In Pursuit of Development

The future of aid — Jonathan Glennie

Episode Summary

Dan Banik speaks with Jonathan Glennie on whether "aid" has reached its expiry date and the characteristic features of Global Public Investment (GPI) for sustainable development.

Episode Notes

International public finance, that is required to address global challenges in the decades to come, is woefully inadequate. And rather than aid, which offers an obsolete approach, we should be talking about joint investments – or as my guest this week puts it, Global Public Investment (GPI).

In his recent book, The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment, Jonathan Glennie urges us to move away from the patronizing and outdated aid narrative.

For starters, he points to the ambitious SDGs and the need for more money to achieve these goals in the years ahead. Domestic resources, he argues, is insufficient to address the challenges the world currently faces and will face in the years ahead. What we must do, he argues, is to turn around the donor-recipient relationship and encourage even the poorest countries to contribute 0.7 % of their GNI to international development. This would in turn require a transformational governance structure where everyone sits around the table – a structure that mitigates the fact that some countries have more money and contribute more than others.

Jonathan Glennie is a writer and campaigner on human rights, international cooperation, sustainable development and poverty.

Jonathan Glennie on Twitter
Dan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitter

Episode Transcription

(prepared by Ingrid Ågren Høegh)

Banik International public finance, that is required to address global challenges in the decades to come, is woefully inadequate. And rather than aid, which offers an obsolete approach, we should be talking about joint investments – or as my guest this week puts it, Global Public Investment (GPI). In his recent book, The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment, Jonathan Glennie urges us to move away from the patronizing and outdated aid narrative.

Jonathan Glennie is a writer and campaigner on human rights, international cooperation, sustainable development and poverty. He was recently on the line from Columbia and we discussed a range of issues including: whether aid has indeed reached its expiry date, the characteristic features of Global Public Investment, and whether getting rid of the baggage that surrounds aid will rid us of self-interests and the politics that underline much of what states are willing to do for each other.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Banik Congratulations on this fantastic new book, Jonathan, and welcome to the show.

Glennie Thanks very much, Dan, thanks for having me.

Banik I’ve really enjoyed reading the book and I really like the fact that you launch this big new idea of GPI or Global Public Investment as a new form of International Public Finance, especially in relation to sustainable development finance that is available and accessible to as many countries as possible. So let’s begin with an overview, Jonathan, of what you propose to be the characteristic features of this GPI and how and to what extent this concept that you propose differs from current forms of aid and investments that we are accustomed to. So, the question is: why is it necessary to undertake these radical changes to the current system that you’re proposing and what can GPI offer?

Glennie So I come from the world of aid, so I call my book The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment, and I compare this proposal of global public investment with what we currently have, the aid system and other things. But a good friend of mine did take the mickey out of the title and he said it’s a bit like calling a book The Future of Television: The Internet because actually global public investment is a much bigger idea than aid, and aid ends up being kind of a small component in a way, bit like comparing television to the internet. So, I come at this from the aid world and I’ve spent twenty years hearing and seeing all the critiques of the aid world, also the good stuff, and I’m not one of those people that just thinks aid is rubbish, not at all. Quite the contrary. It’s made huge improvements in people’s lives all over the world and yet there is the other side and it has sometimes been ineffective and something that can have negative consequences. That’s kind of what I wrote about in my first book a few years ago, The Trouble with Aid, where I said that we somehow have to enable, and African countries have to lead, the reduction of a dependency and yet, with all those critiques of aid, we somehow have to maintain large-scale international public spending for the things we care about at the global level. So this book is an attempt to say, yes, we have to move on from the aid concept, and you can’t decolonise aid, because it is fundamentally a colonial concept, so we need to move on from that twentieth-century governance language and yet maintain large scale, and much larger scale public investment internationally. So, what you hear at the moment in international aid theory, is that we need to stop aid, but then the theory says well we end aid and therefore concessional international finance for most countries comes to an end. You have this idea of a graduation. I live in Colombia. Most countries in Latin America are either graduated, or on their way to graduating. They will no longer need concessions. Meaning countries that most people consider very poor, in Africa and in Asia, are in the process of graduating from this thing called aid. And we’re saying, yes, aid as a concept has to end, but we need something that continues, large-scale distribution across the world between wealthy and poorer countries. And also, thinking about the SDGs and that paradigm shift that said it’s not just about extreme poverty, it’s about all the other global objectives that we have. We need big money to help solve those problems and that’s what the global public investment idea tries to do.

