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Speech

9 March 2009

Seizing the opportunity to help the poor

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's speech at DFID's Annual Conference, Monday 9 March

Let me say first of all that the strength of this gathering today, so many NGOs, so many leaders, so many experts from more than 40 different countries reflects not just your commitment to serving the needs of the poor, for which I congratulate you, but also I think your sense and mine that we have come together to a turning point.

On trial today is the way the world deals with the global challenges of poverty and prosperity, of inequality and of environmental degradation.

Never before have we seen such a global financial crisis of speed, severity and scale - a crisis that has reverberated all round the world, it is touching every country on every continent and we know it is hitting the poorest hardest.

But let me also say, never before has the case for co-operative global action been so obvious and so urgent. And I come here this afternoon to tell you that we must seize this day because now is the time to make the development agenda for addressing poverty a central part of the global agenda for restoring growth.

You see some have argued that in these difficult times the rich world should turn our backs on the Millennium Development Goals and retreat from the promises that we have made to the poor. But I wanted to come here today to say that amidst all the other challenges of globalisation we must not, and will not lose sight of our vision of a world freed from poverty.

And I do not believe that the challenges that the global economy faces today, and the challenges of development, can be simply compartmentalised, somehow to say to each other action on poverty has to be delayed until action on the global financial system is completed.
 

Instead I want to affirm today that we cannot solve the economic challenges of globalisation without involving Africa and all the developing countries. We cannot solve our global climate challenge without involving Africa and the developing countries. We cannot solve our security challenges without Africa and the developing countries.

And that is the message that I want to take from you to the G20 when all the leaders of the developing and the developed countries will meet together.

Now I believe that only when the history books are finally written will the world today truly understand the scale and the scope of the challenges that we are facing together in these times.

We had a major oil and food crisis last year affecting most of the poorest countries of the world, we have had a worldwide financial crisis this year affecting most of the poorest people of the world, and we have a climate change crisis that grows ever more urgent every year, hitting most of all the poorest people of the world.

But I also believe that these events - momentous in themselves and superimposed on all the challenges that this new age of globalisation has already thrust upon us - will come together to be seen as even more significant for the future of our planet than the sum of their combined effects, vast though they may be, because of the parts that they are playing in the creation of what should be a truly global society.

The changes we are living through today are even greater than those witnessed at the time of the industrial revolution:

  • a rise from 1 billion to 4 billion as producers in the global industrial economy in the last 20 years alone;
    we have a huge and continuing shift of manufacturing power from west to east;
  • we have a massive potential increase in demand over the next two decades as billions around the world seek to become consumers and not just producers of goods;
  • and with that restructuring of the world’s economy there is a potential doubling of its size, with all the opportunities and yes all the insecurities it will bring.

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And this unprecedented transformation and rapidly unfolding course of global change presents us with four challenges that if we do not meet them will lead inevitably to a rebellion against multilateralism and to modernity itself - four global problems that demand of us urgent and coordinated action because without such action we cannot hope to solve them.

These are the challenges:

  • of financial instability in a world of instant global capital flows;
  • of environmental degradation in a world of energy shortages;
  • of extremism and the threats it brings to security in a world of unprecedented mobility;
  • and of growing poverty in a world of worsening inequality.

And unless we can find solutions to these problems, globalisation itself, the global economy, a global society will become unsustainable.

But if and when we do provide answers to these challenges, the prospects are:

  • stability and prosperity for our ever greater number of people in a world of global trade;
  • sustainable growth fuelled by sustainable energy;
  • greater security that economic inclusion and greater equality can bring;
  • and what I want to talk about most directly today - the reduction of poverty through growth and economic justice.

So I am in no doubt that what you are discussing today is at the centre of the challenges that all of us have to meet in making globalisation work for the many, and not just the few.

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Now the World Bank - and we have heard from them this morning - estimates that growth rates in developing countries will fall this year, pushing as many as 100 million people into poverty and risking the lives of another two million children simply as a result of this global economic crisis.

We know that money available to countries in the developing world is falling as investors start to withdraw their funds. We know that money being sent home to families through remittances is now reducing. And in some countries, as you know, even the money provided as aid has been vulnerable to budget cuts.

And jobs in many developing countries are being lost as global demand for commodities begins to fall, hitting everyone from textile workers in Bangladesh to miners in the Congo, as surely as it is hitting in a more visible way in our newspapers, steelworkers in the United States and car workers here in Britain.

And these are the realities that we face round the world, and in these difficult times I believe we face a choice.

We can retreat into the protectionism that will lead us to look inwards and look after just ourselves, and that will lead rich countries to turn their backs on the poor.

Or we can resist the temptation to protectionism, which history tells us in the end protects no-one, and we can embark on a new era of global international co-operation, working together to bring growth out of recession, prosperity out of poverty and environmental care out of the environmental degradation we know today.

Now next month leaders from the world’s biggest countries, representing over two-thirds of the global population, will meet in London to agree action that will see us through the current crisis. And I believe that, for the first time, we need to see the interests of the poorest countries as central to the questions that we have to answer and the solutions that we provide.

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The London Summit is our chance to put in place the foundations of what I call a global new deal, and we already know some of its components:

  • sustainable flows of trade with fair trading rules;
  • clean banks that people can trust with better openness and better early warning systems;
  • a decisive push towards a low carbon economy;
  • properly resourced international institutions that can act early to deal with poverty and injustice in a crisis.

