The Reality of Aid Report 2020/2021: Aid in the Context of Conflict, Fragility, and the Climate Emergency – World

1 INTRODUCTION

A triple crisis of poverty, inequality and climate emergency exacerbated by a global pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed worrying limits to global solidarity, particularly among the international donor community. In just a few months, the pandemic has exposed long-standing structural inequalities within and between countries.Despite some progress, COVID has made millions more vulnerable and pushed many into poverty in the context of the increasingly present impacts of climate change.

In the face of these worsening global challenges, there is an unprecedented and urgent need to maximize funding for development while focusing on the rapidly deteriorating conditions for the poor and vulnerable. However, the evidence in this report and several parallel comments from civil society point to largely stagnant flows of aid, an aid system with systemic ineffectiveness that is highly resilient to change, and an increasing primacy of donor economic and political interests in aid priorities. The recently released UN Report on Financing Sustainable Development 2021 warns that the pandemic could lead to a lost decade for development, noting that a highly divergent and unequal world is created by poor countries and people’s lack of access to resources Combating the crisis arises. Your report identifies growing global systemic risks resulting from the interactions between economic, social (e.g. health, inequality) and environmental conditions (e.g. climate). The Executive Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, fears the world is on the verge of “catastrophic moral failure”. Multilateral cooperation is at best limited in the wake of “vaccine apartheid” and the “me-first” allocation of vaccines in the north. The heightened nationalism in several donor countries as well as increasing systemic racism are very worrying trends that run counter to the vision and commitments to a decade of action for the 2030 Agenda.

The immediate pandemic-triggered crisis is deep and profound. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast the deepest global recession since World War II for 2020 and estimated a decline in global GDP of 3.5%. The prospects for global recovery are highly uneven and depend in part on equitable access to effective vaccines. Inequalities between countries are increasing. It is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa’s real GDP fell 2.6% in 2020, the first continental recession in 25 years. In April 2021, the DAC reported that the aid from DAC donors for this region had decreased by 1% in 2020. By the end of 2021, that region’s GDP is projected to drop to levels not seen since the 2008 decade for a full recovery. The modest progress in reducing global poverty since 2015 has proven extremely vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic shocks. It is estimated that an additional 34 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living in extreme poverty in 2020. This is in addition to a pre-pandemic total of 433 million people who have already been deprived of livelihoods. Together, these numbers represent almost 44% of the subcontinent’s population by 2021. The expected worsening of poverty is not limited to sub-Saharan Africa – it will be felt in all regions of the world.

Two-thirds of the 225 million additional people projected to be pushed into poverty (the $ 3.20 poverty line) are in South Asia. More than 200 million additional people are likely to be reduced into poverty (the $ 5.50 poverty line) in East Asia. Given the likelihood of greater inequality and uncertain growth prospects across the global south, World Bank analysts predict these trends will continue in 2021 and perhaps 2022. “The subject of this report focuses on the links between the increasing conditions of” fragility, “of affecting millions of people in poverty, and the immediate and long-term effects of climate change now exacerbated by a global pandemic.

Many of those hardest hit by the pandemic in the global south were already living in fragile contexts and “furthest back”. This fragility has several interrelated characteristics: 1) high levels of poverty and inequality; 2) the breakdown of the main institutions; 3) systemic discrimination against ethnic and racial minorities; 4) high violence against women and girls; and 5) political volatility accompanied by repression and narrow-minded authoritarian regimes. These conditions are often exacerbated by violence and conflict, as governments either cannot or do not want to protect the rights of their citizens. The increasing effects of climate change are increasingly felt in the same country contexts. The combination of these factors paints a bleak picture for millions of affected people around the world.

The number of protracted humanitarian crises (lasting more than five years) has more than doubled in the last 15 years from 13 to 31.

Over a billion people live in countries affected by these long-term emergencies. The Development Aid chapter in this report examines development trends for 30 of the most vulnerable and conflict-affected countries, where 38% of the population live in extreme poverty [Tomlinson, Global Aid Trends]. As the pandemic spreads, the time to combat the climate emergency is also running out.

