Helen Clark (UNDP): ‘Social protection is a necessary investment in sustainable development’

Helen Clark got famous as Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008). Her policy was characterized by investments in social inclusion – with a special attention for the indigenous Maori – nationally, and internationally by her engagement for world peace. Again this year, New Zealand gained the first place on the international peace index as most peace loving nation -and makes  Helen Clark proud.
But today, she especially pays attention to development and the strengthening of vulnerable countries and communities. Clark is a no-nonsense women who wants to make the problem of poverty and marginalization the central issue of the international community.

‘The Millennium Development Goals can still be realized by 2015’, Helen Clark said in her speech for the European Parliament in June. Given the situation of the world economy and the way European countries reacted to it, this sounds like a desperate attempt to uphold some optimism, rather than a well founded statement. Clark admits that her optimism is based on global figures, that show a positive tendency due to the gains made by countries like China, India and Brazil.

‘But even countries where progress is small or even non-existing, a lot can still be realized during the following five years. On condition that there will be enough political will.’ With this message, Helen Clark today travels the whole world, in the hope to convince governments in the North as well as in the South to make renewed and reinforced engagements in New York this year for the MDGs, so that the final outcome will be as positive as possible in 2015.
How would more vulnerable countries, regions or groups be able to realize the Millennium Development Goals by 2015?
Helen Clark: Economical growth is a necessary -though insufficient- condition to get people out of extreme poverty and hunger. Most African countries have seen a remarkable growth between 2000 and 2008, but the poverty of the population didn’t go down at all. A growth strategy only works against poverty if it is focused on the economical sectors in which the poor are working. In most development countries, this means investing in agriculture. But governments have been neglecting their agricultural sectors. It would also help a lot if the Doha negotiations of the World Trade Organisation would deliver an agreement benefiting the development countries.
Do you believe that a WTO agreement would be a good thing for the small farmers and their family agriculture?
Helen Clark: An agreement which is good for the export agriculture is in the first place good for growth countries like Brazil and South Africa. For smaller or poorer development countries more and easier world trade in agricultural products still offers possibilities to concentrate on specialty products and markets. Mali for example has increased its mangoes exportation on the short term of almost nothing to some twelve thousand tons thanks to women co-operations supported by the government for training. A market investigation predicts for that sector a potential for exports up to 200,000 tons a year. In other words, also outside the agricultural industry, there are a lot of other advantages which a world trade agreement can offer to agriculture.
But that does suppose a functioning and stimulating state. 
Helen Clark:  Absolutely. Permitting poor farmers to launch their yields on the market, means to construct roads and transport infrastructure. As well as security and rule of law. But on the other side, roads and ports don’t mean anything if there are no products to transport.
In an dialogue with the European Commissioner for Trade, Karel De Gucht, he stated rightly that some countries have so little trade, that they have barely noticed the global crisis. That seems an advantage, but it actually means that they are too poor today to notice the international shockwaves, but also to poot to develop.  

The strengthening of the government capacities also is the biggest priority for the UNDP, although this usually stays an invisible investment. Water wells and primary schools are usually much more fun to show for communication people and media than an UNDP adviser being put at the disposal of the prime minister or the ministry of Agriculture or Planning. Although such an expert could have a much bigger impact by strengthening sustainably the capacity of the government apparatus.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund also recognize the importance of strong governments now, but they are responsible for the deconstruction of the states during the 80’s and the 90’s.
Helen Clark: In many countries, the structural adaptation programmes were destructive for economies, societies and communities. Luckily, today we are a long way of the Washington Consensus, of which the adaptation programmes were a pillar, and we are conscious again that a state needs to be strong enough to combat fraud and corruption and to enforce create a level playing field for everyone. Without these conditions, it is impossible to attract investments, while the creation of development does not work without a dynamic private sector.   
According to the Global Monitoring Report 2010 from the World Bank and the IMF, in the next five years 1.2 million children will die before their 5th birthday, only as a consequence of the global economical crisis. That is a shocking responsibility for the financial sector which caused the crisis.
Helen Clark: The consequences of the incredible negligence of the financial sector are broader than this one figure. We know for example that if a child is taken of school because the parents can’t afford the school fee any more or because an extra income is necessary to survive, it doesn’t return to school any afterwards in most cases. Nor if the economy would grow again. I fear that the inequities which have led to the crisis, haven’t been handled  yet in a structural way either.  
The consequence is that it will be much harder for developing countries will to attain the Millennium Development Goals, while at the same time official development aid will rather shrink than grow to the promised 0.7 % of GDP.

Helen Clark:  If the European Union will continue to take the lead in the field of development, climate and financial regulations, there is still hope. Otherwise, it does not look good at all indeed.   
In 2010 the real development expenditures of the EU have been less than forty per cent  of the promised amount in 2005,
Helen Clark: Indeed, there have to be more and better accounting mechanisms, through which the European Commission can hold track and publish on who is fulfilling its promises and who is not. Of course, we have difficult times now for everyone, also for the rich countries, but for once and for all, we make it clear that growing economies in the South are good for the rich North. Bigger markets for our products also keep up our living standard.

