Today we had a debate on how far the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been achieved. For those unfamiliar with MDGs, these are a series of actions spelt out by the UN to eradicate poverty in the most deprived countries of the world by 2015.

So some 20 peers with wisdom and experience recorded their views in short speeches. The overall thrust was that we are all so far  behind in achieving goals, despite hundreds of millions of dollars since the year 2000 when the goals were first set up, that 2015 is going to be an embarrassment.

My worry is that even if we were near to achieving the laudable goals – there is no credible evidence one way or another! The problem is that goals set at international levels, however well meant, are almost never successfully translated to the village level. There are too many layers of politics, bureacracy, misinformation, incompetence, corruption and physical obstacles (lack of roads?) for money to trickle down. And even if it did and even if the vast sums available were actually spent on sensible capacity building projects (for example training local midwives, teachers, barefoot doctors) there is no internationally accepted system which would allow us to evaluate progress or the lack of it. In other words we still don’t really know what works.

Have you ever thought about the shock,  horror statistics that we hear about daily: millions dying of HIV/AIDS; 30 million children will die of hunger this year; one woman dies of pregnancy related complications every minute and so on. Horrifyingly these may all be true statistics but where do they come from? Who researches them and who broadcasts them and for what reasons? 

All I ask is that there is serious and consistent work on what the actual indicators of poverty are and what kind of input in terms of aid has a demonstrable effect in alleviating these indicators.

If you consider that development is a roughly logical, and very slow, progression of political and economic change, followed by greater wealth  for the government, leading to investment in services such as education and health resulting in overall reduction in mortality and poverty – where would you put your money? The premise upon which the  MDGs are based is that if you throw enough money at the problem then you can speed up the process and, hey presto, by 2015 you will have resolved the problem of poverty. But it doesn’t work like this and for the reasons I have outlined above – lots of money is not always (if ever) the answer.

The wrong aid goes to the wrong people at the wrong time on a regular  basis. This can result in widening the gaps that already exist in a community and creating even greater political tensions. It can also result in a massive input of material aid such as anti-biotics, drainage systems, machinery, new agricultural crops -all much needed and hugely welcomed BUT not sustainable without the infrastructure in terms of training and renewable resources.

One example I gave in today’s debate is the undoubted reduction in child mortality in Tanzania over the last few years. This country has had huge aid packages of anti-malarials, bed nets, and  immunisation but no one knows if these inputs are the cause of the reduction. One will only know for sure if and when these inputs suddenly cease!

This to my mind is not a sensible approach to eradicating poverty. We need to know what works and we need to apply that knowledge carefully and systematically with the emphasis on capacity building at every stage. We need to encourage international support for political change from within a country and we often need to step back. This might be a much cheaper but possibly more effective approach.