The climate and environmental crisis continues to disrupt the basic conditions of life on earth. Despite the commitments from the 2015 Paris Agreement, CO2 emissions are expected to continue to rise. With the cumulative impact of each year of inactivity, scientists predict the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5 ° C will be exceeded in less than a decade and catastrophic warming of 3 ° C by the end of the century. Emissions fell 7% during the “big hiatus” in 2020, but to keep global warming at 1.5 ° C, those emissions must decrease 14% each year through 2040. The medium and long-term consequences of inaction are critical for the whole world, but especially for poor and vulnerable people.

These effects will be much deeper and more general than even the pandemic, which can be seen as a dress rehearsal for the potential for human rights abuses unleashed by worsening global warming in the later years of this century. In dealing with these intertwined crises, vigorous social and political movements that urge strong coordinated governance are more important than ever. In recent months international social movements and coalitions of youth, indigenous peoples, references in square brackets to chapters in this report. Environmentalists, human rights activists and scientists are calling for a major paradigm shift.

These changes are necessary to rebuild a more equitable and equitable world after the pandemic. The political stakes are high and challenging.

The shift of economies and livelihoods to a carbon-free world is daunting, especially given the continued opposition from powerful corporate and private interests and their commitment to carbon-dependent global capitalism.

The responses of several governments to the pandemic in the Global North have shown that big changes are possible.

Notions of “affordability” and what might be considered “normal” are as much a political constraint as a financial one.
The costs of inaction on climate protection are already paid in the lives of many poor and vulnerable people in the global south. They manifest themselves in extreme weather conditions that destroy their homes and productive infrastructures, in reduced availability of scarce water resources, in the vulnerability of the crops for millions of smallholders and in the flooding of their communities by storm surges as sea levels rise.

According to the World Bank, the effects of climate change are transforming the lives of people who live in fragile and conflict-affected environments. His analysis identifies the prospect that by 2030 an additional 132 million people will live in extreme poverty due to irreversible climate change. By 2050, up to 140 million people could be forced to move within their own country due to climate-related disruptions to their livelihoods.

In 2019, over 70% of internally displaced persons were the result of extreme weather events and natural disasters, more than three times as many displacements due to conflict and violence that year.

In this Reality of Aid Report 2020/2021, civil society contributors examine the importance of aid in responding to these global crises. The donor response will shape the development opportunities for the remainder of the decade. How will donors address the increasing and persistent state fragility and conflict in the lives of people living in poverty? What role will a worsening climate and environmental emergency play in these responses? Given the global health pandemic, how will current patterns of cooperation affect development cooperation over the next five years and perhaps the rest of the decade?

The 2020/2021 report provides new insights from CSOs in both the south and the north.

You write about the role of aid in the convergence of fragile contexts, the escalating effects of the climate crisis and a global pandemic. The chapters critically examine the reform of development aid in these fragile country contexts.

How are donors approaching the Triple Nexus, which calls for greater coordination between humanitarian assistance, development and peace-keeping efforts? Looking for a more holistic approach, the Triple Nexus has had fewer in-donor refugees, ODA reported to the DAC, since the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit and the 2019 agreement from all donors to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and c Real ODA and student costs, debt relief, and interest received on ODA loans.

Development Committee (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) on a DAC recommendation on the nexus between humanitarian aid, development and peace. Experiences and questions in the implementation are elaborated on the basis of country case studies and thematic perspectives on peace and security, social protection and violence against women and girls.

As the climate emergency increasingly shapes the humanitarian and developmental future, several chapters examine the priorities of international climate finance and their potential impacts on development prospects for vulnerable populations and communities.

Overall, this evidence underscores the Reality of Aid Network’s urgent call for systemic aid reform. Can the pandemic be an opportunity? Could the dramatic spread of COVID-19 change the future of aid?

Could it bring the necessary changes in humanitarian aid development and delivery that reformists have missed over the past decade? The report makes a number of recommendations for moving in these directions.