Banik So on the very first page of your book, you write, “the world needs a coherent, ambitious and effective global response to the multiple challenges it faces.” I totally agree with you Jonathan. We really do need new ideas. And I think you make a very important contribution to making us think differently and getting us out of our comfort zones. And for starters, I absolutely agree with you that we must get rid of this kind of patronizing aid narrative. As you really nicely put it in the penultimate chapter of the book, I wish it was actually right in the beginning of the book, that the fact that the words we use do actually matter and we must stop using patronizing, out-dated, embarrassing language. And you say we should be using much more horizontal language. But the aid project, as you were just mentioning, hasn’t failed totally, has it? I mean there are lots of things that have worked. Over the years, I have been interested in highlighting, you know, what works in global development, sure there are lots of things that we could have done differently, but there are numerous successes in terms of say life expectancy at birth, improvements in health outcomes, reduction in child mortality. Some countries have even seen an increase in economic growth, they’ve coped with climate and economic shocks, some institution-building has taken place. So, the question is, Jonathan, should we abandon all of these successes or would you retain some of these elements of the traditional aid system that has worked, while you introduce new elements? What is it that we can build on rather than throwing everything out?

Glennie Of course. I’ve just written a book saying we need to double, triple, the amount of global public investment at the international level. Absolutely. I believe in the role of public money at the international level. And I’m critiquing an aid theory that says aid is temporary, that between about 1950 and about 2030, there will be this thing called “aid,” and then it will come to an end. No. We need to have public investment at the international level in perpetuity, just like we do at the national level. It’s a fundamental part of our national economy. At the regional level, the EU in the 1970s instigated large-scale transfers between countries, not to eliminate extreme poverty but to continue the process of convergence. And that’s exactly how we need to think at the global level. This is not temporary. We need to understand the importance of public money as complimentary to private money, and international money as complementary to domestic money. So, if you read what Mariana Mazzucato is trying to say about public funds at the national level. She says they’re not just filling in where the markets fail, they’re a special type of money, which is a first resort, not a last resort. So, at the international level, it’s not just that we haven’t got any private money, we haven’t got any taxes, so we have to find aid to fill a capital gap. Actually, this is a special kind of money, which does special kinds of things. So, even here in Columbia, where the amount of aid received is very small compared to the size of the economy, it can do very special things, catalytic things. And that’s how we need to think going forward in the 21st century. But we can’t continue with the current structures whereby ODA is managed by a handful of bureaucrats in Paris and where decisions are made simply on the basis of bilateral preference. We need to multilateralise this. The fundamental idea behind global public investment is that it’s no longer North-South, it’s no longer some countries are donors and some countries are recipients. It’s everyone pays in, and everyone can benefit. Of course, we maintain redistribution between richer and poorer countries. But, it’s no longer this kind of division between those who are capable to help and those that need help. On the contrary, everyone has something to contribute. And that sounds quite radical, but it’s already very much happening, Dan, in so many different funds, poorer countries considered “recipients” are very much contributing both money and time and energy and ideas to global welfare. And that’s what we need to emphasize in this decade and the decades to come.

Banik That’s fascinating, Jonathan, and we will return to the more specific issues somewhat later in the conversation, but reading your book, it just appeared to me, I got this feeling that what you write about is perhaps influenced by the discourse on aid in the UK. The constant criticism, the constant pressure to use money within its borders rather than abroad, the narrative on charity rather than a rights-based approach, and my impression, of course from Norway, the Nordic countries, is that the discourse here is somewhat different here than in the UK. That the donor discourse in say the Netherlands, or the Nordic countries is not as polarized as perhaps it is in London. And there’s considerable support in the public for aid, there are concerns about cost and effectiveness and whether it is being misused, but there’s considerable general support, at least in Norway, for continued high levels of aid. Are you describing a uniquely UK or US problem with aid, or does your analysis also factor in these other perspectives in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, just to mention a few?

