Global Issues
DEVELOPMENT: Scandinavia Leads World in Pro-Poor Policies
Scandinavian countries pursue policies that are most effective in promoting development in poor nations, according to the latest edition of the annual 'Commitment to Development Index' released by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD).
Sweden topped this year's Index, which rates the performance of 22 donor countries in seven key policy areas.
Sweden displaced the Netherlands, which had been ranked number one by the CGD for four of the past five years, but which this year tied with Norway for third place. Denmark ranked number two, while Finland, the fourth Scandinavian nation on the list, came in tenth.
Of the larger aid donors that make up the Group of Seven (G7) nations, Canada scored the highest, in 11th place overall, followed by Britain, Germany, and France, which all were tied in 12th place.
The United States, as it has in the past, ranked toward the bottom of the list, at 17, followed by Italy (18) and Japan (21), the other two members of the G7.
Collectively, according to CGD, the G7 countries did best in promoting development through investment and trade policies. With a couple of exceptions, their policies on aid and migration, on the other hand, were among the worst.
Other poor performers included Greece (which tied with Italy in 18th place), Switzerland (20), and South Korea (22), which was added to the Index for the first time last year.
The Index, which has become increasingly influential in the international aid community since it was first published by Foreign Policy magazine in 2003, is designed to encourage donor countries to adopt policies that are more likely to promote development across a broad range of issues that define their relationships with poor countries.
It assesses donor-country performance according to seven criteria - aid flows, trade, investment, migration, environment, security and peacekeeping, and technology - that have a major impact on the welfare of poor countries.
Multiple factors of various weights are used to determine the quantitative score for each criterion. The scores for reach criterion are then added up to determine an overall score and rank.
The score for the 'aid' criterion, for example, is determined not only by a donor's total official development assistance (ODA) as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP), but also by how much of its ODA is 'tied' to purchases of its own goods and services; what kinds of bureaucratic burdens it imposes on the beneficiary country to account for the aid; how it encourages its citizens to contribute to private charities active in developing countries; and whether the aid recipient is likely to put the assistance to good use.
Thus, aid to Iraq, where corruption is rampant, is counted at 13 cents on the dollar, for example, while aid to Malawi, which has made major strides in ending corruption, is counted at 94 cents on the dollar.
On aid policies, Sweden gained the highest score, followed by Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Ireland. At the other end of the scale, Japan and South Korea earned the lowest scores, followed by Greece, Italy and the U.S.
On trade, CGD considered how open donor countries are to poor-country imports and how much they subsidise their own producers. Australia and New Zealand (which ranked seventh and fifth, respectively, overall), earned the highest scores in this category, followed by the U.S. and Canada. The worst performers were Switzerland and South Korea, followed by Norway and Japan.
In the investment category, CGD considers whether and how donor countries encourage their citizens and companies to invest in poor countries in ways that best promote sustainable development.
Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Spain topped that list in part due to their efforts to ensure that their companies' investment did not contribute to corruption. Worst performers included Austria, Ireland and Switzerland, due to their restrictions on investment or failure to offer investment incentives, such as political-risk insurance.
On migration policies, the CGD assessed such factors as the net inflow of people from poor countries to wealthy ones, the aid provided by host governments to refugees and asylum seekers, and the openness to students from poor countries. Austria, Sweden, and Spain performed best in this category. South Korea and Japan, on the other hand, were the two worst performers.
Scores for environmental policies were based on what donor countries are doing to reduce their disproportionate exploitation of the global commons, by, for example, reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions or ending subsidies of their fishing fleets.
The best performer in this category was Norway, which, of all 22 donor countries, had the lowest per capita greenhouse emissions and the highest taxes on gasoline. Other strong performers included Finland, Denmark, France, and Britain. South Korea scored the lowest, followed by Canada, the U.S., Japan and Australia.
On security, CGD assessed each country's contribution to peacekeeping operations and UN- or NATO-approved humanitarian operations and to securing international sea lanes. At the same time, it penalised countries for exporting arms to undemocratic or repressive governments.
In this category, Australia and New Zealand earned the highest scores, notably for Australia's U.N.-sanctioned role in ending Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, while Norway rated third for its contributions to U.N. peacekeeping operations. South Korea, Japan, Spain, and Belgium, on the other hand, scored lowest in this category.
Despite its status as the world's biggest supplier of weapons to developing countries, the U.S. scored above average due to its Navy's role as the de facto protector of the world's major sea lanes.
On technology, CGD used a variety of criteria - including the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) on pharmaceuticals and other important products; and subsidies for non-military research and development (R&D) - to assess each country's contribution to the creation and dissemination of innovations that could raise living standards in poor countries.
Spain, South Korea, and Japan scored highest in this category, while Ireland, Italy, Germany and Britain received the lowest marks.
Over the seven years that the Index has been published, Spain (which ranks 7, along with Australia, in its overall score), Greece (18), Sweden (1), and Ireland (6) have made the greatest improvements in policies that promote development in poor countries, according to CGD.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service