Examination of Witnesses (Questions 169-179)
DR LINDA
WALDMAN
20 APRIL 2006
Q169 Chairman: Good morning, Dr Waldman,
it is very good to see you this morning. Could I apologise for
the fact that at half past 11 I will have to leave and at that
point I will ask Mr Caton to continue chairing the meeting. Could
I ask you to just give us a bit of background about what IDS does—I
hope you do not mind those initials.
Dr Waldman: Sure. IDS is the Institute
for Development Studies, it is based at the University of Sussex
and it was founded in 1966. Its overall aim is to understand the
world, to explain it and to attempt to influence it for the benefit
of disadvantaged, marginalised, poor people. It has three main
principles or three main areas in which it works which are research—we
have a team of about 80 research Fellows—education—we
do a lot of training and teaching, primarily to postgraduate students
at Masters and PhD level—and communication—we have
a lot of communication programmes to disseminate information about
development, about research around development, around ideas,
experiences, case studies and so forth. Within our research sector
we have a number of research teams looking at different issues.
We have a participation team that looks primarily at issues of
participation in processes of governance, in processes of development.
We have a governance team. I am part of a team that is called
Knowledge, Technology and Society which stems out of an earlier
environment team looking largely at environmental issues, sustainable
livelihoods, dams, water, vaccines, health and so forth.
Q170 Chairman: What would you identify
as the major current trends in aid and development and does the
environment feature strongly enough in those trends, would you
say?
Dr Waldman: If I can answer that
question from a somewhat more personal perspective than from an
IDS perspective. From my experience the main trend has continued
to be a kind of economic modernisation process within development.
I would say that environment does not feature very strongly in
that and, in fact, possibly even is disadvantaged by that trend
to a large extent.
Q171 Chairman: I think you have published
research on how the environment has been incorporated into the
Poverty Reduction Strategies and I think that research has been
funded by DFID, amongst others.
Dr Waldman: Yes.
Q172 Chairman: From your experience,
how important are environmental issues to DFID?
Dr Waldman: That is a difficult
question for me to answer because my relationship with DFID has
been with people in the environment sector and for those people
it has been very important. For country officers that I have spoken
to it has been very important. My experience has not been with
DFID as a whole. Within the sector that I have worked with DFID
I have seen them as being very concerned about the issues and
taking it as a central role. I would not be able to answer that
question from the perspective of DFID as a whole.
Q173 Chairman: You may not be able
to answer this from what you were saying. In terms of the Department's
funding of development projects at that level are you able to
get a picture of how important they think the environment is?
Dr Waldman: Again, I have to specify
that my experience is selective and I do not have an overview
of the whole of what DFID is funding in terms of environmental
programmes and issues. Certainly in my experience what I have
come across is a willingness to fund research into environmental
issues both for the project I have been involved in in PRSPs,
to fund follow-up research on those issues, and to try to understand
the issues in more depth. I am aware within IDS there is a very
large climate change programme which DFID is part of as well.
Again, I have to say that within my experience I have come across
a willingness to engage in issues, to understand issues, to fund
issues and to explore issues, but I have to stress that my experience
is limited to a segment of DFID.
Q174 Mr Vaizey: Could you tell us
a bit about PRSPs. Can you tell us how they came about and what
sort of points they cover? How central are they to donor activity
in poorer countries?
Dr Waldman: PRSPs came about towards
the end of the 1990s and they are, in a sense, a replacement for
the Structural Adjustment Programmes which the World Bank and
IMF advocated before PRSPs. As a result of increasing criticism
of structural adjustment and its negative effects on poor countries,
PRSPs were an attempt to shift to a more participatory style of
country governance. They were an attempt to move from Structural
Adjustment Programmes, which were dictated by the World Bank and
IMF, to development programmes which are designed by the country
governments themselves in which not just the governments but citizens,
people, have much more of a vested interest and a role in determining
what the initiatives are going to be for development, and how
poverty will be structured. They are designed as country-led and
country-owned development plans. They are crucially important
if countries wish to access the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
Initiative—HIPC. You cannot access that fund for loans without
a PRSP or an interim PRSP.
Q175 Mr Vaizey: Effectively they
are very central to donor activity?
Dr Waldman: Absolutely. Sorry,
I did not answer that part.
Q176 Mr Vaizey: They pretty much
cover everything?
Dr Waldman: Yes. They are very
central and they pretty much cover everything. They are often
produced under extremely tight pressures.
Q177 Mr Vaizey: You indicated in
your answer that they are country-owned, which gives the impression
in effect that they are driven by the recipient country, but one's
instinct would be probably that actually it is the other way round,
they are driven by the donors. When you say it is country-owned
it genuinely is country-owned, and being country-owned is one
thing but is it owned by that country's government or do you think
the poorest in the country get a voice?
Dr Waldman: Absolutely. The answer
is yes, no and yes. They are intended to be country-owned but
because you are designing them in order to access money run by
the IMF and the World Bank they are heavily influenced by the
demands of the IMF and the World Bank. There are Joint Strategy
Assessments in which these PRSP papers are assessed by international
funding institutions in order to see whether they are appropriate
to loan money to. Yes, they are country-owned but what that means
in practice is often a very strong influence from donors and World
Bank experts sitting on the teams that are writing these documents,
so quite a strong influence. In terms of who owns them within
the countries, again there is a huge discrepancy but it often
tends to be government orientated. In Ghana, when we were doing
research there, the Ghanaian Parliament saw it as a funding document
between the government and the World Bank and not much more than
that. In Vietnam, when we were doing research there, they were
seen largely as funding documents and as secondary to the five
year and 10 year government plans around development.
Q178 Mr Vaizey: So in a sense what
you are saying, and what was going to be my next question, is
this is really just a different way of getting grants. Do you
think that they have changed the nature of the projects that are
funded?
Dr Waldman: Many critics would
say that. Many critics of PRSPs would argue that these are just
new ways of introducing neo-liberal macroeconomic strategies as
suggested by the World Bank. Interestingly, when I was doing my
research, and that was very much my starting position, some people
said quite strongly, "No, we do have a role in this. They
have opened up spaces for us. They are more country-owned than
you are imagining them to be". In Ghana and Uganda that was
my experience. Yes, they are directed and being influence by all
of those above, but people within those countries are starting
to say, "No, they are also ours". In terms of environment
issues, as I try to show in my report, they have opened up a whole
series of spaces. Some of those spaces have been more successful
in getting environmental issues on the agenda and some less. Certainly
within three of the countries we researched—Uganda, Ghana
and Honduras—if something is not in a PRSP it is not likely
to be done. With all the constraints that I have just mentioned
they are still vitally important and they have opened up some
spaces to get environmental issues at least on to the discussion
tables within governments.
Q179 Mr Vaizey: What is the thinking
about the future of PRSPs? Are they going to stay and is that
a good thing or a bad thing?
Dr Waldman: That is a good question.
They are both bad and good in a range of ways. They require massive
country investment. The energy that goes into PRSPs, as Uganda
will show, is phenomenal. Not only are they produced every three
years, they are reviewed every year, there are Joint Strategy
Assessments, and there are massive bureaucratic procedures that
go with them. I do not know if they will stay long-term in the
format that they currently are. There has been huge criticism
of them; you have to invest a huge amount into them. Ultimately
one of the criticisms of PRSPs is that they become a list and
you have a list of priorities, 300 items on your list, and they
are not ranked and how do we then decide what is important within
that.
Mr Vaizey: Cool.
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