Glennie That’s a good question. We set up an expert working group in October with 20 experts from around the world from different sectors, and the one country that we have on the working group is Norway, he’s from NORAD. And he has been really helpful. So, the way that I wrote the book, I say there are these five paradigm shifts that we have, comparing the aid approach to the global public investment approach, and he suggested to me that instead of calling them paradigm shifts, we call them evolutions. Partly because people don’t like to be told that they need to change everything you always thought, and they prefer to be part of a process, but also, like you say, countries like Norway are already on this process. So they’re already part of the evolution and already adopting some of the principles set out in this book. A few years ago when I presented some of the ideas in this book, all I do is listen, listen to critiques from the Global South and adopted them and presented them in this book, and a few years ago it seemed like a radical critique that would never happen. But nowadays it’s much more, well, this is already happening, which is great because things have moved on. But yeah, I’m influenced by the UK. I’ve been brought up to think in this charity model, which is very outdated. But I don’t think it’s entirely that, Dan, because actually, this concept of graduation is not a British narrative, it’s not a charity narrative, it’s a fact. Literally, countries like Nigeria or Ghana, are preparing to graduate from concessional international finance to non-concessional finance, which means basically loans at the market rate. That’s not a narrative, it’s part of the governance structure and the theory behind ODA. And what this book is challenging is that idea. These countries shouldn’t be graduating, actually, the new president of Peru used to work with me on this stuff and he came up with this language of not graduation but gradation. A clever kind of shift in language. Your needs change and your requirements change. And you have to continue to receive confessional finance, as long as there is a significant difference in your standards of living and those of the wealthiest countries. In the book, I make this analogy between international cooperation and the EU. It’s not a perfect analogy by any means, but one of the things that EU funds do, is say, look, we care about a convergence, and about inequality between countries, and it’s not about an arbitrarily set line by the World Bank, that one day countries will overcome and therefore our responsibility to the international community ends. It’s about constant, perpetual working to bring countries up to a standard that is acceptable in the modern world. And most countries, unfortunately, are still miles behind that.

Banik In much of the book, Jonathan, you seem to take issue with aid having an expiry date. Why is it such a bad thing that the long-term goal for aid is that it should stop at some point? And I’m asking you this because in most of my interactions with policymakers, say on the African continent, in many of the countries that I study, the topic that almost everyone seems to bring up is that of self-reliance and the capacity or the ability to shape one’s own future without being dictated to by others. So, there is of course kind of feeling that yes, aid will stop but we still need it. The discussion is more about how can we get donors to align their interests with ours? And you, in the book, also take issue with the fact that the focus of aid has been very much on poverty reduction, and I thought that was an interesting point because some years ago, there was a lot of debate and discussions on how the lack of focus on poverty reduction was becoming a problem. These were rendering aid programs less effective because of all of these other concerns that were crowding out the focus on poverty. So, you know, is it not a good thing or is it not useful to set realistic targets, lets eradicate extreme poverty and then move on to the next set of challenges, even though, mind you, I’m a firm believer that if we aim for the sky high, we will reach the treetop. So, two issues here that I wanted to pick your brain on: the expiry date of aid and why we should abandon the poverty reduction focus?

Glennie So the first one, that is the fundamental point we’re trying to do with this concept. It’s that contradiction, between, on the one hand, of course countries want to move away from aid dependency and the language of being an aid recipient, it’s an aspect of national pride to move on from that, of course that’s true. But there’s a contradiction. And you speak to people in Uruguay, Ghana, India. India’s one of the poorest countries in the world, and yet for reasons of pride, they’ve said no thanks to donors. So how do you end the aid narrative but maintain international concern for countries that absolutely clearly require and could benefit from large-scale continued large-scale redistribution of money. And that is what the global public investment proposal tries to do. It stops countries from being recipients. So Ghana, Uruguay, India would contribute 0.7% of their GDP to this project, in exactly the same way as donors do. Of course, they would receive back more. So my question to people who say that aid has to end, is why hasn’t it come to an end in Poland, or Spain, which is a net recipient of EU funds, Romania, why are these countries receiving millions of euros every year in grant money, not loans, to support progress and yet we’re telling Vietnam, South Africa, Bolivia, prepare yourself to no longer receive this money because “you don’t need anymore.” So we need to somehow move on from the language and the decision-making of aid, but we have to maintain the spending on international objectives and national progress, that as you’ve said already, are some of the best aspects of aid, and that’s what GPI seeks to do.

