UK top of the nutrition scorecards; France and the US could try harder
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Version 0 of 1. There are so many players involved in malnutrition reduction, from health, agriculture, education, water and social welfare, that there’s a worrying tendency for no one to take responsibility. Nutrition investors need to know their resources will be properly managed. So the launch of global health advocates Action’s Following the Funding scorecards earlier this week was good news. The scorecards assess the pledges made by 11 bilateral and multilateral donors in the context of the 2013 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) summit, a major pledging event, with more than $4bn (£2.6bn) between 2013 and 2020 in extra funding for direct nutrition interventions alone. The N4G pledges consisted of financial commitments of spending targets on nutrition specific interventions, and non-financial commitments around policy, institutional and legislative initiatives. Pledges are compared with what has been spent, beginning in 2013. So what do the scorecards tell us? And how reliable are they? Top of the class – the UK The UK is the only donor on the scorecard on track to meet “ambitious” pledges ( in other words going way beyond “business as usual”). It pledged to at least triple spending on nutrition specific interventions and it is on track to do so. Impressive. Business as usual – Canada and Australia This assessment may be unfair on Canada. It is not clear, for example, that their N4G pledge is a re-announcement as the scorecards claim. Canada has posted impressive increases in overall nutrition spending between 2010 and 2012, and the initial report on 2013 is very promising. Australia made a very modest pledge and is meeting that. Related: Breakfast around the world: share your pictures Ambitious pledges, but show me the money – the EU, Germany, the Netherlands and the World Bank For the EU, Germany and the Netherlands, pledge delivery is “unknown”. For Germany, this is because they did not divide pledges into nutrition-specific and sensitive. For the EU and the Netherlands, it is because while the 2013 spending is good, it will need to be modestly scaled up in the future to meet the pledges. For the World Bank, one of the biggest nutrition donors, the pledge delivery is rated as “progress in danger” because the spending on basic nutrition in 2013 was half of what the pledge suggests it should be. But the scorecard notes that this 2013 spending might be an underestimate, due in part to the complexity of reporting. Bottom of the class, inadequate or vague pledges – France, Japan, Norway and the US Norway was not an N4G signatory, but the scorecard recognises the potential Norway has to make a big difference to nutrition with its strong commitments to official development assistance (ODA), rights, agriculture and gender empowerment, and urges the country to get more involved in nutrition. Japan is a large ODA nutrition contributor. Its pledge needs to be more specific, however, because it is locked into a broader statement on health and so it’s hard to identify the nutrition component. Given its strong commitment to equity issues, France is implored to make a new financial commitment to nutrition – it made none at the N4G summit. The US, by far the biggest nutrition ODA donor, is criticised for no new money at the 2013 summit, although it is recognised for increases in nutrition funding since 2008. Related: Evening seminar: Are development agencies failing women? The verdict on the scorecards Inevitably, the issues are not as cut and dried as any scorecard may make them seem, but the cards add value. For a start they come from civil society and this is really important. Malnutrition is as much about social change as technical advances and so the greater involvement of citizens is vital for resetting norms around funding and action. Civil society is active in nutrition but, with more support, it could be doing more to hold everyone into account. Second, the assessment of the ambition of the pledges is useful. Making pledges is a diplomatic artform. Some organisations and countries are spectacularly vague when formulating them. For strong accountability, pledges need to be specific, measurable, assignable realistic and timebound. Third, it is good that the basis for the assessment is published. Assessments are contestable and so we need to see, and challenge, the workings behind them. Often this information is not presented, and if you want others to be accountable you have to be too. Related: Rebranding bran: teaching nutrient-rich cooking in Mali Will the scorecards change donor behaviour? This is difficult to say. I hope there is donor engagement around the scorecards and a more formal evaluation of whether the ratings mattered. The nutrition donors have, as a set, performed really well over the past four years. As the 2015 Global Nutrition Report, published in September, will show nutrition-specific ODA spending has nearly doubled between 2012 and 2013. That is the good news. The less good news is that ODA spending on nutrition is still a very small number – almost $1bn out of more than $100bn of ODA, or less than 1%. When you put that alongside the fact under-nutrition is implicated in 45% of all under-fives deaths, then something is clearly wrong with the picture. The scorecards are a welcome addition for nutrition champions everywhere. But they must be used to help up, not beat up, people working hard to fight for more nutrition resources within their development agencies. They are nutrition champions too. Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow@GuardianGDP on Twitter. |