11 The Role of Emerging Donors in Global Health Development Flashcards
Overview Summary
Since the creation of the United Nations (UN) system in 1945, the fields of international development and development aid have undergone several transitions, experiencing shifts related to which countries are recipients or donors of development aid, which development issues are prioritized and why, and how international development programming is governed, financed and implemented. This session will provide a brief overview of the historical context and key concepts in international development and development aid, before examining the dynamic landscape of development aid in global health, with a focus on the proliferation and growing prominence of emerging donors. In particular, the expanding influence of a number of countries in the Global South as development aid donors suggests a shift from single polar to multi-polar governance, which suggests a re-balancing of powers at the global level. With a focus on bilateral aid, this session will explore the important implications of this shift for global health governance more broadly.
Overview Aims
This session aims to provide students with an understanding of the emergence of new bilateral donors in global health, and how they are changing the global health development landscape
Overview Learning outcomes
By the end of this session you should be able to: Describe the actors involved in providing development aid for global health, including the growing number of bilateral aid donors in global health, and the likely implications for “traditional” donors from the global North; Explain the factors influencing the growth of aid donors for health and the possible motivations of emerging donors; Analyse the policy consequences arising from the increased involvement of emerging donors in development aid; and Evaluate the global efforts to address aid effectiveness and their likely impact.
Key terms Emerging donors
are considered countries which a) have become donors relatively recently (i.e. in the last 2-3 decades), b) are not part of the DAC or have only recently joined and c) have been recipients of aid in the past (or in some cases, continue to be) (Rosser and Tubilewicz 2015).
Key terms Hard Power
Strategies that focus on military intervention, coercive diplomacy, and economic sanctions in order to enforce national interests resulting in confrontational policies vis-à-vis neighbouring countries (Wagner, 2005).
Key terms Official Development Assistance (ODA)
government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and well-being of low- and middle- income countries. ODA is provided by official agencies, including state and local governments. (OECD 2019).
Key terms Soft Power
the capacity to persuade or attract others to do what one wants through the force of ideas, knowledge and values (Lee and Gomez 2011).
Key terms South-South Cooperation
is a broad framework of collaboration among countries of the South, which can take place in different domains (social, economic, political, cultural, etc). Through this type of cooperation, two or more LMICs share knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through joint efforts (UNOSSC, 2020).
Key terms Transaction costs
The costs arising from the preparation, negotiation, implementation, monitoring and enforcement of agreements for the delivery of Official Development Assistance (Fozzard, et al, 2000).
Key terms Triangular cooperation
is collaboration in which a traditional donor countries and multi-lateral organisations facilitate South-South cooperation initiatives through the provision of funding, training, management and technological systems as well as other forms of support (UNOSSC, 2020).
1 Background
Improving health outcomes and health equity globally requires investment in health systems, social protection policies and addressing the social determinants of health, which is often beyond the financing capacities of some low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (Taylor and Rowson 2009). The world has seen significant gains in global health development (e.g. through scaled-up response to the HIV pandemic, improved malaria control and significant declines in maternal and child mortality rates), attributed in part to a wide range of global investment in health, through both privately and publicly funded initiatives over the past several decades (Moon and Omole 2013). At the same time, global health outcomes remain starkly inequitable and are characterized in most countries by significant disparities between the wealthiest and poorest segments of the population, a significant and growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and weak and under-resourced domestic health care and public health systems.
1 Background
The following sub-sections will provide a brief history of development aid and an overview of different types of donors and aid in global health, before introducing certain competing normative theories of international development and development aid. Finally, in section 1.4, we will consider the various motivations donors may have in providing development aid, through an examination of the interconnections of aid and global health diplomacy.
1.1 Historical Background of Development Aid
The history of development aid has been shaped by major concurrent political events and economic landscapes. For decades, health development aid and governance was dominated by the largest member states of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) was created to coordinate the official development assistance (ODA) or ‘aid’ of its member states and throughout the 1950s and 60s, the DAC (then comprised of Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the commission of the European Economic Community, as well as Japan and the Netherlands), provided 90% of development assistance (Jing et al. 2020).
