She with a child on her arm and a pink suitcase on her head is fleeing a catastrophic flood in Pakistan. She who stretches her arm in the air in a classroom in Niger needs the education to get out of poverty. Does the need for help have to be set against each other? The global problems are becoming more complex. Norway is getting richer. Climate destruction will become more extensive. The oil fund will grow. The world’s poorest will live in demanding countries with weak governance, war and conflict. The state budget’s “least debated NOK 50 billion”, i.e. the aid budget, will be put under increasing pressure. The conflicts of interest and contradictions are increasing. It may seem as if the minister for development is blowing off an emerging debate. It is strange. The debate has been going on since an expert committee last year proposed a twofold division of aid’s objectives and allocations. Recently, the Norad director has supported the new principles, while the minister does not want changes. She writes in a debate article in Panorama Nyheter that she does not want “more silos” in aid, and believes that the fight against poverty and climate change must be seen in context. Poverty or public goods? Ever since the 1950s, the countries of the world have agreed on how international development aid should be calculated and defined. It is agreed that at least 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) should be given to aid. Norway has long had an aid target of 1 percent of GNI. The target has largely been met in recent years, it has brought the aid level from approximately NOK 11 billion around the turn of the millennium to NOK 50 billion today. This entire system has always assumed that aid should be poverty-fighting. The aid needs for basic health care, water, wells, education and food and field hospitals as emergency aid are still great. Such aid is primarily about individuals, local communities and how to lift nations out of poverty. A fisherman walks across a dry patch in the marshes of Dhi Qar province, Iraq. Climate aid is about providing money for loss and damage as a result of climate destruction. Photo: AP In the future, major challenges that affect poor countries but affect the whole world will increase. Preventing the consequences of climate damage for island states in the Pacific is not just local emergency aid, but a global challenge. Cleaning the world’s oceans, a task Norway will take a leading role in, is a global challenge. Preventing or dealing with large flows of refugees is concrete on the ground locally, but a global challenge. Preventing or mitigating the next pandemic is about healthcare and medicine in some places, but is a struggle that concerns everyone. The dilemma is open, heartbreaking and serious: The very poorest account for the least degree of climate emissions, but face the consequences of climate change to the greatest extent. One or two money bags? The government-appointed Sending Committee proposed that the current aid percentage target of 1 per cent must be split in two; 0.7 per cent (which is the international target) for poverty reduction and emergency aid, then 0.3 per cent earmarked for global common goods such as climate aid. This last part should also have increasing elements of private assistance. In addition, the committee believed, the 0.3 figure should be increased over time so that “the two money bags combined” would over time become 2 percent. In other words, a total level of aid twice the current level. In the aid environment, the debate has intensified after Norad director Bård Vegar Solhjell, in a column and a reply column, advocated much of the same as the committee: Aid must be increased overall. In order not to put poverty reduction under pressure, a distinction must be made between poverty reduction and global common goods. He emphasizes the moral responsibility rich countries have. Several of the aid organizations are more keen on an increased aid percentage from today’s starting point, than that the money should go to two different money bags. In a joint report, they ask for increased allocations from the oil fund to finance more aid. They are to a lesser extent concerned with putting traditional aid and e.g. climate aid against each other. Climate or poverty? This winter’s climate summit in Dubai could celebrate the first payments to a new “Loss and damage fund for climate and natural destruction”. Norway contributed NOK 270 million. Jonas Gahr Støre announced during the UN climate summit in Dubai last December that Norway will contribute large sums to combat loss and damage as a result of climate change. Photo: Lars Nehru Sand / Lars Nehru Sand This fund is an example of a mechanism that makes it relevant to talk about a “new” aid percentage in addition to the old one. A new type of international aid will have to increase in the coming years. Then the original poverty alleviation assistance may have to suffer. MDG believes the solution is a separate climate aid percentage. The party has set aside money for this in its alternative budget. KrF, Venstre, SV and Rødt have not set a new aid percentage, but want climate aid to be given without counting in the calculation of aid as 1 per cent of GNI. In practice, then, two money bags are created, without having any percentage target for the climate aid part. Rødt also wants to increase aid by taking money from the oil fund without allowing it to count as a fund withdrawal according to the action rule. “Taking money under the line” has long been a frowned-upon budget trick, but the parliamentary majority can be accused of having left the door open on the Nansen package for Ukraine. The central Norwegian aid organisations, which apply for ODA funds, will take international climate finance as a direct withdrawal from the oil fund. It differs from how Norwegian politicians have so far thought about fund withdrawals. Generosity or selfishness? Aid Minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim (Sp) writes in a debate entry in Panorama Nyheter (formerly Bistandsaktuelt) that she does not want “more silos” in aid, and believes that the fight against poverty and climate change must be seen in context. Anne Beathe Tvinnereim (Sp) is minister for development Photo: Vegard Tjørhom / news It is strange that a minister for development does not want the division into two as a “weapon” in the government’s budget debates. It is good that she is clear about her view, but it is a shame if it short-circuits an important debate. After all, she is speaking against her own agency director and expert committee. She is of course right that there is a lot of overlap, both in geography and subject matter, for where the money is to be allocated, but as a minister you know better than most that the money in the Norwegian state budget comes from one place; the Storting’s appropriations. The debate also has a moral aspect. A new type of aid is not about gifts and generosity, it has a lot of self-interest in it. Global commons, as mentioned, provide just as much help to the world as a whole, even if the money is allocated to poor countries. People fleeing the great flood in Pakistan in 2022. Photo: FIDA HUSSAIN / AFP Increased needs and tighter budgets Regardless of how the politicians define money bags, percentages and targets: The room for maneuver in the state budget is shrinking. The need for international aid is increasing. It is naive to think that different forms of aid cannot be pitted against each other. That is why the debate is right and important. Because the contradictions are heartbreaking when you realize how intertwined and complex the situation is for the people who are affected. Whether they are fleeing floods or need education. And after all, they are the ones you have to think about.
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Heartbreaking contradictions – Speech