Banik Many would object to you characterising India as one of the poorest countries in the world. Sure, there’s poverty in India, but the whole point about the Indian stance of saying we don’t need aid is that the Indian economy is huge. It’s one of the biggest economies in the world.

Glennie Not per capita.

Banik It’s more about an internal distribution of the benefits of growth that India is struggling with. It isn’t as if it is up to others to help India. That would be the Indian point of view.

Glennie Okay. So, my characterisation of India as a very poor country is quite clear. First, you can look at the number of people living in extreme poverty. And then you could look at what would happen if you took the overall GDP of India divided by the number of people. Per capita it’s incredibly low. And no one living in a European country would consider that to be acceptable. It remains huge amounts of what is defined arbitrarily as extreme poverty, and above that line live hundreds of millions of more Indians, who are not extremely poor but still poor as defined by any standard in wealthier countries. So India is very poor. And this is one of the arguments I make in the book, that the definition the aid industry has created about what counts as extreme poor and what counts as low-income and middle-income are incredibly stingy. We have to move on from this idea of graduation.

Banik Sure. India has, I don’t know, 200 million people who can be categorized as living under the poverty line. It depends on which measure one uses. But my point here was that the Indian state’s capacity to promote development, the sheer number of very ambitious and very expensive social protection programs, the whole experience of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty is very different from what one usually thinks of in relation to low-income countries struggling, because India has its resources, its economy is growing. It hasn’t of late, but it has this kind of potential to manage a lot of these problems on its own, unlike certain other countries who are heavily dependent. But let’s move on to another set of issues, Jonathan. And if you don’t mind me asking you a somewhat provocative question, how much of what you suggest in the book is a matter of terminology and semantics I have this sense often that you’re saying we should be dropping the word aid and getting rid of the baggage that surrounds it. The question is, will it really help us get rid of all the self-interest, the politics, that really undermine much of what nation-states do for each other, the competition, the rivalry, because we must bear in mind that we can’t really think of international development actors and this whole sector of aid, to be very powerful. Just take a look at some of the real power and influence of these ministers of international development in some of these countries. Not all of them are very influential or powerful. And in my interactions on, say, sustainable development, on the SDGs, with officials in various ministries of foreign affairs, I get a sense that politicians are more interested in what they consider to be more important foreign policy goals than say sustainable development. It is more their own national interests, which are not necessarily in line with the aid agenda. So even if we agree on a new ambitious GPI agenda, Jonathan, how can we really sustain any momentum, if the GPI project is indefinite and long-term and not short term as aid? How would GPI facilitate a radical restructuring of all of these very well entrenched political interests that characterize global politics.

Glennie On semantics, absolutely not. One aspect is about the narrative and language that we use. This has been talked about for decades. But this is not about semantics, Dan. When we say look we need to double or triple the amount of international money being spent on international public money. That is not semantics. When we say these countries should not be preparing to graduate from concessional international public finance, that’s not semantics. Public money complimenting private and domestic resources. And then we come on to your power question. I’ve spent a lot of time working on structural issues rather than finance, and I absolutely respect that these finance issues are not going to change power relations fundamentally. We need to structurally adjust, change in a structural fashion. I don’t claim that making aid more modern and making it GPI is going to replace the need for transforming other aspects of the economy. Nor do I think the fundamentals of power will shift. But you can somehow mitigate the power. When you institutionalise a new form of GPI, you can somewhat mitigate that. At the EU, you don’t just have Germany and France making decisions about how money is spent. On the contrary, Poland and Romania are sat at the table, of course they’re never going to be as powerful as Germany and France, but because they’re sat at the table, they’re somehow more powerful. And that’s all we can really try to do at the international level.

Banik Reducing any form of global inequalities and providing more money say to others that can be potentially used by rivals that may compromise the interests of the donor, it not something that donors or states are typically keen to undertake or address. Any form of inequality reduction for me is inherently a political issue that states will resist. So that’s why I’m asking you in terms of the role you see of politics and all of the uncomfortable questions of power, of exclusion, of marginalization. How will they be addressed in this new ambitious agenda that you’re proposing?