1.1 Historical Background of Development Aid
While often framed in terms of international solidarity, eliminating poverty and promoting economic development within recently de-colonized states of the Global South, aid has historically been influenced by the economic and political agendas of donors. For example, at the height of Cold War tensions, aid programmes were defined by client-state relationships along geopolitical lines dividing the then Soviet Union bloc and the United States. (Alden et al. 2020). The Soviet Union had an important presence in development during this era, replacing the US and World Bank as sponsors of the Aswan Dam, and with a foreign aid programme that peaked at $1 billion US dollars in 1960 (Asmus et al. 2018). Early economic influences over aid are exemplified in donor patterns of the Gulf states which have been strongly correlated with the rise and fall of oil revenue. During the mid-1970s, aid programmes of members of the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) accounted for approximately 30% of aid worldwide, helped along by a simultaneous decrease in aid from DAC countries. Following the 1979 oil shock and around the time of the Gulf War, the OPEC and Middle Eastern donors became a relatively less significant source of aid.
1.1 Historical Background of Development Aid
Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, DAC members shaped the dominant narrative of a development aid paradigm built along a North-South divide, with the aid recipients of major donors often reflecting the lines of former colonial empires. However, forms of South-South Cooperation (SSC) also date to the mid-twentieth century. Both India’s aid to neighbouring Nepal and China’s aid programme to Africa began in the 1950s (Harmer and Cotterrell 2005, Huang 2020). Brazilian development cooperation began in the 1960s and expanded throughout the eighties and nineties. The geopolitics of the Cold War also played a role in the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), formed by countries in the Global South to challenge the burgeoning global inequalities and aid dependencies they attributed to a global political and economic system dominated by Northern interests (Gray and Gills 2016). However by 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union would leave Western ideologies of neoliberal economic globalisation unchallenged, driven by a confidence in “linear material progress through the innovation and the application of modern science and technology” (Gray and Gills 2016, pp. 559) In1993, DAC donors once again accounted for 95% of all aid for almost a decade.
1.1 Historical Background of Development Aid
By the turn of the century, significant global economic growth was redefining the global development landscape (Carbonnier and Summer 2012). This period was characterised by the overall growth in development aid, as well as the transition of several countries from low (LICs) to middle income (MICs) status and the beginning of their shift from being net recipients of ODA to net donors (Ying et al. 2020, Kickbusch 2016). For example, India was the world’s largest recipient of aid in the mid-1980s, but by 2008 was allocating $547 million to aid-related activities (Ramachandran 2010). According to the OECD, by 2016 ODA from non-DAC donors was 13.1% of aid globally (OECD 2019), compared to 86.9% from DAC donors.
1.1 Historical Background of Development Aid
For health specifically, the period from 2000-2010 is sometimes referred to as the ‘golden age of global health’, wherein development assistance for health (DAH) increased by an average of 11.4% annually (Bendavid et al. 2018). This period of abundant resources was simultaneously marked with disillusionment in existing health institutions due to repeated failures to respond with the agility required to tackle contemporary global health challenges. This contributed to a proliferation of global health actors which will be explored in the following section. Since 2010, though growth in DAH has plateaued at 1.3% annually (Dieleman et al 2019), it continues to remain relevant to global health development. Following sections in this session will show some of the ways in which development aid plays an important role for global health, beyond financial assistance to support specific health development outcomes.
1.2 Types of Development Aid and Donors
As we saw in the previous section, development aid has undergone significant shifts throughout time. Given these shifts, an important question that may come to mind is what motivates countries to provide aid when they could be investing in their own economies and health systems? This section will consider these issues as well as introduce different types of aid and donors.
1.2 Types of Development Aid and Donors
While at one time considered primarily humanitarian issues, many global health issues have ascended within broader foreign policy agendas due to the acceleration of globalization and resultant increases in political, social and economic interdependence (Khazatzadeh-Mahani et al. 2020). Diplomatic efforts in health often rely on expressions of soft power, or ”a country’s ability to persuade and attract others to do what it wants without resorting to [military or economic] coercion” (Khazatzadeh-Mahani et al. 2020). The relative influence of soft power among countries is highly relevant to global health and development, as it is through global health diplomacy channels that critical decisions around what types of health issues are prioritized and why. Feldbaum and Michaud (2010) emphasize how the health community has drawn on the concept of health diplomacy to raise the profile of health within foreign policy agendas. Indeed, foreign policy priorities of donors can influence relative funding of global health issues (McInnes and Lee 2012, Kickbusch 2011, Jing et al. 2020). As discussed in session 3, this dynamic was exemplified by the rapid and sustained political prioritization of global efforts to respond to HIV-AIDS from the 1990s onwards. Widespread fear in the Global North of the economic and security impacts of the unhindered international spread of HIV-AIDS led it to become the first global health issue to be elevated to the agenda of the UN Security Council (UNSC) in 2000. The shift of HIV-AIDS from the global health sphere to the “high politics” of the UNSC led to significant increases in funding, increasing from 300 million USD in 1996 to 15.6 billion in 2008 (Bergh and Gill 2013, Baringer and Heitkamp).
