UNDP's Achim Steiner on the 'chronic erosion' of development

<a class="spreaker-player" href="https://www.spreaker.com/episode/exclusive-interview-undp-s-achim-steiner-on-the-chronic-erosion-of-development--66082342" data-resource="episode_id=66082342" data-width="100%" data-height="200px" data-theme="dark" data-playlist="false" data-playlist-continuous="false" data-chapters-image="true" data-episode-image-position="right" data-hide-logo="true" data-hide-likes="false" data-hide-comments="false" data-hide-sharing="false" data-hide-download="false" data-title="Exclusive Interview: UNDP&#39;s Achim Steiner on the &#39;chronic erosion&#39; of development">Listen to "Exclusive Interview: UNDP&#39;s Achim Steiner on the &#39;chronic erosion&#39; of development" on Spreaker.<script async src="https://widget.spreaker.com/widgets.js"></script></a> Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, YouTube, or search “Devex” in your favorite podcast app. When Achim Steiner took on the role of United Nations Development Programme administrator in June 2017, the agency was in transition, and as he prepares to depart after two terms, it is once again facing a period of change and disruption. Some 100 UNDP programs have been affected by the Trump administration’s stop-work orders or terminations, according to Steiner. These disruptions haven’t fundamentally altered the agency’s portfolio because they don’t rise to that “magnitude,” and because the U.S. government’s financing of UNDP is limited, he told Devex in a recent interview for the This Week in Global Development podcast. But the individual cancellations have had a significant impact, abandoning yearslong partnerships, disrupting HIV/AIDS medication supply chains, and forcing UNDP to stop work in countries suffering crises that focus on both immediate response and stabilization. The U.S. cuts come on the heels of a decade-long trend he described as a “chronic erosion of the volume of finance” to development cooperation. Even while official development assistance numbers appeared to be rising, the truth behind the figures is that “for much of the developing world, such as the African continent, it's either been a stagnant or even a declining amount of funding.” For UNDP and many other multilateral institutions, core financing has also been on the decline. “We have faced already a financial phenomenon that is equivalent to defunding international cooperation.” And while poverty has eased, multilateral institutions are being questioned about why development assistance has not solved the world’s most pressing challenges, fueling skepticism about the effectiveness of multilateral institutions. But he acknowledged that many institutions have also not been self-critical enough when engaging in these discussions. “The confidence that development works has been severely questioned and eroded in my mind, sadly, very often for ideological reasons rather than for factual reasons,” he said. Too often, the focus of “aid bureaucracies” has been how to further cut overhead costs on staff or travel, he added. UNDP scrutiny is warranted, Steiner said, but questioning whether it could squeeze more than 92 cents of every dollar into programs misses the point. “That's not going to solve the great challenges of our time,” he said. At the same time, he stressed that the U.N. system must avoid waste and is “in urgent need of a decluttering, of a reconcentration on core functions.” Under his leadership, UNDP has tried to adapt — diversifying partnerships, experimenting with financing models, and helping countries create customized plans aimed at attracting private capital, Steiner said. At the upcoming Financing for Development conference in Seville, Spain, Steiner said the global community faces a choice. “We can either haggle over a chessboard where there is hardly anything left to haggle over” or seize the moment to chart new pathways for financing global challenges. In some countries, private finance will be a key part of the equation, but that means that scarce aid resources should focus on poorer countries, small island developing nations, and crisis-affected countries where private finance is not a viable option. That means deploying instruments to de-risk investment and building hybrid finance models, he said. So while he prepares to leave an agency that is in some ways under threat, Steiner said this moment could present an opportunity to overcome past risk aversion to “actually change things that have rendered our institutions less effective and less agile than they should be.”