Glennie I would summarise your point as: this is hard. I would totally agree with you. I mean the entrenched interests of people or communities in countries are entrenched. And it’s very hard for countries or communities to hand over any kind of advantage that they have. I mean, that’s quite clear. I don’t think that means we don’t try. The UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, sure they’re dysfunctional, but they represent the beginnings of some kind of global responsibility amongst ourselves. And this is just going to increase in the 21st century, Dan. I mean, it’s hard and there will be backlash. But we don’t just give in to those interests. Global public investment is only going to be one small part of that. It’s just the financial side of it.

Banik I agree with you, Jonathan. It is a hard task. I didn’t mean that this is impossible. It was more a question of how realistic it is in the short and medium-term and identifying certain challenges rather than promoting this idea that everything is win-win and somehow, we’ll get there. Any ambitious agenda will meet resistance. And there is this kind of feeling that this will take time and this may be wishful thinking and some of it is based on the fact that you’re aiming quite high and it’s one of your five paradigm shifts that you mention, this ambition level, and much of what you propose is a way of financing another ambitious global agenda that has been in operation since 2015: the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, which require considerable amount of money. And in the book you discuss how there’s really not much funding, and that is also my impression that there was far too much emphasis on the role of the private sector, that businesses would somehow fill the funding gaps and that hasn’t happened. There has been private sector enthusiasm for the SDGs, but not nearly enough in terms of financing, particularly in the countries that really required in the most. So, the implementation of the SDGs, thus far, has been far from ideal and it’s not just about the lack of funding. I would argue it’s a total lack of political enthusiasm in many countries. So, when I read your book, I got this feeling that you seem to be uncritically aligning GPI, this ambitious agenda of yours, with the SDGs. Are you doing that uncritically or do you see some problematic aspects of how these goals were formulated? How they were implemented over the last six years? And by the way, progress on the SDGs has been slow, and this was the case well before the onset of the pandemic.

Glennie Yeah. So I mean, you know, someone very wise said to me when we were signing up to the SDGs about 6 years ago, will it actually lead to change? And her answer was, it somehow increases the cost of inaction. Only marginally increases the cost of inaction. The entrenched difficulties remain, but it somewhat helps. I think the SDGs were a transformational moment for the international community. The post-2030 agenda, the next financial settlement, will firmly emphasize the importance of concessional funding and public money at the International level public to pursue these public objectives that we all have. And regarding the realism, when I started talking about this seven-eight years ago, a lot of the feedback was that it was so unrealistic, and today, almost every presentation that I give on this, people say they love the idea. So I think it is eminently reasonable. Obviously, it will take time for things to shift, but I think the Covid-crisis has really pushed people on their understanding of the connectedness of our world and the need to invest. Overall, this is a transformation in our mindset, that says it is time to invest publicly, and the private sector isn’t just going to save us from this.

Banik I agree that the SDGs are transformational but in some parts of the world, populist leaders have used the SDG rhetoric to also look within their own country, saying that it’s no longer us and them. It’s also about us. It’s not just about transferring resources to others. We need to fix the health system in the UK. And so there’s been a redirecting of aid budgets, not least in the UK, but also in many other parts of the world. It’s like, oh, let’s spend it on us. We are all in the same boat and we also have vulnerable people. So, I think that’s been the concern, that aid is decreasing, people are using it more for their self-interest and there are very good justifications being provided by the 2030 Agenda. Let’s move on to the function of international public money as you see it, Jonathan, and in the book you say that domestic resources are never going to be enough for the SDGs, not in the next 10 years or so, surely, even though we’d ideally like there to be domestic resource mobilization, you argue that one needs concessional international public money and that this can be useful not just in the poorest countries but in all countries. You mentioned this earlier in the conversation that a good example is the EU and the kind of investments that the EU makes in promoting development in poorer parts of the continent. So in terms of the GPI, Jonathan, how would this work? Would it be similar to say how the EU works? You also mention good examples like the Global Fund, how that has brought people and countries together in terms of providing funding. So, would it be that kind of a model? Should the EU or the Global Fund model be scaled up? Is that what you have in mind?