1.2 Types of Development Aid and Donors
Partly as a result of this, we have seen significant growth in the number of actors in global health in the past decades. In 2008 there were more than 40 bilateral donors, 26 UN agencies, 20 global and regional funds and 90 global health initiatives (McColl 2008) and these numbers have only grown since. There are several underlying explanations for the proliferation of new global health actors. An increasing recognition of health as part of sustainable development and the emergence of globally-relevant health risks have contributed to an increasing number of global health actors (McColl 2008, Kickbusch 2016). Certain global health initiatives and partnerships have emerged as more agile alternatives to traditional global health actors like the World Health Organization (WHO), which have been side-lined due to governance gridlocks and institutional lethargy ill-fitted for responding to an ever-changing global health landscape (Spicer et al. 2020). Finally, frustrations with persistent failures of development aid to reduce inequities and improve health outcomes have also led to the emergence of global health actors which challenge traditional architectures of aid delivery, whether through innovative financing mechanisms or new forms of South-South cooperation.
1.2 Types of Development Aid and Donors
From a finance lens, global health actors can be defined broadly by primary roles of providing, managing or spending DAH as depicted in Figure 1.1. In reality, this landscape is further complicated by the emergence of hybrid actors and the fact that some actors perform all three functions (McCoy et al. 2009). Governments provide development aid through a combination bilateral aid (from one country to another, for example through state aid departments such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)) and multilateral aid (delivered via funding to multilateral institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or to global partnerships like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria). These two types of aid (also known as Official Development Aid - ODA) can be accompanied by varying conditions or constraints (Harmer and Kennedy 2020).
1.2 Types of Development Aid and Donors
The ranks and influence of government donors have expanded in recent decades to include a multiplicity of donor states beyond the traditional donors of the OECD DAC.[1] Non-DAC donors are sometimes referred to as emerging donors, derived from their categorization as emerging economies. Admittedly, the term “emerging economies” is sometimes considered outdated, since countries such as South Korea are among the most advanced economies and China’s economy is the second largest in the world (GSHi 2012). For the purposes of this session, emerging donors are considered countries which a) have become donors relatively recently (i.e. in the last 2-3 decades), b) are not part of the DAC or have only recently joined and c) have been recipients of aid in the past (or in some cases, continue to be) (Rosser and Tubilewicz 2015). In 2016, emerging donors responsible for the largest portions of non-DAC aid include Turkey, Brazil, China, India, Kuwait, Mexico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the UAE (Luijkx and Benn 2016). [1]As of 2020, the DAC comprises 30 members (OECD 2020): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States
1.2 Types of Development Aid and Donors Box 1
Global health has witnessed a growing influence of and financial contributions from non-state donors. Non-state donors encompass a wide range of actors and institutions, including private foundations (eg. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Wellcome Trust), public-private partnerships (eg the Global Fund, UNITAID, Gavi), and private corporations. Given both the relative and absolute volume of global health financing these non-state donors provide, they play a pivotal role in shaping many of the priorities, new instiutions and development programming in global health, raising concerns around whether a private entity should hold such influence, these actors are not accountable to WHO or any other global governance institution and decisions of which projects will be funded and for how long are subject solely to the philanthropic interests or decisions of the funding mechanisms. Though private or non-state funding for health is difficult to track as it is not universally nor regularly reported, it is estimated that private funding for global health has grown to account for approximately a quarter of all development aid in recent years. However, governments remain by far the largest source of DAH, accounting for about 70% of the global total.
1.3 Summary
The geopolitical context, actors, motivations and impact of bilateral aid for global health has undergone several significant transitions since the creation of the contemporary international system in the 1950s. In recent decades, the emergence of non-traditional donors has transformed the global health development sector with wider impacts beyond financial contributions. The following sections will further explore the complexities of development aid and diplomacy in relation to global health governance, drawing on examples from emerging donors.