NPR: Making Foreign Aid Work for Struggling Nations

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    Aug 28, 2005

    Ahead of the UN Summit next week, NPR's Liane Hansen interviewed CGD President Nancy Birdsall about ways to make foreign aid work for poor countries. The interview was based upon a recent controversial article in Foreign Affairs by Nancy Birdsall, Dani Rodrik,and Arvind Subramanian titled How to Help Poor Countries: Getting Development Right, which argued that rich countries should look beyond aid and trade in their efforts to support development. Click the source link to the right to listen to the NPR interview.

    Excerpt: "The most well-known approaches to helping poor countries have to do with money—giving aid—and with improving their access to markets, the trade approach. And those things are important. But, what we concluded in our piece is that it is also tremendously important to broaden the agenda. The evidence is that if you are looking for long-term growth, a real transformation of societies, we have got to recognize that aid can only help. It can’t be the fundamental driving force. What really matters is the decisions made within these countries and their ability institutionally to sustain a good policy environment, accountable government, all of the factors that make it possible for people to improve their lives…

    What needs to be emphasized more (than aid and trade), including at the United Nations next month, is a whole set of other issues where the rich world is doing harm to the poor world. A good example is our green house gas emissions. The fact is that global warming is and will be very costly to poor countries. And because they are poorer they will have less ability financially and institutionally to adjust to the difficulties that global warming will bring. Think of a country like Bangladesh is already possibly being victimized by more volatility in weather…"