International Targets for Poverty Reduction and Food Security
Simon Maxwell (Director, ODI, UK)*
A (mildly) sceptical but resolutely pragmatic view, with a call for greater subsidiarity**
International development targets have become a prominent feature of development discourse in recent years. Many different targets have been adopted at UN conferences. A selection of these have been brought together and widely distributed by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, in a publication entitled "Shaping the 21st Century: The Contribution of Development Co-operation".
Are targets in general a good idea?
The case in favour is that they serve to provide political impetus, as well as funding, which is perhaps more generous, but certainly more finely tuned. The monitoring of targets facilitates programme implementation and helps to mobilise and maintain public support.
On the other hand, targets can be criticised on the basis that they over-simplify and over-generalise complex problems, distort public expenditure priorities, and cost a great deal to monitor. Furthermore, the political benefits may rapidly be lost if targets are not achieved.
In food security, there is a history of target setting stretching back to the World Food Conference of 1974, and running through to the World Food Summit in 1996. The target adopted there was to reduce the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than 2015. A lot of emphasis was placed on monitoring progress toward the target and the pride of place was given to a food insecurity information and mapping system (FIVIMS) that would generate the required information.
The use of targets in food security is complicated by technical difficulties in measuring and monitoring under-nourishment. Targets can be reductionist, particularly in the sense that simple targets obscure the complex multi-dimensionality of the food security problem. They can run the risk of distorting policy. And they can be expensive to monitor. In addition, they are often set with such long time horizons that the political momentum can be lost.
We need a pragmatic solution to the dilemmas.
There are three possible solutions. The first is to abandon international targets. This must be the wrong answer. International targets are useful. They do galvanise opinion. And they do help to raise resources. The second is to refine targets to reflect the complexity of poverty and food insecurity. This is a difficult option. It is hard to find good universal indicators, and multiple indicators raise many questions about weighting and about priorities and resource allocation.
The third option is more promising. It is to keep the international targets universal, unambiguous and simple; but devolve responsibility for definition and measurement to lower levels, mainly national. In effect, this is to follow the principle of subsidiarity. The way forward would be to work in action-research mode with poor people themselves, on multi-dimensional poverty, food insecurity and human development. If we want to monitor progress, a good way to do it might be by means of regular location-specific 'food security reports', similar to poverty assessments or human development reports: these can be as rich and diverse as we like.
It is too early to tell whether FIVIMS will adopt an approach consistent with the option recommended here. If it does, it will simplify the data collection problem internationally, and help countries carry out meaningful local planning. If it does not, then we are likely to be lumbered with an expensive and cumbersome layer of statistical bureaucracy.
* Drafted by S. Hollema based on the summary of the article with permission from the author.** The full argument is published in the Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Vol. XIX, 1998. A copy of the paper is available on request from the FIVIMS Secretariat.