And we know also that if globalisation is going to be successful for the poorest of the world we will need global institutions that are more strong, more open and more inclusive. But to win the support of the developing world, for these institutions it is right that we must ensure for them a much bigger voice and representation.

And if we are going to move the global economy forward we will need to work together on a fiscal stimulus for all countries and not just some. And that is what I mean when I talk about a global new deal, a deal that recognises and embraces our interdependence and makes it work for all the peoples of this world.

Now there are those who say that to talk of common interests and how we can work together weakens the moral case. But I don’t share that view. I am passionate about development because I cannot countenance a world in which a child dies because they are too poor to live, because they don’t have enough access to clean water or because they don’t have a mosquito net.

But I am passionate about development also because I believe in its transformative effects - its potential to help us create the global society that will benefit us all.

So in the run-up to this London Summit we will work with the World Bank and our G20 partners to build support for a new fund specifically to help the world’s poorest through the downturn. Too often our responses to past crises have been inadequate or misdirected, promoting economic orthodoxies that we ourselves have not followed and that have condemned the world’s poorest to a deepening crisis of poverty.

But I want new measures that will be targeted to help the very poorest, helping to keep girls in school, helping to keep food on the table, keep poverty from the door - so that when growth returns people are in a position to contribute to their economy in the way they want to do once more.

For if this global new deal begins at the London Summit, it must be one that continues to form the basis of our international policy for years to come. It should underpin the next G8 meeting in Italy, the climate negotiations in Copenhagen, our review of the Millennium Development Goals in 2010, it should herald a new era of rights and responsibilities that it is incumbent on each of us here this afternoon to develop and fulfil.

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Now let me say that while others may be tempted to shy away from their development responsibilities, we in Britain will continue to meet them and we will keep our promises on aid.

We must ensure that aid flows are predictable and support plans formulated by national governments, not spent on priorities, however well intentioned, imposed by donors from afar.

We must look also at how companies report and inform the public so that developing countries don’t lose their fair share of revenue through creative accounting.

And at the London Summit I can tell you that we will also set down new measures to crack down on those tax havens that siphon money from developing countries, money that could otherwise be spent on bed nets, vaccinations, economic development and jobs.

Of course a country where one in four children die before their fifth birthday, and where one in six mothers die in childbirth, and where the vast majority of children are denied the chance to go to school, will never be strong or fair.

And that is why achieving the Millennium Development Goals - those solemn promises we made on health, on education, on poverty and hunger - must remain a central focus of all our efforts and it is also why our shared goals on climate change must be realised.

And to those who claim that it can’t be done during a period of financial difficulty and economic change, I quite simply say this:

Who would have thought at the turn of the Millennium that just eight years later 40 million more primary aged children would be able to go to school? But that’s what the world has done and we have done it because of you and all your efforts.

And who would have guessed that polio, a disease that has crippled so many, would today be on the verge of being wiped out? But we have done it and we have done it because of all the efforts of medical and other organisations determined to eradicate polio in our lifetime.

And who among us would have dared to expect or predict that 300 million could have been lifted out of poverty in these years as they were able to reap the benefits of economic growth and trade? But again that has been done and that has been done because of the combined efforts of all of you.

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Now many of these achievements are permanent - a child who has learned to read will be transformed forever, a vaccination can prevent disease for life, and debt relief releases money for investment in the future - but many more of our objectives and our achievements are at risk of being undone as the global economic crisis bites.

So I believe that now is the time to summon up the energy and the inspiration we will need to join the great battle of our generation against poverty once again - and I, like you, know why together we must act.

The greatest gift that we could give, the greatest legacy that we could leave would be for every child in every country to have the chance that 75 million children do not have today - the chance to go to school, to spell their name, to count their age, perhaps to learn of the generation that is fighting to make their freedom real.

And that is why I was so keen last week, meeting with President Obama, to agree that we would work together towards a new global education partnership to equip young people and children of the next generation to get the skills that they need to transform their communities and turn around their lives.

And America and Britain will lead the way in attempting to meet the Millennium objectives that every child will be at school, the eradication of avoidable diseases, millions moving from poverty to prosperity, of sustainable environments.

Governments, businesses, NGOs, faith groups and leaders and experts from across the world all coming together to make globalisation a truly international force for justice on a global scale.

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Now that must be our goal and we must never lose sight of our power together, working collectively to achieve it.

I want to thank all of you for what you do in your own individual organisations, I want to thank the NGOs and the churches, and those people who are involved in medical and other academic research, and for all those people who work tirelessly for the causes that they individually represent.

And I want to say that DFID, the department that we created in 1997 to further development across the world, led by someone - Douglas - who I have known for 20 years or more and for all those 20 years has been pushing, and pushing, and pushing so that the poorest are given the best deal, who started 20 years ago as a volunteer in Kenya and is now, I am proud to say, our Secretary for International Development.

But we want to work with you over these next few months so that in all the discussions, in April in London, in July in Italy, in December in Copenhagen, at the UN in September before that, we can make sure that the common agenda that we pursue is one that we can persuade the whole world to stand up to.

I think the challenge for us today, facing an economic crisis, facing unparalleled changes in the global economy, facing up to our responsibilities as citizens for those who are in poverty, the challenge for us as a generation is to do what is right, to meet our moral obligations, to stand up for what we believe even in the most testing times to push forward with the agenda we know is not only ethically right but is also both socially responsible and economically essential, to build a global society that is based not on ever increasing inequality but a global society that is, as we want it to be, a force for justice on a global scale. Thank you.

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