Hollow ring to speech on overseas aid

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern’s spirited argument at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg for richer countries to commit more financial help in overseas development aid would have had a greater ring of conviction but for the fact that Ireland has cut its own contribution this year.

In describing as “shameful” and “indefensible” the fact that some countries will not reach the UN target of contributing 0.7% of their GDP by 2007, Mr Ahern was being rather disingenuous.

When the Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy ordained that Government departments deliver on a series of cutbacks because of domestic economic pressures, the first to be targeted was Ireland’s overseas development aid.

Immediately, 32 million was slashed from the contribution which we make to help provide vital facilities such as water and sanitation to Third World countries.

Although our total spend this year in ODA is 420m, which is up by 100m over last year, it ill-behoves the Taoiseach to lecture other countries when Ireland is paring the amount it could well afford to contribute.

This year’s contribution represents 0.4% of GDP and the UN target is to raise this to 0.7% in five years’ time. By comparison, Norway is committed to spending 1% of GDP on poor countries by 2005, which puts Ireland’s effort into perspective.

In much the same vein, the Taoiseach reiterated Ireland’s commitment to fair trade around the world, a sentiment which does not sit well with our stance in relation to EU policy.

Along with France, Ireland vociferously objected to an EU plan to remove trade-distorting subsidies. These enrich Western farmers and penalise others by blocking access to lucrative markets to Third World countries.

The Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen, said that Johannesburg was about targets. If these targets were included in the final text, the summit would have been a worthwhile experience.

Whether it will ever prove to be such will have to be evaluated sometime in the indefinable future. In the meantime, it remains to be seen how many countries will adhere to the targets agreed, or whether they will be ignored and consigned to the realm of merely good intentions.

Ostensibly, agreement was reached on how to promote renewable energies, such as wind and solar power. Yet the only reference in the final agreement was that they “should be substantially increased”.

This vague commitment was a major concession to the Americans and a number of oil-exporting countries who had persistently resisted a move by the EU to increase the target of renewable energies.

The US was intransigent about even the fractional move proposed by the EU which would have seen the target increased to 15% by 2010, which would have been a rise of just over 1%.

America has resisted any new international agreements, with the exception of conceding a target for providing sanitation for the poor. More than 170 countries signed up to a target of halving the number of people who lack access to proper sanitation by 2015.

That ambition could prove to be the biggest success of the summit, if the target set is genuinely pursued by the countries which promised their commitment.