MARCO VERWEIJ& DIPAKGYAWALI MARCO VERWEIJ is Associate Pro- fessor of Political Science at the Sin- gapore Management University. DIPAK GYAWALl is the Director of the Nepal Water Conservation Foun- dation and Pragya at the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology. Formerly, he was Minister for Water Resources in His Majesty's Govern- ment of Nepal. Against More Aid Why Development Assistance Should Not Be Tripled S ince the early 1990s, many have -.iiiiilyzed, criticized, lamented, and prtitcstctl five decades ot hir^rc-scale development aid gone disastrously wrong. They have made two main avgiinients. First, many low-income countries are hobbled by corrupt governance and uncompetitive markets. Under these circumstances, development aid mostly benefits the rich and not the poor. Second, for various unfortunate reasons, donor agencies tend to favor development projects that are overly expensive and not sustainable. These profound critiques have come from both the political right and the left, from people and organizations in the South and the North, from academics and street protesters, and trom people within and without the international donor community. Yet as if nothing had been learned, large-scale financial assistance for poor countries has suddenly resurfaced on political agendas everywhere. Indeed, in recent years, gov- ermnent leaders around the workl have lieen calling for a tripling of development aid. Tn our view, these plans should be abandoned as they suffer from the same weaknesses as the much-maligned aid efforts of yester\-ear. Implementation ot these plans would wreak havoc on poor countries. The Latest Plans to Save the World In signing [he 2002 Monterrey (',onsensus, governments around the globe pledged to achieve the Millennium De- velopment Goals. These entail that by 2015, the number of people who live in extreme povert)—the I.I billion people with less than USSI per day—must be halved. Ilow this should be achieved is detailed in three new publications: Inve^hig in Development by the United Nations Millennium Project (headed by Columbia Universit)' economist Jeffrey Sachs), Sachs's latest book The End of Poverty, -ind Action for a Strong and Prosperom Africa b\' the Commission for Africa (established by British Prime Minister'Ibny Blair). Accord- ing to these publications, the government of each poor coun- tr\' should draw' up a National Povcrt\' Reduction Strategy, which spells out the investments in hospitals, roads, schools, canals, housing, water supply, fertilizers, and so forth needed to reach the Millennium Goals. Rich countries should then foot the difference beuveen what is required and what poor countries can afford. Though few strategies have been finalized, the UN Millennium Project and tbe Commission for Africa claim to know what will be necessary. They prophesize that, in the next decade, poor countries need to invest US$110 per person per year to halve extreme poverty. They also foresee that households in these countries can afford to invest US$10 per person per year and that their governments will have USS3.'> per capita at their disposal trom domestic coffers. A R \' A R I) 1 X •[• K R \ A 'I" I O N A I. R R V I F, W • Winter 2006