Written evidence submitted by Dr Gerard Gill

The appropriate size and scope of DFID's programme in Bangladesh

1. I do not feel qualified to comment on the size of DFID's programme in Bangladesh.

2. In terms of scope, the focus of support from the ODA-DFID continuum has changed globally over the years from emphasis on productive activities to accentuation of less tangible areas, such as governance and institution building. This is not limited to DFID: the same tendency is found in many other donor agencies, so the effect is cumulative. This policy shift on the part of DFID-B is a reflection of changes in policy at London level. Many Bangladeshi development specialists find it difficult to accept that a donor agency has comparative advantage in areas such as governance, whereas they feel these agencies do have comparative advantage in areas where technical expertise and financial investment are required. The pendulum has, in my view, swung too far, and too little attention is now paid to issues such as food insecurity, which is a huge problem in Bangladesh. The steady increase in global food prices from the early 2000s until the sharp price spike of 2008 should serve as a wake-up call which tells us that renewed investment is needed in improving food security. While food prices have declined from their peak in mid-2008, they remain high and volatile, and according to a joint FAO-OECD medium-term outlook for major agricultural commodities published in May 2008, the period to 2017 is likely to see food prices remain high compared to the 1990s. The danger is that the lessons of last year will be too easily forgotten. Needless to say high food prices hit poor households especially hard, because they spend the highest proportion of their budgets on food.

2. Another vital technical area in which there is serious underinvestment is arsenic contamination of ground water. The arsenic occurs naturally in the lower layers of the soil, but heavy drawdown for drinking water and irrigation has brought it to the surface, where it contaminates both drinking water and irrigated crops, particularly rice. This is an area in which a donor could invest in devising cheap simple technologies that really help the poor, but this is not happening to anything like the required extent.

DFID's support for more effective governance and institution building in Bangladesh

3. I have insufficient first-hand knowledge to offer further comment on this topic.

DFID's strategy for reducing poverty and inequality, including gender inequality

4. DFID's strategy in Bangladesh is strongly focused on reducing poverty and inequality, and there is a particularly sharp focus on gender issues (as in "Women and Girls First"). This is highly appropriate, as the levels of poverty and deprivation, particularly in rural areas are very high. It is widely acknowledged - including in the PRSP and other government documents - that women and girls suffer from intra-household discrimination in a number of areas, including the allocation of food, and especially in times of dearth. Female-headed households are also particularly vulnerable to food insecurity. DFID-Bangladesh has been at the forefront of efforts to address this situation.

5. At a more central level, however, DFID should be rather more mindful of the fact that a sharp focus on the most disadvantaged segments of the population has important implications for the timescale of its operations. There are no 'quick fix' solutions. It is particularly difficult to reach and support those who need it most, and any effort to help them raise themselves from the mire must be long-term. This means that the standard evaluation criteria for interventions - relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability - particularly the last - should be reinterpreted to take the scale and depth of the problem into account.

The management of climate change impacts and support for disaster risk reduction

6. DFID-Bangladesh takes support for disaster risk reduction seriously, as witness its sustained support for the multi-donor Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme. It also employs a highly-gifted local professional as a specialist on climate change (CC).

7. The global debate on CC is emotionally highly-charged and sometimes driven more by assumptions than hard evidence. It is widely assumed that Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to CC because it is a low-lying delta and therefore especially at risk to flooding and coastal erosion, and that CC-induced rises in sea levels will permanently submerge coastal areas of the country and low-lying areas around major river systems. While there is truth in this, it is also the case that Bangladesh is simultaneously gaining land. The country's landmass was largely formed by mass wasting in the Himalayas (caused by tectonic processes) and the accretion of the resulting materials downstream, transported to the delta by the river system. Recent work on this topic has, inter alia, used satellite imagery to measure the net changes in the longer term, and the data indicate that, while in some parts the country there is a net loss of land, in other large areas there is net gain. Overall there seems to have been a small net gain. Impacts will be different in different areas, and so different countermeasures will be required to address them. I have to add that these remarks address the general situation with respect to perceptions of the CC issue insofar as it affects Bangladesh. I do not know sufficient about DFID-Bangladesh's work on climate change at the moment to be able to say to what extent these issues have been taken into account in their interventions.

The role of community-led initiatives in reducing poverty and increasing access to basic services

8. 'Community' is very positively-charged word, but it is not normally the case in Bangladesh that simply because people live in the same village they can be regarded as a 'community' in any meaningful sense. In each village, particularly in the mainstream (non-tribal) areas, there are rich and poor, landlords and tenants, land-surplus households and landless households, moneylenders and money borrowers, etc. Elite capture of benefits is a distinct possibility if villages are regarded as relatively homogeneous 'communities'. I believe that DFID-Bangladesh is well aware of the dangers, but it is worth reminding ourselves that are sometimes powerful vested interests to be confronted in the development process. The use of the phrase "community-led initiatives in reducing poverty and increasing access to basic services" suggests a need to underscore this point.

 

Gerard J. Gill, PhD

Bangladesh experience:

· As Senior Research Fellow at the University of Reading, led ODA-funded study of farm mechanisation in Bangladesh 1978-79

· Worked as agricultural economics advisor to the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, 1980-86; simultaneously served as informal advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture (employed by the Agricultural Development Council Inc, New York);

· Worked as a consultant in Bangladesh for various donors and other agencies, including DFID-B, Danida, the European Commission and FAO (1995-2009)