By Ferial Haffajee
Inter Press ServiceMarch 21, 2002
The unnecessary deaths of some eight million people a year from preventable illnesses demonstrates the need for special funding for preventing and treating disease and ensuring access to clean air and water, experts said at a United Nations development conference here.
"Health interacts with global economic development," says Jeffrey Sachs, economist, special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a proponent of special funding for health as a global public good.
He manages the U.N. Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
The Fund is a pilot project for a growing body of development thinkers (including governments, multilateral agencies and individuals) who support such "global public goods" to tackle development imperatives that cut across borders in a focused and international way. "Eight million people a year die from readily preventable diseases that, with the slightest effort, could be averted," says Sachs.
All it would take is one cent of every $ 10 million to fund a kitty to stave off these deaths and pay a development dividend. In addition, says Sachs, 2.9 million people die annually from vaccine preventable diseases, while the toll from HIV/AIDS would not be as severe if lifesaving anti-retrovirals were supplied to people living with the virus.
"We have ways to keep millions alive at low cost and we're not doing it," says Sachs, who has estimated that it would cost an additional $ 27 billion a year to provide the lifesaving vaccines and medicines. The additional funding money would also be used to create a market for research and development into vaccines and drugs.
Says Sachs: "We could have AIDS and malaria vaccines in 10 years, but no private money is going into this."
Developing countries had responded enthusiastically to the global fund. "Fifty countries submitted proposals and there was some beautiful work in there. People were motivated because the money was finally out there. But the needs in the proposals were five to 10 times more than the money in the bank. I also heard that countries were arm-twisted to cut down the size of their proposals. That's not the world we want to create," says Sachs.
The arm-twisting occurred in a context of diminishing aid funds where the dominant view is that while global public goods are a nice idea, the additional funding is an unlikely prospect. But France and Sweden have broken ranks at the United Nations financing for development conference in Monterrey, Mexico to give political and financial support to these "global public goods."
In addition to health and HIV/AIDS, these goods can include global campaigns for clean air and water provision policies as well as international drug control. Such global public goods are defined by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) as a "new lens for analyzing and addressing global priorities. It is an approach that emphasizes the vital need for international collective action in the mutual interest of all, developing and developed countries, rich and poor."
But in the preparations for the conference, global public goods have fallen off the agenda and did not find support in the Monterrey Consensus, a document that seeks to map out a plan to deal more effectively with world poverty.
It was kept off the agenda not only because the concept is new, but also because developing countries fear that funding such goods will take away from the diminishing aid pot. While the European Union and the United States have made new financial commitments at Monterrey, the world aid pool is still under-funded by $ 50 billion to $ 100 billion a year, according to estimates from organizations ranging from the World Bank to Oxfam.
"Developing countries feel that if we press for global public goods, this will divert from overseas development assistance," says Stephen Browne, a principal adviser to the UNDP. "These goods are also of a slightly amorphous nature because what they are and what they can do has not been sufficiently communicated."
A UNDP briefing on global public goods explained that it was important to distinguish between the two sets of funding. "Aid is meant to assist poorer countries in their national endeavors, not to mend the ozone hole or pursue other global concerns in the mutual interests of all."
With the support of France and Sweden, this innovative idea will stay on the agenda. "We need the global public goods discussion back on the agenda," said Jan O. Karlsson, Swedish Minister for Development and Cooperation, speaking in Monterrey.
Together with France, Sweden will sponsor a task force to study the philosophy of global public goods and to draft funding models.
"Global public goods are now the issue at the heart of globalization and North-South relationships in environment, health, access to knowledge, financial stability, security and peace," said Charles Josselin, the French Minister for Cooperation.
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