ReCom: Aid and Our Changing Environment 11/24 - Helle Munk Ravnborg
Channel: UNU-WIDER
Date: 2013-07-09

Achieving environmental goals in developing countries
Helle Munk Ravnborg, Danish Institute for International Studies
     - Environmental governance and development co-operation


Why pour aid money into the environment when the world´s poorest still struggle to survive?

Aid institutions and agencies were largely designed in a context where the vast majority of the world's poorest people were living in the world's poorest countries and where low and middle income countries both contributed to and suffered relatively little from global environmental problems.  However, times are changing.

Today, the majority of the world's 1.3 billion poorest live in fast growing middle income countries, which are major contributors to and frequently first in line to suffer from global environmental problems. Research now shows that to ensure foreign aid reaches the world´s poorest, governments must simultaneously confront the interlinked challenges of human development and global environmental change.

An interactive 'Results Meeting'

At the 4 June Stockholm ReCom results meeting renowned researchers, academics and politicians from the Global South and North, as well as high profile policy makers from donor recipient countries reflected on global trends in the "greening" of aid and lessons learned in past successes and failures of development cooperation.

Experts presented findings on the need to increase aid to middle income countries whilst using aid as a catalyst to support appropriate policies and institutional innovations that work.  Experts also discussed how continued and enhanced provision of global/regional public goods such as agriculture and the financing of efforts to mitigate environmental issues figure into the future role of aid in our changing environment.

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