Glennie This issue of the function of international public finance, in the aid world, people consider concessional international public finance to be a last resort. Okay, you do a calculation, you see how much money is needed and then you see where you can get it from, and we can get some from the private sector, some from taxes, some from Bill Gates, and if there’s any left over needed, then we need ODA, it’s a last resort. And this GPI theory challenges that. It is not a last resort. It is a special kind of money, which is complimentary to other kinds of money and has special characteristics. One is that it supports international objectives, like the SDGs. So, you can change a government that may hate the SDGs, but international public money still broadly supports the SDGs. It also has different accountability, not always perfect accountability. So, it’s a special kind of money. To move on to your EU question, absolutely, and my question to the aid sector is: if it’s good enough for these countries to receive large amounts of international public finance, well into high-income status, then why can’t we transform our ambition at the international level? And also our understanding of the function of this money. Because clearly Poland does not “need” this money, and yet it can use this money. It is useful to promote progress, even high-up the income per capita scale. So, if the EU can use it, why isn’t it true around the rest of the world? Europe is showing that the function of concessional international public funding is different to what the aid sector has always maintained.

Banik So let me provide one explanation, and you may disagree with me, it has to do with the proximity argument that we are much more likely to help our neighbours and friends and people living close to us and countries that are close to us than we are to show solidarity with strangers far away that we can’t relate to. So yes, Poland is getting help or Spain because they are part of Europe, because they have some commonality that binds us. It is often easier to provide assistance using that kind of proximity criteria than it is to provide assistance to countries that we know very little about. What do you think of that?

Glennie Of course that’s true, Dan. And that’s kind of the point I’m making. That as humanity progresses, we move on, and unfortunately Brexit is such a step backwards in this, but we move on from just caring about people in our own town, to the people in our own country, and then to people in our own region, because we feel more proximity to them, and what I’m saying is: and that continues. And we need to start seeing people all around the world more as our neighbours, both in terms of the moral sense of common humanity, but also in terms of trade. The concept of proximity is shifting as globalisation shifts. So, my argument is, yes. Absolutely. That’s the reason why we give more money to closer neighbours. But that is precisely what GPI challenges.

Banik Among the numerous interesting suggestions you have, Jonathan, and this is something I truly agree with you, is the need to turn around the donor-recipient relationship that we shouldn’t be using these terms just like you suggest not using the term aid and in this connection you suggest that even the poorest countries should put in 0.7% of the GNI in international development. So, my question is: is this possible? Is it realistic? It’s difficult enough to get some of these countries to pay their dues the UN. How will this play out? Do you see any interest in Colombia to do this? Do you see any interest in other parts of the world? There are only like four or five countries that in any case commit 0.7% of the GNI. So, how realistic is that, Jonathan?

Glennie On the one hand, it sounds like a very radical argument. But, if you look at what countries are already doing, most countries are already both recipients and contributors. India is a net contributor of aid. This idea that the world is divided into contributors and recipients, is fallacious already, and we need to continue to emphasise that point. Increasingly, people will realize that we need to look after ourselves as a globe. And the final reason why I think that poor countries will go for this, and are supportive of it already, is that they’re going to get a lot back. And they stop being recipients, and starts being a net recipient, but a member of a gang that is jointly trying to respond to global problems. And that transforms, ultimately, governance and decision-making. I think there are incentives for poor countries to pursue this. They’ll get a lot of money back. And that might shame richer countries to finally commit to the amount of money they have committed to. Shifting from the idea of charity and starting to think about it as investment in our own global home.

Banik I’m glad you mentioned India and China, and if I were to critique your book, Jonathan, I felt that you had far too little on the discussion in the book on South-South Corporation and the kind of alternative models that India and China and many other countries are really providing an alternative, which seems to somehow disappear in this analysis of yours, which is very Western-centric. And so I would argue that these powers are having a major say, by offering a totally different win-win, mutual respect, solidarity, non-interference-based assistance. It is about learning from the record that Indian and China have at poverty reduction. It is about learning how these countries resolved food insecurity problems and now, Jonathan, vaccine diplomacy, the way India and China are making sure that the recipient countries, if I can use that term at all, their friends, their neighbours who are receiving generous doses of Covid-vaccines, which the West is not being generous about, the West is just trying to get all of these supplies for itself, whereas India and China are not only thinking about their own population, they’re actually thinking about this too. This is not something people will forget. So, I feel like that kind of challenge to the western narrative of aid, is happening, has been happening for a long time. So why didn’t you use more of that to further bolster your argument?

