D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 4, July/August 2001, p. 20 - 22)

After lengthy discussions between government ministries, the German Federal Cabinet in April adopted 'Action Programme 2015', the national contribution to the global strategy on poverty reduction. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder thereby kept a promise he made at the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York in September last year. German development cooperation is to be aligned systematically on the international goal of halving absolute poverty around the world by 2015. But the other ministries also must now adopt poverty reduction as part of their objectives.

Despite its obvious shortcomings, Action Programme 2015 could help achieve a new quality for German contributions to solving global problems by means of multilateral cooperation. But only the next few years will show to what extent the ambitious goal will be realised.

Structure and content

The Action Programme's main elements are 10 starting-points which mark the priority areas for German policy interventions. The topics based on the problems of the South range from economic policies and food to world trade, indebtedness, basic social services, human rights, peace and the environment. The cross-sectoral tasks of gender equality and participation are also included.

Each starting-point encompasses up to 10 'actions' which address the concrete measures the German government can take at three levels: international structures; structures in partner countries; and conditions in Germany, elsewhere in Europe and other industrialised nations. An implementation plan is soon to place the 'actions', which frequently are expressed in very general terms, on an operational basis.

Positive elements

In various respects, Action Programme 2015 can be rated as an innovation of German foreign policy. First, the Chancellor has thus declared global poverty reduction to be a top priority and had his cabinet adopt a cross-sectoral action programme which binds all government ministries. Second, the government has thereby explicitly accepted a global strategy on poverty reduction as a reference framework for German policy and, as a leading industrialised nation, has committed itself in the eyes of the world to making effective contributions to solving the problem. As a result, the third point is that the administrative processes in an important sector of foreign relations are subject to a strategic planning process up to 2015. Fourth, the government's consultation mechanisms are manifesting a new quality. This is because the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) made early efforts to ensure the participation of civil society in basic decisions on the programme, and aims to continue this dialogue in its further development and implementation.

The Action Programme came into being amid tough arguments between the BMZ and other ministries and with external actors such as NGOs, the academic world, trade unions and business. To keep these contacts going, the government plans to set up a Dialogue Forum 2015.

The programme's content also features various innovations which in general are not new as single elements, but appear in a new light due to their grouping and alignment on poverty reduction. These include:

• scrutiny of all government bills for their compatibility with development;
• creation of greater coherence between global regulatory mechanisms, such as trade and environmental agreements, to ensure overall consideration of poverty reduction targets;
• reducing consumption of resources in Germany to enhance the development opportunities of other countries;
• reduction of EU agricultural exports subsidies to avoid negative impacts on food production in the South; and
• recognition of the right of developing countries to issue compulsory licences for production of vital medications under the TRIPS agreement.

Weak spots

On the other hand, the Action Programme's shortcomings both in terms of its origin and content are clear to see. Basically, it should be noted that the programme does not signify a fresh start in Germany's relations with the poorer countries. Essentially, it continues the old policy lines.

Guided by a strongly humanitarian view on the poorest countries, Schröder assigned the BMZ ultimate responsibility for the programme and ordered its design at the administrative level to be implemented according to the conventional interministerial harmonisation process. If he had perceived the establishment of a world social order as the central global challenge to safeguard long-term German interests, responsibility for it would have been assigned to the Chancellery. That Schröder is open to such arrangements is shown by work begun recently on a sustainable development strategy and the establishment of a Sustainable Development Council - both of which are steered by the Chancellery. A cross-ministerial task force (possibly even augmented by representatives of business, civil society and the academic world), would have been able to offer a way out of two dilemmas. First, unlike the BMZ, such a working group would probably not have fallen for the temptation of starting out from the old pattern of thinking that has prevailed under the heading of combating poverty, some of it over decades. Instead, they would have begun their work with an analysis of the current global debate on poverty reduction in order then to consider specific German inputs. Second, the BMZ's leadership remained without problems as long as it was about its own areas of competence. Things got difficult when developmental objectives deviated from the other ministries' positions. The ministries saw diverse BMZ proposals for the Action Programme as encroachments upon their own interests and deleted almost all such passages from the BMZ's drafts.

Open rows between the BMZ and the other ministries broke out over the following points of the BMZ draft, among others:

• restriction of access to phytogenetic resources in the South by means of global patent protection. The result was a soft formulation which did not mention the problem of 'patent protection';
• reform of the EU's generalised system of preferences in order to promote products which met social and environmental standards. Result: the term "reform" was deleted in favour of "further improvements";
• review of the developmental, security and social aspects of the government's Hermes export credit guarantees. Result: no further mention of guarantees' possible "negative impacts on poverty";
• review of the impacts of German foreign trade promotion on conflict situations in developing countries. Result: the potential link between the two is no longer mentioned; and
• provision of additional public funds for world social policy, particularly in the BMZ budget. Result: the formulation which the BMZ wanted in an earlier version: "As a contribution to achieving the goal of halving poverty, the Federal government will continually increase its development budget", fell victim to the opposition of the Finance Ministry.

