Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-132)
MR EDWARD
BELL, MS
HELEN COLLINSON
AND MS
ROMILLY GREENHILL
13 DECEMBER 2007
Q120 Hugh Bayley: Good point. What
are your respective experiences of co-operation between the Bank
and DFID in-country? DFID, when we visit developing countries,
invariably tells us that their bilateral relations with the World
Bank are one of the most important local partnerships. To what
extent do you think that partnership exercises some policy influence
on the Bank or constraint over the Bank's policies in that particular
country?
Ms Greenhill: From our side, one
of the concerns we have is that the whole harmonisation agenda,
which is an extremely important agenda—I am not denying
that—but what we are seeing a lot is that harmonisation
is tending to mean a lot of donors, including DFID coming in behind
the World Bank and the World Bank being very dominant in putting
together policy matrices, doing a lot of the background analytical
work and so on for lending programmes, and DFID then supporting
those matrices, rather than directly engaging with the government
to get the government to develop their own matrices. We are seeing
generally the Bank playing a very dominant role and DFID tending
to come in behind that, which is quite a concern, particularly
when DFID's conditionality policy, for example, is a good deal
more progressive in our view than the World Bank's policy; its
policies on gender and other issues also tend to be much stronger
than the Bank's. We are seeing them very much as a subordinate
rather than an equal or even a dominant partner in countries.
Mr Bell: In a number of countries
where we work that is true, that in some places the Bank develops
a development agenda that DFID staff might themselves, if they
had more time, think was wholly unrealistic. If you look at what
has just been agreed in DRC for that country's development progress,
it is completely impossible in that circumstance. There are though
examples where the partnership works quite well on project issues
on public financial management in Nepal and on ex-combattant issues
in the Great Lakes of Africa.
Q121 Hugh Bayley: Can you give us
a couple of examples?
Mr Bell: Yes, just to take the
example of the MDRP, which is quite a unique and innovative way
of working for the Bank. They have joint missions with bilateral
expert staff, so a Dutch counterpart, a UK DFID counterpart would
travel with Bank staff on a supervisory mission to engage the
partner country representatives on the various issues, technical
and political, that affects the progress of demobilising and reintegrating
ex-combattants in these conflict-affected countries. In Nepal,
on public financial management, it is joint DFID-World Bank technical
expertise provided to the Government of Nepal to improve the tracking
of expenditure— the fiscal space in which development spending
can be given. Where I would add a note of caution to what Romilly
has said is the issue of country ownership. DFID might have a
more nuanced, more politically sensitive conception of it, as
you can see this over development governance and democratic politics
both of DFID's governance departments produced, which is very
different to what the World Bank has to do because it has to act
as if it is in a financial institution/client/borrower/grantee
relationship. That is where there is the possibility for some
tension between the World Bank's approach and DFID's.
Ms Collinson: Can I comment on
the Latin American point to reiterate what I said before. It is
not just CARE which is emphasising the importance of DFID having
a foot on the ground. It was a conclusion of the ODI evaluation
where they said "having a `foot on the ground' is crucial
to ensure that DFID maintains its leverage on the IFIs".[27]
We have found that the ability of the DFID staff in Nicaragua
to develop relations with the World Bank and IDB staff on the
ground has definitely been limited. There is evidence that DFID
has persuaded the World Bank to hold local-level consultations
around its country assistance strategy, which was not happening
before. You have had not just the IDB and the World Bank staff
but also other stakeholders confirming that it was DFID that persuaded
the World Bank to include micro and small enterprises in private
sector support programmes. You have had DFID funding workshops
to improve the World Bank's work on gender and women's economic
empowerment, and then, a crucial issue in Nicaragua, persuading
both the World Bank and the IDB to engage much more practically
on the Caribbean coast, which was more or less excluded from the
National Development Plan. It is not just a question of having
some kind of presence on the ground because there is some presence
in Brazil—there is a small DFID office in Brazil—but
compared to Nicaragua there was quite a stark contrast there in
Brazil where the IDB and the World Bank had no idea about what
DFID was doing and neither DFID nor the IDB and World Bank staff
could identify any particular issue where DFID had exerted any
influence. In Brazil, the bilateral programme was closed down.
There is a very small team there Generally the switch has been
to a regional approach in Latin America. It is very difficult
to understand what this regional approach means. Possibly, it
is not very appropriate for engaging with, particularly, the World
Bank. As a result of decentralisation, there is a certain amount
that you can do to influence World Bank operations at a national
level, but DFID is falling between stools because they have closed
their bilateral programmes apart from Nicaragua. They do not have
the staff at a national level and are supposedly working at a
regional level, but the World Bank does not necessarily work at
a regional level, so the possibilities for influencing at that
level are limited.
