The Reality Check is the official newsletter of the Reality of Aid. It is designed to highlight current issues in aid regime written from a regional perspective but with global significance, edited in rotation by members from the different global regions.
Reality Check
Reality Check, November 2011: Climate Finance and Development Effectiveness in Africa
The aid effectiveness campaign has succeeded in offering a set of operating principles and a process framework for making development assistance more transparent, effective, accountable and consultative. However, as climate change poses to be a significant threat to African countries, the prevailing modality to address adaptation and mitigation is the global fund, which is delivered directly to projects, bypassing partner countries’ public finance management systems and institutions.
Reality Check, July 2011: PPP: Private Gains, Public Costs
Governments across the globe are now being encouraged to partner with private for-profit entities in various fields that were formerly the exclusive or dominant turf of public agencies, in what has come to be known as Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). Private sector participation in building and operating infrastructure and other public service facilities, under some contractual arrangement with the government, is increasingly packaged as a win-win solution, which on one hand taps private investment, management, and technical capacity, while on the other hand supposedly benefits the government and the public through increased revenue and improved service.
Reality Check, March 2011: Examining Development Policy: Coherence for Whom?
Current international concern on policy coherence comes from the recognition that the enormous range of development policies implemented or proposed is motivated by diverse agendas and interests of various actors whose concerns and priorities may not be consistent or even intersect. This incoherence results in contradicting policies that have tremendous impacts on people especially the poor in developing countries.
Policy coherence for development (PCD) is often confused with and narrowed down to harmonization and coordination, but PCD covers the whole policy environment that ensures economic relations are not damaging as well as country ownership of development programs and policies. As such, PCD must be guided by principles of human rights, gender and social equity, ecological sustainability, solidarity, and mutual accountability to achieve development effectiveness.
Reality Check Africa, January 2011: The State of Agriculture in Africa
This edition of reality check provides an insight into the status of agriculture and food security in Africa. It highlights the challenges facing agricultural growth in Africa particularly in respect to ensuring food security, and analyses the existing efforts and opportunities for African governments to address the twin challenges of ensuring agricultural growth and food security. It further assesses the impact of efforts by global funds and private investors in responding to the twin challenges, thus identifying the existing gaps in these approaches.
It concludes by observing that it is imperative to address poverty in Africa to ensure sustainable agricultural growth and reduce hunger. African governments must work concertedly with development partners to address the causes of poverty and hunger, and support vulnerable populations against shocks. Agricultural polices and investments must go hand in hand with addressing issues of household incomes and vulnerabilities, as well as understanding the nature of appropriate technologies necessary to sustain the majority small scale producers of agriculture.
Reality Check, December 2009: Climate Funds & Development
Climate Change is the biggest challenge confronting our present generation with potentially catastrophic consequences for ecological systems along with people’s health, safety and livelihoods. But its impacts are unevenly distributed. Those with the least contribution to the causes of global warming are the most adversely affected by it. They also command the least resources to adapt to the ongoing changes brought on by climate change.
Mobilizing resources for climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development is therefore an urgent matter for international development cooperation.
Reality Check, August 2008: Civil Society and Development Effectiveness: Another View
This edition of the Reality Check tackles the critical issues of civil society and development effectiveness. In the lead-up to the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, CSOs have been challenged to respond to the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in relation to their own effectiveness as aid and development actors. Rejecting the direct application of the Paris Declaration to CSO development roles, CSOs have focused on their roles as innovative agents of change and social transformation. This Reality Check highlights issues of CSO accountability, support for women’s rights organizations in development, political roles, and North/South civil society relationships, among others. In July 2008, about 80 CSOs from around the world launched a two-year Global Forum on CSO Development Effectiveness to discuss these issues and agree upon civil society development effectiveness principles and guidelines to implement these principles.
Reality Check, April 2008: Aid for Trade
“Aid-for-trade” (AfT) is the catch-all term for trade-related official development assistance (ODA) provided to developing countries. With the Doha Round in the doldrums, Aid-for-trade is gaining even more prominence within offical aid and trade circles. Proponents basically share three common premises that provide the rationale for Aid-for-trade: (1) that trade is beneficial to developing countries; (2) that developing countries may face costs and other constraints that prevent them from fully benefitting from trade; and (3) that aid can offset these costs and constraints, hence, enable these countries to benefit significantly from trade. Despite this ostensibly laudable objective, the Aid-for-trade agenda merits a closer and more critical examination from the perspective of people-centered development.
Reality Check, April 2009: Financing Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation and Sustainable Development
Climate Change is the biggest challenge confronting our present generation with potentially catastrophic consequences for ecological systems along with people’s health, safety and livelihoods. But its impacts are unevenly distributed. Those with the least contribution to the causes of global warming are the most adversely affected by it. They also command the least resources to adapt to the ongoing changes brought on by climate change. Mobilizing resources for climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development is therefore an urgent matter for international development cooperation.
Reality Check, January 2008: Aid for Agriculture and Rural Development
The emerging consensus in development circles about the need to increase support for agriculture and rural development is certainly a welcome change after decades of relative neglect. But we need to go beyond "more of the same". The challenge is not merely nor mainly.
Reality Check, January 2007: The Paris Declaration: Towards Enhanced Aid Effectiveness?
This Reality Check provides an overview of the Paris Declaration and highlights donor commitments that purport to improve aid effectiveness. The papers present critiques to the Declaration and pose challenges to donor countries, local and national governments as well as civil society organizations working towards aid effectiveness.
Reality Check, June 2005: Post-Tsunami Issues and Challenges
This edition of the Reality Check tackles pressing issues in the two countries hardest hit by the tsunami - Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The papers outline concrete proposals for concerned national governments, foreign aid donors, and non-government organizations and civil society groups involved in post-tsunami relief operations on how they can ensure that assistance really benefit the victims of recent history’s worst tragedy.
Reality Check, October 2004: Reality Check on Security Agenda and Development Cooperation
With the security agenda in aid policy resonating in recently launched 2004 Reality of Aid report, this Reality Check looks into the various issues related to the current donor policies to address conflict, security and development. This can be gleaned from the contributions of two donor country perspectives on the current shift of donor policies in diverting from poverty eradication to contribute to the "war on terror" and how it has reflected in the case of Mindanao in the Philippines.
Reality Check, September 2003: Aid Off Target: The Reality of Trade-Related Capacity Building
This Reality Check provides an overview of TRCB and highlights the orientation and goals of current approaches to capacity building. By examining what is covered by TRCB and some of the major programmes, we will be able to highlight the major weaknesses in its design and delivery. These weaknesses have led to the conclusion that funding for TRCB, as currently conceived and used by donor countries, is off target if it is to truly make a significant contribution towards reducing poverty in developing countries. Recommendations will be advanced for refocusing TRCB in order to strengthen capacities in developing countries to understand how trade policies influence and can form an element of strategies to improve the livelihoods of those living in poverty.