If only aid were under national control

Monday, April 27, 2009

If only aid were under national control

How often have we heard this from many people who believe that the European Union could do with a bit of reforming but is, otherwise, a jolly spiffing idea? Well, maybe not exactly spiffing but not really all that bad, if only we could get some of those powers back.

Because, of course, our own politicians and civil servants will always make the right decision, the sensible choice, and go along the correct path. One of those powers that will be so much more sensibly handled by national governments and officials, we are frequently told, is foreign aid.

Let us have a look at one small aspect of foreign aid, which is apparently, under British control. We are speaking of aid going to Gaza and the West Bank, which is now officially known as Occupied Palestinian Territories.

On Tuesday the answer to a written question by Lord Hylton (a man of rather wide political interests) was published in Hansard. The question had been:

To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Statement by Lord Tunnicliffe on 17 March, what conditions are attached to the grant of £50 million for reconstruction in Gaza; what conditions are attached to planned development and aid expenditure in 2009-10 in the occupied West Bank; and to what extent the government of Israel is affected by any conditions.

Even though his lordship seems more interested in conditions placed on the government of Israel than in the amount of aid money that had been siphoned off by both Hamas and Fatah, this is a reasonable question.

Was the reply reassuring? Well, no, not exactly. As far as Gaza is concerned, there are no conditions attached to the aid at all but we shall, of course, make sure that all the money goes to the people it is intended to. We do seem to have heard that before, for instance here.

What of the situation in the West Bank? What is happening with the aid money there?

With regards to our planned expenditure in the West Bank, at the Paris pledging conference in December 2007 the UK committed up to £243 million over three years to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Provision of this funding is linked to tangible progress in peace negotiations, including progress on reform of the Palestinian Authority, and the easing of movement and access restrictions by the Israeli Government.

The Israeli government has always said that "the easing of movement and access restrictions" is conditional on there not being any movement of suicide/homicide bombers and there has never been a proper undertaking on that from any Palestinian organization.

As for that tangible progress in anything at all, especially reform of the Palestinian Authority and some kind of accountability over the money that is pumped into the area, there has been no sign of anything, tangible or otherwise. So, will the money go there anyway? I suspect I know the answer to that.

COMMENT THREAD

A new one almost every week

"Before we succumb to the oracles of doom, we should formulate a new scientific law: small fluctuations in scientific data produce disproportionate panic in the populace. Climate scares have become like health scares: there is a new one almost every week, and they get less persuasive as they multiply."

So writes Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, in theIndependent on Sunday of all places, speculating about the quiet sun and the prospects of the world suffering from a cool spell.

He is absolutely right to propose such a scientific law, although there is hardly anything new in it. The dynamics of scares - or "moral panics" as the sociologists prefer to call them – are well understood.

Fernandez-Armesto, however, believes the current cooling trend will "probably be a short lurch", as opposed to the warming which, in accordance with the warmist orthodoxy "is the long-term trend."

One can only hope he is right for, as we have observed on many occasions, the impact of even slight cooling on world agricultural production is likely to be extremely serious - in a system which has little in-built flexibility.

Quite how close to the edge we really are comes with little-noticed reports from Pakistan, which are warning of an imminent wheat crisis. Already, prices of wheat flour and its products are soaring and the Pakistani government is being forced to increase imports to meet the shortage.

Of even more concern is another report which points to greater turmoil to come. This predicts that the GDP growth rate of Pakistan is expected to decline further as the current wheat production target looks set to be missed by 6.8 percent. Initial estimates of wheat production show that only 23.3 million tons of wheat are expected from the current harvest as against the target of 25 million tons. 

This decline in production is in spite of the fact that the wheat sowing target was surpassed. The government had fixed the target at 8.610 million hectares, while wheat has been sown on 8.749 million hectares, an increase of 1.61 percent. This shortfall is expected to have a profound effect, driving down GDP growth to two percent - the lowest in the past 38 years of Pakistan's history.

A great deal has been written recently of the political situation in Pakistan, the growing instability and the rise of the Taleban but, at the root of it all is this specific phenomenon. No country which neglects its agricultural base can ever prosper.

In Pakistan, we hear of urgent need for structural changes in the economy and, in particular, of the need for land reforms, without which there can be no leap in agricultural productivity. But so bad has the situation become that yield per acre is not increasing in line with increased population.

Since 2000, the per annum increase in wheat production has been a paltry 0.44 percent, against an approximate 2.3 percent population increase. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan ranks 61 out of 85 countries in the 2008 Global Hunger Index.

Against the underlying problems in agriculture, Pakistan is one of the many countries which can least afford a further decline in production arising from cooler weather. If the current political instability can, in part, be attributed to lacklustre agricultural performance, then it provides an indication of how things might develop if cooling does set in for a prolonged period.

This is a "climate scare" that we do not want to see turn into reality.

COMMENT THREAD