Readers' opinion

Letters to the editor

Two letters to the editor from Germany.

Focus: Donor harmonisation
and the EU / “No impact”,

Monitor p. 50.
D+C/E+Z 2/2008,

An article in D+C 2/2008 de­scribed the conclusion reached in a GDI discussion paper, namely that the goals of the Paris Declaration have not been achieved. Our experience in intensive cooperation with local-government bodies confirms this view.

ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability is an international association of local governments (www.iclei.org). For nearly 20 years, we have been developing international programmes to strengthen local governments’ capacity to implement sustainable development. In recent years, we have been observing a growing discrepancy. While local authorities are praised at every possible opportunity as relevant actors, global cooperation with municipal bodies is actually becoming more difficult. Why is this so?

– “Ownership”, no doubt, exists at the local level, but if recipient countries are given greater scope for decision-making, those to benefit are normally the national governments, not the municipal ones. Projects to strengthen local authorities are not even given priority in countries with poor governance, even though it would make sense to set out from the grass-roots levels in such cases. This is where public participation and control can be implemented, and doing so would boost democratic development in general. If the goal is really to strengthen democratic foundations, the fixation on national governments is counter-productive.

– International donor programmes are becoming bigger and bigger. “Pooling of funds” is the catchword. However, it would be possible to support local governments very effectively with smaller projects designed for the long run. Multi-million dollar projects often are not even necessary for (local) development, but that is what large consortia of regional banks and intermediary institutions thrive on.

– Even if there is increased multilateral cooperation on the part of the donors, in most cases, such cooperation remains restricted to individual target countries. Positive exceptions to this trend are seen in recent Europe-Aid programmes, which cover entire regions. Local governments are learning from one another in projects on local climate protection, new strategies for mobility, environmental manage­ment systems and so on. Nothing is more effective than inter-municipal North-South networks and, increasingly, South-South networks too. However, very often they do not fit into donor agencies’ focus areas for specific target countries. Today, it would be more difficult to arrange funds for an international project like the Local Agenda 21 than it was 15 years ago, when the Agenda was launched.

Practical problems of this nature must be taken into consideration in the discussion about the Paris Declaration.

Monika Zimmermann
Director, International Training Centre ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability; Training.centre@iclei.org, Freiburg

The myth of Western aid
The roots of Kenya’s crisis

D+C/E+Z 2/2008, p. 69 ff. und p. 86

In “The myth of Western aid”, K. Mahbubani does not give the impression that he is sufficiently informed about years of development aid efforts by the West. The essay of the author from Singapore is full of well-worn clichés in its dismissive judgment. Mr. Mahubani does not even try to make an enlightening contribution to explain his nearly completely negative statements. I do not believe myself that the track record of western aid and western policies is all that convincing. But Mr. Mahubani’s assessment does not at all do justice to the variety of attempts made, the complexity of the issues at hand, and even the results.

I was also irritated by M. Ngesa’s comment on the roots of the Kenyan crisis. The author refers to a thesis by C. Elkin that the British colonial power is to blame for the continuing malaise of hatred and tribalism in Kenyan society, and adopts it as her own. One gets the impression that she knows nothing about scholars’ debate on the British colonial power’s aspiration to enforce a so-called Pax Britannica and what it actually achieved in those terms – particularly in the first decades of colonial rule. Otherwise, she would have referred to that debate. She also seems to have little interest in analysing more recent post-colonial problems, for else her assessment would have been less scathing.

Prof. Dr. P. von Blanckenburg, Berlin

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