Yes, but much depends on whether or
not industrial countries clearly distinguish between the financing for
global public goods and the aid agenda.
In many instances, industrial
countries today use official development assistance to back
international cooperation on global public goods to which they attach high
policy priority. Often, these particular goods do not enjoy similar policy
preference in developing countries. The reduction of greenhouse gases is a
case in point. In this case, industrial countries are a major contributor to
the problem: the emerging risk of global warming. Therefore, it would only
be appropriate for them also to take responsibility for needed corrective
action. If for cost-saving or efficiency reasons they prefer to request a
developing country to undertake the corrective action on their behalf, the
payments, which might be involved, would clearly not constitute aid but
rather "trade in developmental services". Hence, it could be
argued that the required money—if it were public money—would most
appropriately come from the budget of the technical government agencies that
are responsible for the domestic policy components of the global public good
in question (e.g. the health or environment ministry).
International cooperation for global
public goods, which are more or less equally valued by all countries,
could, in the case of industrial countries, be financed through a mix of aid
and non-aid resources.
If a particular global public good
were primarily in the interest of developing countries (the control
of a certain disease could be a case in point), the use of aid for this
purpose (by donor and recipient countries) would be appropriate.
Put differently, if the provision and
financing of global public goods is not to come at the expense of aid (as
it unfortunately today often does), the following is important:
-
A clear understanding of
"whose" global public goods are under consideration: Who are
the main beneficiaries?
-
A clear differentiation on the
part of industrial countries between the aid (global equity) and the
global public goods (efficiency) agenda.
Moreover, if financing for global public
goods comes at the expense of aid, development and aid effectiveness may
suffer, leading to extreme poverty, and possibly, more negative cross-border
externalities (e.g. conflict and war, illegal international immigration, or
poor communicable disease control), affecting both developing and industrial
countries. In addition, the poorest countries often do not figure largely in
terms of correcting global public bads that concern industrial countries.
(This is clearly the case in correcting global warming.) Therefore, the use
of the aid modality in these instances is clearly sub-optimal. Playing aid
and global public goods off each other is likely to harm both agendas.
