From May 25 to 27 in Shanghai,
several heads of state, more than 80 ministers and heads of
agencies, along with some 1,000 development specialists, public and
private sector executives, academics and social representatives,
will meet on the world’s most urgent important topic: how to scale
up the fight against global poverty.
Along with the government of China,
which is cosponsoring the meeting, Presidents Lula of Brazil, Mkapa
of Tanzania, Museveni of Uganda and Prime Minister Zia of
Bangladesh will participate in the discussion of the central
question facing the world today: with more than half the people in
developing countries--2.8 billion--living on less than US$2 a day,
how can we possibly achieve the Millennium Development Goals
without large-scale solutions that can be widely applied?
In New York, at the Millennium
Summit in 2000, the international community agreed on the
Millennium Development Goals--including halving the proportion of
the world's population living in extreme poverty by 2015. In
Shanghai, we are looking to find solutions that can help us meet
those goals. Solutions for developing countries from developing
countries. Solutions that can travel.
In fact, the proportion of people
living in extreme poverty has been reduced by half over the past 30
years. On current trends, however, most of the targets for 2015 in
education, health, the environment and other areas, will not be met
by most developing nations. To not miss our targets, we need to
speed up action now--and we need to find a new way of doing
business. A new paradigm: scaling up.
"Scaling up" means taking successful
programs, policies, or projects and expanding, adapting, and
sustaining them in different places and across time, which requires
learning more about what works and what doesn’t.
Scaling up can take place at the
country level, based on growth-oriented strategies coupled with
policies that aim specifically to reduce poverty; at the program or
project level, by expanding and enlarging them over time and space,
and by ensuring their sustainability; and at the global level, by
encouraging spillovers from village to city, from city to region,
from region to nation, and across countries.?
The more than 100 case studies that
have been prepared for Shanghai provide a wealth of experience and
embody lessons of failure and as well as success. On balance, they
show that getting to scale is not a smooth linear process but
rather a long, arduous, unpredictable journey.
Examples:
- In northeast Brazil, a decade of piloting and expanding
rural, community-driven programs has benefited some 7.5 million
rural poor and resulted in 35,000 community associations and 1,500
representative municipal councils. Ninety percent of project
resources directly benefit the people.
?
- Indonesia’s Kecamatan Community Development Program
benefits about 35 million poor people, expanding from 25 villages
in 1998 to 28,000 villages today. The program gives power to
communities by placing funds and decision-making directly in the
hands of villagers.?
- In Uganda, even in the face of recurring internal
conflict, a committed political leadership achieved sustained
economic growth during the 1990s and reduced urban poverty from 28
percent of the population to 10 percent in 2000.
- The Yemen Social Development Fund provides clean water,
education, cultural restoration and health delivery in rugged rural
communities, which decide on their own priorities, contribute a
percentage of the costs and play a key role in maintaining the
services themselves.
?
These are very different countries,
very different experiences. Yet a number of common elements shine
through: good governance of projects and programs as well as good
economics; a clear focus on client--not donor--needs; communication
and transparency, to guard against corruption; a spirit of learning
and experimentation and a culture of monitoring results in a way
that can be communicated for adoption elsewhere, as well as to gain
political support to reach for higher levels of achievement.
There are messages also for
aid-givers and partners, including the importance of “ownership” of
development projects and programs--solutions cannot be imposed from
the outside--and the importance of the quality as well as the
quantity of aid.?
The millions of people who have
participated in, and benefited from, fundamental shifts in
development policy and investments over the years have a wealth of
knowledge to share. The World Bank and the government of China hope
that the Shanghai conference can help unleash this knowledge on a
global scale.
Achieving the millennium goals
requires decisive and urgent action. Shanghai will push the process
in that direction. With 2 billion more people to be added to the
world’s population over the next 25 years--95 percent of them in
the developing countries--the fight against poverty represents the
great challenge of our time.
For the sake of our children and our
children’s children, we must scale up.
(James D. Wolfensohn, president of
the World Bank Group, contributed this article.)
(China.org.cn May 24, 2004)