‘I also sympathize with the ice bear, but climate change is in the first place about farmers who have to leave their drying or flooded land ’

When we talk about development aid, we always talk in the facts about the expenditures of countries who are member of the Organisation for Economical Cooperation and Development. The new donors continue to be invisible.
Helen Clark: It is right that the reality of the global development aid is a lot more complex than the figures of the OECD Development Committee tell us, which are now about 119 billion dollars yearly. South – South co-operation is now estimated at about 15 billion dollars, which is still small in comparison with the classical donors, but this amount is growing exponentially. Especially growth countries like China and Brazil are important, but also South Africa, Turkey and Saudi Arabia should not be forgotten. Their contributions are not added to the official recognized development aid, because they want to develop their own approach and do not want to fall under the agreements and the criteria agreed on within the OECD. 
Is more aid the answer to global poverty and exclusion?
Helen Clark: Aid is important, but we need to look more and more in which way it can be provided in the best way– and this is not by pumping money into an endless row of small projects. The main question is: in which way can we really change the power relations? What will shift the balance towards benefiting the poor?
If I go on a working visit in development countries, I don’t want to be taken around to all those small projects. That does not interest me too much. I want to get to know things which can be taken to scale, which can offer real change on a national level. Is there a will to co-operate with authorities to increase the scale and in this way the impact of the approach? Because if your water well or primary school is so fantastic, then why aren’t there more of these wells or schools everywhere in the world? Development aid should be seen more as a catalyst of change instead of replacement of the failing government policy.

Increasingly, the future funds for development will have to be looked for in the development countries themselves. Governments used count on import taxes before, but in a world of increasing free trade, this is coming to an end. In the future, economic growth and more efficient fiscal systems will have to applied on domestic incomes to finance national development.
You say that development aid has to be a catalyst for national development. But why has aid not realized this outcome during the past half century? 
Helen Clark: The past peak of development aid was towards the end of the 80s, the time the Cold War peaked. Why do you think that so much money went to the South then? For development or because there was an intense competition between the East and the West for the favours of third world countries?

Today, we are back on the right track and this time, I think, for the right reasons, which are even going further than the strong moral argument that each human life is worth the same. We realize today more than we used to do, that we can only keep up our own living standard if the rest of the population also knows development. Our products are in need of new markets, our greying population is increasingly in need of social care, our economies need active and trained workforces. Besides, frontiers have become irrelevant for the big international challenges linking poverty, insecurity and climate change.
The past decade, a large part of aid went to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Can you still maintain that we use a real different development vision today than during the Cold War?
Helen Clark: I agree that fragile countries get too big a share of the aid. That is why my plea is about investing much more in the poor but more stable states during the next five years, in the run-up to the Millennium Development Goals’ finish. It is unacceptable that there needs to be a revolt or a civil war before the cheques of the rich countries arrive.
In the endless stream of figures and indicators for the millennium development goals, hardly anything is said about the impact of social injustice.
Helen Clark: In middle income countries, we are actively tracking inequalities and helping governments to answer the question why not everyone profits of the economical growth. China has asked us to help with the formulation of a new strategy for their struggle against poverty, and there the focus will specifically be on inequalities. We have the same focus in Latin America. Deep inequalities in a society are always causing more criminality and insecurity. More and  more governments realize this.
Today, everyone is advocating social safety nets to safeguard the worst cases of exclusion. But do we not have to go further and aim for real social security systems?
Helen Clark: There has to be a social floor under which no one should fall. This minimum has to guarantee everyone sufficient food and income to participate in society. Also for developing countries, this is no science fiction. Experience actually proves that an inclusive system of social protection strengthens the resilience of families, communities and whole societies.
Some countries started to build their social protection after the food crisis of 2008. Although that was late, those countries were better equipped to deal with the shocks when the economical recession of 2009 hit them.
We do not see social protection as a heavy burden for the state budget, but as a necessary investment in sustainable development. That is the reason that we never talk about social safety nets, but about inclusive social protection. It is not about an afterthought, but about strengthening the development capacities of the groups and the communities, and about a fundamental choice of values, namely that development may not leave anyone behind in a situation not dignified for humans.
How important is a climate agreement for development? 
Helen Clark: For the developing countries the basic principle of “common but diversified responsibility” is essential. The North will need to continue taking in charge a much bigger part of the costs for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, because it also has profited much more from the economy and the life style that have caused the problem.
Climate change is more a development problem than an environmental problem. I also sympathize with the ice bear, but climate change is in the first place about farmers who have to leave their drying or flooded land, about fishing communities being pushed out of their coastal villages or about vulnerable communities which see their culture and live style being destroyed. If the West is committed to development cooperation, it will also need to work on an alternative for its oil addiction. Otherwise, it is not credible.