Examination of Witness (Questions 1-19)
MR SIMON
ANDERSON
27 JANUARY 2009
Q1 Chairman: Good morning, Mr Anderson.
Thank you for coming in. Perhaps for the record you could introduce
yourself.
Mr Anderson: I am Simon Anderson.
I am Head of the Climate Change Group in the International Institute
for Environment and Development.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you. You have
given us an update on your CV which is helpful. In passing, I
notice that you are working with Danida.[1]
This Committee had a very good visit to Denmark last year, especially
to Danida, who I think have become a very valuable partner—two
ways, between the two countries. It is interesting that you are
working with them. Indeed, I think they have a number of UK nationals
working on some of their development policies.
Mr Anderson: They do.
Q3 Chairman: And some joint activities.
It is interesting from that point of view. Obviously we are here
to explore with you your thoughts about DFID's engagement in sustainable
development and the extent to which it is real or could be improved.
We are concerned about to what extent there is a real drive to
address sustainable development in a different climate and to
what extent are they badging things that would be done anyway
and calling it sustainable development? You say that you think
it has become a low priority for the UK Government. Can you give
us some evidence to back that up, as to the way in which that
is manifesting itself?
Mr Anderson: To a certain extent
there are issues of definition here. The way that DFID might choose
to define sustainable development perhaps differs from some of
the more mainstream definitions of sustainable. They do tend to
emphasise economic development or the economic component of sustainable
development, and perhaps because of that there is less emphasis
on the socio-economic and the environmental aspects of sustainable
development. Also, as was pointed out in the environmental audits
a couple of years ago, DFID's focus on the environmental elements
of development has received a proportionate decrease in interest
within the department and in investment. We can look at indicators
in terms of the way the environmental advisers are integrated
into country programmes and into central DFID, and, also, the
way that the environmental components of sustainable development
are factored in mainly through environmental screening, which
we would consider does not take into account sufficiently the
environmental causes of unsustainable development.
Q4 Chairman: You also mention the
Sustainable Development Commission in fairly complimentary terms
in terms of its function, but say that it is does not have a very
high profile in international work. Do you have a view as to how
that can be improved or developed or strengthened to enable it
to help DFID to deliver its policies more effectively?
Mr Anderson: Perhaps due to the
performance of that Commission there has been less interest in
engaging with it as fully as might have been the case. There are
certain chicken and egg situations here. If agencies such as DFID
took more interest in the Sustainable Development Commission,
in fact encouraging them to engage more in the realities of sustainable
development within developing countries, its agenda would become
more closely related to development issues, where they matter,
and it may well be that the agenda could be honed more to the
needs of countries which are suffering due to the environmental
impediments to development.
Q5 Chairman: In one sense you would
have thought that the Sustainable Development Commission might
start in developing countries, on the grounds that what they are
trying to do is to promote development in sustainable ways before
it has happened as opposed to trying to turn unsustainable development
that has happened into sustainable development. It is a bit odd
that you should say that the very existence of this Commission
may have lowered that, when you might have thought it would have
wished to push for that to happen. Are you suggesting that there
has been no such push from the Commission itself?
Mr Anderson: No, I am not suggesting
that. Neither am I suggesting that the Commission was a cause
of unsustainable actions. But there is a concern we have that
the Commission needs to be better integrated, needs to be better
engaged with development activities, development evidence, perhaps
including, for those who are involved in providing evidence to
the Commission, that the issues they deal with and the evidence
they are using are more grounded in the realities of developing
countries.
Q6 Andrew Stunell: Your brief, a
bit unkindly, referred to the Department's approach to sustainable
development as window dressing. Would you elaborate on that point
a little more, please.
Mr Anderson: There is, as I have
mentioned, a dichotomy perhaps between the interests of stimulating
economic growth to solve poverty issues and a more holistic interest
in development, including environmental causes and outcomes of
development. DFID has rightly engaged thoroughly with Poverty
Reduction Strategies in many developing countries but the way
that it has done that has led it to ignore or certainly put far
less emphasis on an integration of environmental causes of poverty
than might otherwise have been the case.
Q7 Andrew Stunell: Could you give
an example of where you see that happening at the moment with
the current programme?
Mr Anderson: Across the board,
if we look at the agencies that are involved in developing the
Poverty Reduction Strategies in different countries, we see that
there are few cases—perhaps the Tanzanian case is one that
is worthy of investigating further—where the environmental
concerns have been more thoroughly integrated into the Poverty
Reduction Strategy process.
Q8 Chairman: The Committee is visiting
Tanzania as part of this inquiry.
Mr Anderson: I think it would
be interesting to examine that case further to see whether the
integration of agencies, government agencies and others involved
in the environment side of sustainable development, have been
sufficiently engaged with during the development of the Poverty
Reduction Programme that Tanzania has taken up. Of course it is
less easy to learn from success than from failure: success is
due to a myriad of factors, whereas with failure one can perhaps
be more prescriptive in terms of the facts that have led to failure.
I can think of a number of cases where environmental foresight
has not been included in Poverty Reduction Strategies. I think
there are more cases of that across Africa and South Asia, and
it may well be worthwhile looking at such cases.
Q9 Andrew Stunell: Would you be able
to give the Committee a note on one or two of those? You have
given us a good example as you see it, which we are visiting.
Do you have some bad examples in mind?
Mr Anderson: I would not like
to name bad examples or even label country-driven initiatives
as being bad examples, but we could certainly provide information
on those that would assess the level of engagement of environment
agencies, both government and non-government, within the Poverty
Reduction Strategy process.