Glennie That’s a fair criticism. The concept of global reimbursement I’m proposing is clearly not Western-centric, it is quite the opposite, trying to undermine the Western-centric idea of aid, but I think you’re right, and maybe this was sub-conscious. I guess I was writing for primarily a western audience to try and shift people’s understanding. So I’m not trying to preach to the South so much as trying to preach to the north and saying actually, you know, I’m one of you and this is where we have to evolve. You are absolutely right that the leadership on this, a lot of it comes from South-South cooperation, and most of these ideas in the book are from my time here in Latin America and you know traveling the world and talking to people. That’s where the ideas come from. But yeah, I guess academically speaking, I could have brought in more examples from around the world. I wanted it to be a popular book in that sense.

Banik Well we academics are very good at criticising each other. So we’ll always find something to criticize. But moving on to the final set of issues, Jonathan, which is really related to governance, and you suggested earlier in our conversation that there really is a need to undertake major reforms to the multilateral system and in the book you suggest that what we need is a structure where everybody sits around the table, some sort of transformational governance, with civil society, states, all of these people, all of these actors working together. And so, you know, I’m wondering then naturally enough, how would this work? How can we build these governance structures that mitigate the fact that some countries actually have more money and contribute more to global efforts than others? And I’m thinking about the UN, you know, we were talking about the SDGs earlier. I often react to the fact when people say it’s the UNs Sustainable Development Goals. It’s for the world to look at. It’s not a UN kind of own initiative and many of the challenges that we face in terms of international development can be traced back to the UN system itself and lots of people are very critical of it. So we already have this global governance architecture that doesn’t always work, many UN agencies are extremely weak, and in recent years, of course, we’ve seen many influential countries pulling out or at least reducing the support to certain UN institutions and thankfully these have been restored now with the change in the US administration. But we have the UN and there are lots of problems, all kinds of debates on UN reforms, how would your proposal fit into these ongoing efforts to reform the UN system? Are you thinking about a parallel structure? Are you going to build on the UN?

Glennie Well, I mean, a lot of those questions are going to be worked out by the people adopting the principles of global public investment. And then starting to work out what that means in practice in governance structures. When you look at how hard it is to get a country, even a relatively small country, working properly to root out corruption, inefficiency, to try and respond democratically to the will of the people, at a national level. And then you look at the regional level where you had some success in Europe and maybe in other regions and sub-regions, but it’s still miles away. The global level is so incredibly complex. This idea of GPI is really ambitious, but on the other hand, there’s another part of me that’s worryingly fatalistic, Dan. I don’t expect the fundamental power structures of our world to fundamentally shift in my lifetime. For me, this is about bolstering the UN and the regional parts of the UN, as much as possible. And trying to put preventative barriers up to those more nationalistic and entrenched interests that can consistently ruin our attempts to do the right thing.

Banik We haven’t really addressed this poverty reduction issue that I asked you earlier. Could you briefly explain or justify whether we should abandon the poverty reduction focus?

Glennie So on the question of poverty reduction, yeah, you’re right. It’s not true to say that aid and development cooperation has always focused on poverty reduction. But I would argue that in the last twenty years, there has been a strong effort to focus on extreme poverty, and the MDGs are the most obvious example of that. But development only really begins when real poverty is eradicated. And that’s my point. One of the points of GPI is the total refutation of idea that when these countries or communities go over these arbitrary poverty lines, they are somehow no longer requiring of substantial concessional support. And that’s what I mean when I say we need to move on from this obsession with extreme poverty and start to talk about convergence, bringing countries to a similar level around the world. A job that will never be done, which is why this is a permanent thing. But it’s a job that we can continue to work at.

Banik It was great fun to chat with you today, Jonathan. Thank you so much for coming on my show.

Glennie Thanks, Dan. It’s been a really good chat. I look forward to listening back and sending it around.