There were not only ideologically-based controversies over the proposed actions, but also over the introductory analyses of the fields of action. One of the disputes was about assessment of the social impacts of trade liberalisation. While the BMZ said it believed globalisation had not brought about a decline in poverty, the Economics Ministry emphasised the positive effects of open markets - and deleted the critical passage from the BMZ draft.

Little clout of BMZ

As a weak ministry with little clout in power politics, the BMZ obviously had no chance of asserting itself in the controversial policy areas, as these and other examples prove. The BMZ's awareness of its institutional weakness may also lie behind the fact that the term 'Global structural policy', which the ministry introduced as a new development policy model at the beginning of the Social Democrat-Greens coalition government in late 1998, is not used once in the entire Action Programme.

The programme's low innovation achievement is also documented by the fact that important topics of the international debate on social development, such as introduction of an international insolvency law for foreign debt, the future of the EU sugar market regime, or new global financing mechanisms such as the Tobin tax and user fees for global community goods, were not taken up.

The programme also suffers from the negative aspect that a confusingly large number of possible steps (75 actions!) are lined up together without focus or priorities, let alone the lack of details on implementation and verifiable interim goals. This pattern neither emphasises nor excludes any partner country or any sector. A specific German identity, a clearly evident national contribution to the global strategy on poverty, is not recognisable. There are no details on where Germany can act alone or on where it depends on consensus in the European Union or in global bodies. Since in the main all the fields taken up are the ones in which the BMZ is already active, no immediate consequences at the operative level arise from the paper either. Linking Action Programme 2015 with the recently adopted focusing of German development cooperation on selected partner countries and fewer sectors within a respective country programme will initially not even be attempted. The document also makes only general statements on the touchy subjects of donor coordination and joint sector financing for single countries.

Where does it go from here?

Despite all its shortcomings, Action Programme 2015 opens up new scope for exemplary learning processes in German policy for cooperative handling of global problems. The programme's unusually long time horizon increases the incentive for various groups of actors to take part in it. The German government can in future use the process to focus and further develop its contributions to the establishment of a world social system. It can also gain experience in building up heterogeneous policy networks at home and at international level. But at the same time it should not omit to include the Federal Parliament to an appropriate extent in developing policy.

The German NGOs, including the trade unions and the churches, have an opportunity to determine their role in the context of a global strategy on poverty and ensure optimal deployment of their resources. Business faces the challenge of participating actively in the designing of social framework conditions at international and national level and taking into account the principle of social responsibility in pursuing legitimate commercial interests. The academic world and professional associations can input their resources of knowledge to complex strategies for solutions to issues of global governance.

The BMZ is called upon to take a new approach with the announced 'implementation plan' in order to concretise the aim to combat poverty and to focus it in a strategy worthy of the name. Thereby it must at last be clear how the specific German input can be fitted into the context of the many other international actors. By what 'actions' and instruments the targeted goals are to be achieved, and what priorities apply, must be specified. Finally, monitoring of defined interim goals must be able to show whether the German contribution is really having an effect. Only for such clear perspectives can public support be expected. Then, and only then, will backing for calls for more money for development increase again.

Action Programme 2015 takes its cue from the United Nations Millennium Declaration in New York of September 2000, which formulated deadlined targets for a global strategy on social development and overcoming poverty. The proportion of the world population suffering from absolute poverty is to be halved by 2015. In base year 1990, no less than 29 per cent of all people in the world, or a total of 1.3 billion, had to survive on less than US$ 1 per day (in purchasing power parities). The basis of the UN declaration is a comprehensive perception of human deprivation and equality of opportunity going beyond the monetary dimension. In addition, the following equally important goals are also to achieved by 2015:

• halving of the proportion of the world population suffering from hunger;
• primary school education for all children;
• equality of girls and boys in education; and
• reduction of infant mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters.

These benchmarks represent a summary of the most important social policy decisions of the UN international conferences of the 1990s.

The Millennium Declaration has delivered a global strategy on poverty which is supported by international organisations and governments in both the North and South and also by NGOs around the world. Together with the UN conventions on human rights and labour law, which are binding under international law, the declaration can be seen as the global ethical foundation of a slowly growing world social system.

The declaration thus makes the social challenges of global change the focus of an innovative model of transnational policy based on mutual cooperation and heterogeneous networks - as an exemplary field of learning for global governance. As hopeful as this concretising of a world social policy sounds, the political will of the major actors to change course in global steering must first be proven. The industrialised nations' reluctance to expand the international transfer of resources and their clinging to asymmetrical structures in the world economy raise considerable doubts about their seriousness. At the same time, the fact that many governments of the South still are a long way from dismantling inequalities and allowing broad democratisation in their own societies stabilises the status quo.