Happy to see that there’s a new org getting started in this area. If you can say, who are your initial funders?
One thing I’d like to see you grapple a bit more with is the politicization of official aid. This may seriously constrain an org’s ability to influence (1) top-down aid priorities and (2) in-country programme outcomes. This is based on my experience on the ground rather than a rigorous review, so may be wrong or biased in important ways. But it is my impression that official aid programmes are usually designed and implemented with much closer cooperation with and direction from the host government. I think this means that official aid orgs face more impact-political palatibility trade-offs than do NGOs, for example (though NGOs are constrained in other ways).
Another trend I think you should be aware of is the apparent pillaging of aid budgets to fund climate finance commitments. Rich countries have promised to finance projects in lower-income countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and pledged that they’ll do so by providing additional funding on top of their aid budgets. In reality, though, they’re falling well short of those taregets AND many are raising much of the climate finance money by reallocating their aid budgets!
I’d love to see more scrutiny on this decision—for example, some of the folks at CGD are doing God’s work by working through tedious aid budget details. It’s not at all clear that climate finance projects save more lives than traditional aid projects that are more optimized for health outcomes, so I think this trend is probably very bad compared to a counterfactual of just funding the regular aid budget (and almost certainly very bad against a counterfactual of aid funding + additional climate finance).
At least in the UK context, I think the “pillaging” of aid budgets to fund climate commitments isn’t my top concern.
UK aid monies are currently used by the Home Office on rehousing refugees. It looks like we’re going to spend more UK aid in the UK than overseas.
Apart from the obvious concern that each pound can do more good in the world’s poorest countries, it’s actually engendering exactly the kind of waste that aid critics detest. The Home Office has no incentive to use the money cost effectively, because it comes from the FCDO’s budget, not theirs.
Thanks Sanjay. I agree in the UK context. I think this is a great example of how every country is very different. Yes England have absolutely routed their overseas aid and might be another good example of a country not to focus on with this kind of advocacy. Which is sad because until recently UKAID had some pretty good programs.
We are incubated through Charity Entrepreneurship, and have gotten our seed funding through their network.
When deciding on our pilot project, we did briefly look into the cost-effectiveness of climate mitigation projects funded by development aid and it was difficult to conclude much with high confidence. While it won’t be our initial focus, we would be very excited to see increased measurement and the creation of better metrics for aid projects related to climate change and mitigation.
Traditional aid has benefited tremendously from the increased focus on measurement and evaluation in recent decades. I think it’s especially important we don’t forget the lessons learned as we start to carry out aid projects in new domains.
Happy to see that there’s a new org getting started in this area. If you can say, who are your initial funders?
One thing I’d like to see you grapple a bit more with is the politicization of official aid. This may seriously constrain an org’s ability to influence (1) top-down aid priorities and (2) in-country programme outcomes. This is based on my experience on the ground rather than a rigorous review, so may be wrong or biased in important ways. But it is my impression that official aid programmes are usually designed and implemented with much closer cooperation with and direction from the host government. I think this means that official aid orgs face more impact-political palatibility trade-offs than do NGOs, for example (though NGOs are constrained in other ways).
Another trend I think you should be aware of is the apparent pillaging of aid budgets to fund climate finance commitments. Rich countries have promised to finance projects in lower-income countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and pledged that they’ll do so by providing additional funding on top of their aid budgets. In reality, though, they’re falling well short of those taregets AND many are raising much of the climate finance money by reallocating their aid budgets!
I’d love to see more scrutiny on this decision—for example, some of the folks at CGD are doing God’s work by working through tedious aid budget details. It’s not at all clear that climate finance projects save more lives than traditional aid projects that are more optimized for health outcomes, so I think this trend is probably very bad compared to a counterfactual of just funding the regular aid budget (and almost certainly very bad against a counterfactual of aid funding + additional climate finance).
At least in the UK context, I think the “pillaging” of aid budgets to fund climate commitments isn’t my top concern.
UK aid monies are currently used by the Home Office on rehousing refugees. It looks like we’re going to spend more UK aid in the UK than overseas.
Apart from the obvious concern that each pound can do more good in the world’s poorest countries, it’s actually engendering exactly the kind of waste that aid critics detest. The Home Office has no incentive to use the money cost effectively, because it comes from the FCDO’s budget, not theirs.
Thanks Sanjay. I agree in the UK context. I think this is a great example of how every country is very different. Yes England have absolutely routed their overseas aid and might be another good example of a country not to focus on with this kind of advocacy. Which is sad because until recently UKAID had some pretty good programs.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment Stephen!
We are incubated through Charity Entrepreneurship, and have gotten our seed funding through their network.
When deciding on our pilot project, we did briefly look into the cost-effectiveness of climate mitigation projects funded by development aid and it was difficult to conclude much with high confidence. While it won’t be our initial focus, we would be very excited to see increased measurement and the creation of better metrics for aid projects related to climate change and mitigation.
Traditional aid has benefited tremendously from the increased focus on measurement and evaluation in recent decades. I think it’s especially important we don’t forget the lessons learned as we start to carry out aid projects in new domains.