The State of Development

Since becoming Secretary of State for International Development I have had the privilege of seeing how our staff and development partners are helping alleviate poverty.

I have witnessed the high quality work being undertaken in our joint headquarters in East Kilbride and seen what it means on the ground.

In particular I will never forget my visit to northern Darfur in July where I saw the human costs of conflict first-hand. I spoke with mothers, fathers and children forced from their homes. But I saw for myself the outstanding work of aid agencies providing water and sanitation to those who have been displaced.

Throughout these six months, I have been extremely impressed by the development community’s achievements. For this reason, whenever I am asked about my priorities for the Department for International Development (DFID), I start by noting progress that has been made: debt cancellation and aid increases helped to put 20 million more African children into school between 2000 and 2004, and the proportion of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has fallen from nearly a third to a fifth.

In 2005, a global movement was launched to take action against poverty. I marched alongside thousands of SCIAF supporters in the Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh, calling for more and better aid, trade rules that work for the poor and debt cancellation. Together we ensured leaders didn’t leave Scotland without promising to do just that. Landmark commitments were made to increase aid by $50 billion extra a year by 2010, with half for Africa, and to cancel crippling debts.

I am acutely aware there is still more we can do, particularly to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Our Comprehensive Spending Review settlement confirmed this Government is serious about tackling global poverty, and that we are on track to reach 0.7% GNI* spending on aid by 2013. I am absolutely committed to ensuring we focus this aid on the right priorities to achieve more.

As well as ongoing commitments to governance and basic services, for me there are four key policy challenges for DFID: increasing growth, reducing conflict, reforming international institutions, and tackling climate change. I would like to focus on climate change as it has become more than an environmental problem - it's inherently a development issue.

It will be the world's poorest people - who are least responsible for the problem - who will be hardest hit by climate change. Failing to tackle it will lead to natural disasters which can destroy poor people’s lives and livelihoods. And people in developing countries have the least resources to deal with the impact. For example, around 70% of people in Africa rely on farming. And scientists tell us that by 2020, climate change could reduce some farming harvests in Africa by 50%.

I am aware SCIAF is launching a climate change campaign, which I very much welcome. In my view, the focus has to be both how we mitigate the effects of climate change, which is why we are pressing for a global post-Kyoto agreement by 2009 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also how we help poor countries prepare for the impacts of unavoidable climate change.

At DFID we have been looking at using the UK’s new £800 million Environment Transformation Fund to leverage additional funding to help developing countries adopt low-carbon growth. Helping countries grow in a clean way is an example of development work that will help tackle climate change.

In July the Prime Minister launched a Call to Action to governments, NGOs and businesses, in particular to live up to Millennium Development Goal 8: the "global partnership for development”. Organisations like SCIAF play a fundamental role in this. This is as important for climate change as other development issues. In the same way that millions came together in 2005, I want the development community to join forces to tackle climate change. To achieve the aspirations of the Make Poverty History campaign and meet the MDGs, we must rise to the challenge together.

*Gross National Income

March 2008