The March 10, 2015, Lab seminar was presented by Sam Loewenberg, who is an investigative journalist and a 2014-15 Project for Public Narrative Fellow. Loewenberg covers the intersection of global health, business, government and politics, and during his fellowship, he will be investigating the political, economic, and institutional barriers to reforming American foreign assistance programs for global health and hunger.
Loewenberg began his presentation by explaining what initially caused him to begin to focus on hunger. In 2005, a hunger crisis in Niger affected 2.5 million people, and later it became apparent that the crisis was not caused by war, famine, or catastrophe, but by bad governance. In fact, the crisis had been warned about 6 months in advance. Beginning with this crisis, and looking at others, he noticed a pattern: that aid usually comes only once a full-blown crisis has occurred and television cameras have arrived, and that governments and the public usually pay little attention beforehand. This media-driven response to public policy is known as "the CNN effect."
Loewenberg then discussed the underlying dynamic, by which preventative measures (such as building basic infrastructure for water and sanitation, or providing financial assistance to make people more resilient before the crisis hits) are dismissed by policy-makers as "too expensive." Rather, they wait to act until the crisis occurs, which is far more costly both financially and to people's health. He calls this dynamic the “politics of scarcity.” This type of politics is great for fundraising, but terrible for people’s underlying situation, because those situations are never changed when assistance only comes when things have already become a full-crisis. What’s more, Loewenberg explained that the types of people who are usually hit hardest by these crises are the politically disenfranchised, often indigenous people or other politically disenfranchised minorities, including those in the US most affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Moving on, Loewenberg began to discuss countries that are making progress with hunger problems, and what the primary cause of that success is. He explained that some countries in Latin America have successfully addressed pervasive hunger problems recently, which is largely a factor of political will. Still, there is the case of Guatemala, which is not considered poor relative to its surrounding neighbors, there are still persistent hunger problems among the country's large indigenous population, and this is largely because of political disenfranchisement.
Speaking on the efficacy and economics of food aid, Loewenberg argued that the way the United States delivers food aid to foreign countries is nothing short than absurd. Specifically, numerous researchers and even the GAO have produced studies analyzing the costs, and in general, the U.S. loses about 50 cents on every 1-dollar spent on food aid. What is the reason for this? In fact, the program has not changed much since it was started by the Kennedy administration in the 1960s.The U.S. still ships commodities abroad on American-flagged ships, which exist largely only for this program (most ships are registered in Liberia, Panama, or the Marshall Island). Further, the US differs from almost every other donors because it ships actual food bought on US commodities exchanges, rather than sending cash for local purchase, which is what most countries do. We now know that this method is highly inefficient because when you ship food into local markets, you’re flooding the markets and may actual do damage by undermining local farmers. Efforts to reform this type of food aid, first under the Bush administration and currently by the Obama administration, have been blocked both by the shipping industry and the agriculture industry because they stand to profit from current system.
Sam concluded by arguing that because much foreign aid is given for reasons other than its stated purpose - helping people - but instead of strategic or diplomatic reasons, it is no wonder that it does not work very well. This misalignment of underlying interests corrupts the entire institution of aid itself. As a possible model for reform, he cited the Report of the Massachusetts Sanitary Commission of 1850, which presented the political and economic case for implementing long-term public health and infrastructure programs, which said that many argue that these types of programs are too expensive, the most wasteful course of all is to do nothing.
Closing the discussion, participants of the Lab began to consider corruption on both ends of the foreign aid spectrum, on the donor end which is self-interested, and on the receiving end - national governments that receive the aid - which often lack the political will to help their own poor and do not use the funding to deal with underlying issues. Participants agreed that the whole system seems broken. At this point, one participant pointed out what he considered to be the key problems in foreign food aid policy from Sam’s presentation. The Fundraising account: wait until it’s a full-grown crisis, delay for self-interested reasons; the capital investment account: what we need is a major upfront investment, rather than a reactive emergency response that doesn’t address underlying infrastructure issues; and the capacity account: do we actually have the resources necessary to develop third-world countries? And even if our ends are true and not corrupt, will corruption on the ground hamper us from doing so? There was a consensus among participants of the Lab that these key issues must be addressed in order for foreign aid policy to be steered in a better direction.
- Summary composed by Joseph Hollow