loans and grants to developing countries to promote growth
and poverty reduction.
As Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency
for International Development, says, “This [15 percent]
threshold is critical, as it enables the United States to block
amendments … on critical issues.” He points out that the
United States is the only country with this veto power.
Maintaining and strengthening U.S. support for multilateral development efforts and institutions complements
the renewed American emphasis on focusing development
assistance on top priorities and achieving results. This way,
the United States can specialize in particular programs and
issues while still having a voice in the allocation of resources
to projects around the world.
One area where U.S. influence can be critical to the effectiveness of development assistance is the recognition that
women do much of the essential work to grow crops and
feed their families nutritious foods but too often lack access
to resources. Another is the move toward more “transparency” in assistance programs—meaning that everyone concerned with a development project, from officials of donor
countries to local beneficiary families, knows exactly what
its objectives are and how the money is being spent.
the international community did not consider it a high
priority and advised aid recipients to develop manufacturing
and other sectors.
On the flip side, U.S. action persuades others to act. For
example, from the Green Revolution’s beginnings in the
1960s, the United States supported this key effort—generating momentum that over a few years ended hunger for
millions of people in Asia. The U.S. proposal to invest significantly more resources in agriculture made in L’Aquila,
mentioned earlier, won support from other G-8 members,
who committed to providing $22 billion in financing for
agricultural productivity over three years.
The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program
(GAFSP) grew out of this U.S.-led multilateral initiative.
GAFSP supplies funding for country and regional agriculture and food security strategic plans. Since it began in April
2010, the effort has received about $1 billion in pledges and
continues to attract new donors. The U.S. Treasury Department called it a “compelling example of how the United
States can internationalize” efforts to respond to urgent
global problems, adding that an initial U.S. contribution of
$302 million “directly leveraged $579 million from others.”
GAFSP estimates that these resources will improve the food
security of 7.5 million smallholder farmers.
The idea behind leading and supporting multilateral development efforts is that the whole is greater than the sum
of its parts. We can see this when we look at what is already being accomplished through newer efforts such as the
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the
L’Aquila food security commitments and the GASFP grants
that L’Aquila made possible, the Millennium Challenge Account, and CAADP. Multilateral cooperation enables the
global community to pool its resources, share knowledge of
what is working well, and identify and fill funding gaps in
the most promising programs.
Until 2005, the United States was the largest donor to
every multilateral development fund, but a shift toward
more bilateral assistance through efforts such as PEPFAR
and Feed the Future means that this is no longer the case.
In fact, the share of U.S. foreign assistance that is channeled
through multilateral programs has fallen to 11 percent of
our country’s total assistance—less than half of its level in
2000. The average for donor countries is 30 percent.
Financial contributions are a way to show leadership in
multilateral initiatives. Moreover, influence on important
decisions within multilateral organizations is often linked
to funding. For example, the United States contributes 15
percent of the funding for the World Bank, which provides
Agricultural assistance programs that help improve soil, irrigation,
storage, and access to markets often benefit two generations,
including Pedro and his daughter Eloisa in Nicaragua.
4
World Bank/Arne Hoel
Richard Leonardi/Bread for the World
A Question of Leadership