Q122 John Battle: If I could ask a question
here about agriculture. After years of neglect, there is more
of an interest in it and it is seen now as making a big impact
on tackling poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, of course,
and the World Bank is expressing a new interest. What strategy
should they be pursuing? Do you see them having expertise in assisting
subsistence farmers? Where is their speciality, what should they
be focusing on?
Ms Greenhill: My summary would
be that they should not be pursing the strategy that they are
pursuing at the moment, particularly the one outlined in the recent
World Development Report. I agree with you that agriculture has
been neglected and needs much more attention from the World Bank,
DFID and from a large number of donors. The strategy that the
World Bank seems to be pursing is very much around liberalisation,
around involvement of small farmers in global supply chains, much
more emphasis on large farms rather than with smallholders. ActionAid's
staff on the ground have a lot of concerns about that because
we have seen the damaging impact over the last 20 years of a focus
on free markets, on liberalisation, which has left many of the
small farmers unable to get basic agricultural inputs—seeds
and so on—which has led to increases in landlessness and
food insecurity and so on. In summary, this is a very important
area for donors to focus on but we need a really big shift in
the World Bank's strategy.
Q123 John Battle: What should the
World Bank be doing? I am not as aware as you that they have been
doing that much except the mega scale, high-tech telecommunications,
road building that they abandoned in Africa after failing. I have
not noticed them doing too much on the ground in terms of agriculture.
What should they be doing though?
Ms Greenhill: The main thing that
they have been doing is around the content of the policy advice
they are giving to governments, and this comes back to the question
of conditionality. A lot of the advice gets the public sector
out of marketing, provision of seeds, rural extension and so on
and their World Development Report is suggesting a continuation
of that approach, that there should be a very limited role for
states, only in providing an enabling environment for the private
sector. The World Bank's own evaluation unit has shown that simply
providing an enabling environment is not enough. The private sector
has not come in, particularly with very small family-run smallholder
farms.
Q124 John Battle: So should the World
Bank turn itself into the Grameen Bank?
Ms Greenhill: The first thing
the World Bank should do is stop putting pressure on governments
to withdraw their own role. It should encourage governments and
work with governments, so that governments have a much stronger
role in the public provision of those areas. And it should have
much more emphasis on supporting the smallholder farmers as opposed
to the big corporations and trying to get farmers involved in
the global supply chain.
Q125 John Battle: I am looking for
models to see what it might do, as opposed to just define policy.
Should it become a Credit Agricole which set off a roll
of credit unions, for example, that flourish in the West Indies—as
it used to be known—and certainly in France and Francophone
Africa? The Grameen Bank is another example of small credit. Should
the Bank split into parcels of money? How would you see the investment
model of the World Bank working? That is what I am trying to seek
out.
Ms Greenhill: Well, again, it
comes back to this country ownership question because I do not
think the World Bank should be going into any country saying,
ok, we are going to do x, y and z. What the Bank should be doing
is supporting countries to develop their own strategies to support
smallholder farmers and particularly women, because obviously
farming is a very important issue for a lot of women. It should
be providing some of the support that countries need to develop
those policies.
Q126 John Battle: If I were to push
you hard, in the 40 to 50 failed states, how many of their country
anti-poverty strategies define it in those terms? That is the
problem.
Ms Greenhill: For me, though,
if you have got a failed state, the answer is not to come in and
start trying to do your own thing as a donor. If you have got
a failed state, the first priority—Edward would probably
agree with me on this—is to try and see how you can make
the state work better and support those public institutions to
deliver those services. Only in very extreme circumstances of
war or conflict should there be direct intervention.
Q127 Chairman: Bob Zoellick has said
"accelerated growth", as in agriculture, "requires
a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined
with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence
farmers, many of them in remote areas."[28]
That sounds exactly like what you are asking for?
Ms Greenhill: But if you look
at the detail in the World Development Report, it is still very
much about this enabling environment point. There is still a very
strong emphasis on the private sector and in trying to get smaller
farmers engaged in global supply chains. That is the thrust of
the World Development Report, and that is something that we are
quite seriously concerned about.
Q128 John Battle: DFID working with
the World Bank—this Committee pushed DFID to re-engage with
agriculture—in our report five or six years ago—we
put it on the agenda and got a good and positive response from
DFID and from other organisations. Where would you see DFID's
approach on agriculture then through that prism of the World Bank?
Perhaps complementing the World Bank, or pushing the World Bank,
or telling the World Bank to get out? How would you see DFID?