Q10 Andrew Stunell: Thank you. Also
in your evidence you said that DFID had a short-term perspective
which was making it difficult to get sustainable development incorporated
effectively. What do you think the solution to that problem is?
How can DFID develop a more long-term approach to these issues?
Mr Anderson: I would like to point
out at this juncture that in my career, as is pointed out in my
biography, I have been a DFID employee. As I mentioned to your
scientific adviser, there is no axe to be ground here. DFID is
an organisation that I joined because I thought they were doing
some good work and they continue to do so. Inevitably, however,
with an organisation, a government department, that has its workload
defined in large part by political cycles, it is more expedient
to be dealing with shorter-term, more easy-win objectives. Environmental
degradation—the classic example being the way that this
climate change is exacerbating different elements of environmental
services—is a long-term issue. DFID and its partners, the
developing governments, suffer from the same conflict of interest
between dealing adequately with long-term investment problems
and dealing with those within a shorter-term political cycle.
It is not just DFID, it is the partners that DFID is working with
which suffer from this. Also, DFID is a reasonably high turnover,
dynamic institution or organisation, and, as I have said previously,
there is a strong interest in managing economic development for
poverty reduction which perhaps you can do on a shorter-cycle
basis but, in terms of the way that environmental, social and
cultural cycles coincide with economic cycles, there is the need
to work over the longer term, and the incentive structure perhaps
within DFID is not such that individuals, departments, or teams
within DFID respond to that.
Q11 Andrew Stunell: There is no reward
for looking to the long term is what you are saying.
Mr Anderson: I would not say there
is no reward. I would say that the reward structure does not emphasise
longer-term issues.
Q12 Chairman: That should not inhibit
the World Bank so much, should it?
Mr Anderson: No, it should not.
However, as we have seen historically, the Bank also is less convinced
of the need to address longer-term environmental issues in its
development planning and its loans portfolios.
Q13 Chairman: That might be a point
of engagement between DFID and the World Bank.
Mr Anderson: Yes, I think it might
be. DFID does and should continue to encourage the Bank to take
on environmental concerns. This is the opportunity that the arrival
of climate change issues on the agenda provides us, because we
are now being shown that environmental externalities to conventional
growth patterns have led us into a situation most close to a tipping
point, and the tipping points in different parts of the world
are going to be at different distances into the future, including
from now right the way through, so we are being encouraged by
the nature of the environment to take a longer-sighted vision
and, also, to include evidence for our planning that generally
looks at the environmental causes of development failure.
Q14 Mr Singh: Is there a development
agency that we could look to with better practice or best practice
or a better balance in terms of the economy and the environment?
Mr Anderson: Yes, I think there
is the need to address the balance.
Q15 Mr Singh: There is a critique
of DFID there, which is fair enough, but is there a development
agency we could look at and learn from which has a better record
or better practice?
Mr Anderson: There is a number
that have attributes that DFID could investigate. Organisations
that have taken a more environmental approach to development have
more expertise in engaging with both civil society and government
agencies within developing countries that have pursued those issues
more thoroughly. DFID has a very, very broad portfolio.
Q16 Mr Singh: But you will not tell
me who they are.
Mr Anderson: There is a number—
Q17 Chairman: Are we talking about
Danida here or somebody else
Mr Anderson: There is a number
of international NGOs who are far more willing to look at the
environmental causes of what we might call development failure.
Those are well known. There are, of course, developing country
networks which are exposing both the environmental and socio-economic
causes and effects of environmental change, including climate
change. One which comes to mind and with which we are closely
involved is the capacity building in least developed countries
on adaptation to climate change. This is the CLAC network. This
is a civil society network across South Asia and Africa. Those
organisations, small organisations, are grouping together to increase
the volume of their advocacy voice, working together on environmental
change issues, particularly climate change issues, within countries
and cities: health, the economic costs of adaptation, and coming
together to provide evidence both of practice and what they are
doing on those issues and on their evidence gathering. I think
that is a good example and we can provide other examples.
Q18 Chairman: You say in your evidence
that DFID used to be supportive of sustainable tourism but has
effectively pulled out of it and should go back. We are going
to have a separate session on tourism, so I do not want to go
into too much detail, but could you elaborate on the specifics.
Your view is that DFID used to and they now do not but you think
they should go back. DFID could be doing more to promote sustainable
tourism. Is that still true, given the current economic climate?
Mr Anderson: I think we can point
to some country programmes that were exploring the potential for
tourism, namely some in southern and eastern Africa. The central
part of DFID was also investing in developing the evidence of
the poverty reduction contribution of more sustainable tourism.
There is an issue here of being able to look at evidence from
the medium term, because it is not as if you can go and take a
snapshot of what is happening with sustainable tourism and then
solve all of the issues. There are some quite complex issues in
terms of the distribution of benefits from sustainable tourism
that are not static. If one looks at some of the potential for
tourism to continue and increase its contribution to GDP in certain
countries, if the institutional work, which is probably the most
difficult, the inter-organisation and the distribution of benefits
is worked upon, then the poverty reduction potential can be better
realised. Perhaps this is an issue again of not being able or
not being willing to maintain an interest into the medium term
to appreciate fully the benefits
Q19 Chairman: Your evidence is helpful.
The written evidence clearly is that you can look at tourism as
pro-poor.
Mr Anderson: Yes.
1 The Danish International Development Agency Back
| 
