The past year has sent a clear message to world leaders: The global development landscape is shifting. Emerging economies, civil society and nontraditional donors from the public and private sectors are making their mark from Washington to Busan and surely, next year, to Rio.
The international community must improve crisis prevention and response, as this year’s famine in the Horn of Africa shows. Better coordination of foreign aid is key. No wonder, then, that country ownership, capacity building and country systems were among the buzzwords of 2011.
It was a year of uncertainty as the global economy continued to tether on the brink and policymakers everywhere considered — or even implemented — aid cuts.
These challenges won’t go away — just check out these 2012 predictions from some of the Devex International Development Leaders in London.
But, what were the top global development stories of 2011?
The Horn of Africa famine and refugee crisis overshadowed much of this year, as did the demonstrations and democracy movements of the Arab Spring. We saw emergency response to floods in Thailand, mudslides in Brazil and typhoons in the Philippines — and the creeping disaster surrounding the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. South Sudan celebrated independence — and remains desperate for food aid and the infrastructure and human resources that are key to sustainable development.
There were advances in aid transparency and the use of social media for social good. A growing donor focus on innovation prompted Devex to honor 40 organizations as Top Development Innovators; a growing focus on leadership had us name 40 International Development Leaders in London. Together with the U.N. Foundation, we launched Busannovate: Making the Money go Further to highlight the importance of innovative financing for development in a campaign that Impatient Optimists blogger David J. Olson named one of the top 10 global development communications stories of 2011.
World leaders debated progress toward the Millennium Development Goals at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. They engaged with civil society at the historic 36th Session of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome. They reached broad consensus at the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, and drafted a follow-up to the Kyoto protocol at a U.N. climate change conference in Durban.
Elsewhere, policymakers contemplated aid cuts and, in rare cases, aid increases. The Obama administration continued to push U.S. aid reform as much as possible without legislative backing, while countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Italy began to overhaul their foreign assistance.
The growing number of players in international development meant a growing diversity of opportunities for aid workers in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. One thing that didn’t change is the selfless dedication with which the development community went to work, despite continued security challenges in many hot spots around the globe.
Please let us know what you’ll take away from this year in international cooperation by leaving a comment below and by voting on Facebook for your biggest humanitarian and global development story of 2011.
See you in the new year.
Read last week’s Development Buzz.
About the author
Rolf RosenkranzRolfRosenkranz
Rolf Rosenkranz has worked as a Global Editor for Devex. Previously, Rolf was managing editor at Inside Health Policy, a subscription-based news service in Washington. He has reported from Africa for the Johannesburg-based Star and its publisher, Independent News & Media, as well as the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, a German daily.