Ms Greenhill: Again, the area
where DFID has a much stronger set of policies than the World
Bank is really about this ownership question. They are generally
much better at listening to countries and supporting countries
to build up their own strategy. Where both DFID and the World
Bank need to do better is in listening to the smallholder farmers
themselves, particularly women to whom farming is extremely important
and whose voices often get lost in this whole debate. Both DFID
and the World Bank need to be going out and engaging, and this
relates to the staffing questions that we have already been discussing.
Q129 John Battle: It also relates
to the men who run the countries in which those questions might
be asked.
Ms Greenhill: Sure, but it is
actually getting the voices of the people that are poorest and
most marginalised who tend to be women.
Q130 John Battle: You may meet opposition
if you go to that capital city where the politicians who are men
say, that is not our strategy, we want the big boys in and the
big projects and the rest of it, in order to get our votes in.
Ms Greenhill: There are two things
here. Firstly, it is about countries determining their strategies
and ultimately governments are responsible for doing that, but
you have also got to make sure that people who are affected on
the ground have their voices heard at the national level. For
me, the role for DFID is both to take what the government is doing
seriously and really work with the government, trying to make
the government work more effectively, but also make sure that
those voices are heard and provide the support that is necessary
for those voices to be heard.
Q131 Chairman: Thank you. Just a
small anecdotal example. When we were in northern Afghanistan,
we were in a village where they had been discouraged from growing
poppy and had switched to growing melons. But they did not know
anything about growing melons and they were being affected by
fleas—some melon flea or something—and they said "nobody
is there to tell us or advise us what to do." Is that not
a role—whether it is in the public or private sector, but
frankly these people cannot afford to pay for it so it would have
to be bought from the private sector by somebody. Is that not
a role where both DFID and the World Bank could be providing some
practical help? Or when we were in Malawi, there was a real problem
because people wanted to grow maize everywhere, regardless of
whether it was the best crop, or the most appropriate circumstances,
and were not interested in growing alternative crops. That is
the real difficulty when the country only wants to grow one crop
and it is the wrong crop or not the best crop. There has to be
an interaction, does there not, which tries to guide people even
if it does not push them or demand them or force them?
Ms Greenhill: At the local level,
both of those examples are symptomatic of the lack of agricultural
extension services and again, that comes back to the heavy focus
on simply providing an enabling environment for the private sector,
and the private sector will fill the gap. As I mentioned, the
World Bank's own independent evaluation group has come in saying
that, actually, no they have not filled those gaps. There definitely
is a need for advice and assistance to small farmers at the local
level but it is the governments that need to set those strategies
in place to make that happen. To go back to the point I made earlier,
we know that if donors come in and push things that do not have
ownership at the local level, they do not tend to be effective.
Mr Bell: I would just like to
give an example of some worthwhile projects on coffee reform in
Burundi. Here you see again why you need to nuance this issue
of ownership and leadership so much. The World Bank engaged with
the Burundian Government to try and liberalise the coffee sector
because if you control the coffee, you control the power, you
control the money. The Government has sold the entire crop to
a New York broker, one Burundian that connected to the elite.
We have been trying to work with local confederations of coffee
growers. They cannot pull up the coffee plants because it is against
the law. They cannot engage in other types of production, so the
World Bank is on the right track in trying to give people choice
and make it more of an open access type of economy, but the way
that they have to engage with the Government means that they are
up against elite's capture interest. You have to go through the
process of engagement participation extremely slowly and make
sure that as a staff member of the Bank you are not conditioned
by your own timetable in headquarters about what you have to achieve
within a year. You have to work through the process slowly to
make sure that reform is sensitive to the context. There are all
sorts of competing priorities.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
I am sorry it has been rather a disrupted and consequently longer
evidence session, but votes do happen although we were not supposed
to have them this afternoon. Both of these sessions have given
us quite a lot of evidence to evaluate and consider in our report.
It is extremely helpful. If you have any thoughts after you leave
here that you think you want to reinforce anything you have said
or provide some supplementary factual information to reinforce
it, that would be fine, please communicate directly with us.
Q132 John Battle: Sorry to interrupt.
Have we got the full reports on Latin America?
Mr Collinson: Did the Committee
members get copies of the synthesis report? There are summary
chapters of the research in each country in this synthesis report
and I also have the full reports of the country research but they
are in Spanish and Portuguese. The Brazilian one is fascinating
but unfortunately it is in Portuguese. However, most of the key
points are in the Brazil chapter in the synthesis report. I will
send in some additional points about this issue of national ownership
because it came up quite a lot in our research, but I will do
that in writing. 29
Chairman: Thank you very much, all three
of you.
29 Ev 77
27 Overseas Development Institute, Interim Evaluation
of DFID's Regional Assistance Programme For Latin America,
January 2007, p 7 Back
28
The World Bank, Agriculture for Development, 2007, p xiii Back
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