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09.11.2017 | Blog

Compass 2030: Walk the Talk

Terre des hommes and Welthungerhilfe are addressing the newly-elected political representatives, surveyors and negotiators in the recently-published “Compass 2030” with a clear and decisive motto: "WALK THE TALK!" Words seem more passive than ever today.

More was supposed to be provided for the poorest countries during the last legislative period, but the opposite happened: At 0.08% of the gross national product, they moved even further away from the internationally-established goal of 0.15-0.2%. This may sound like academic nit-picking, but should the poorest and most vulnerable not receive the most support? In concrete terms, the poorest countries (LDC) receive only a seventh of German development cooperation funds. Which are the top 10 recipient countries? The answer may surprise you:

Is the Agenda 2030 important and right? Yes, as the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) also agrees. It supports its implementation in many countries. We approve! It would naturally be better if we were to not only demand that others make changes but also implement them ourselves. However, as in the example of climate politics in Germany, it can be easy to set high goals and difficult to truly implement them, e.g. in the case of traffic or coal. We, too, will have to change a lot if we want to prevent the collapse of the planet. WALK THE TALK!

Implementing Agenda 2030 Together

Take the civil society: Truly a mainstay of development cooperation! And it has so many comparative advantages! This is not coming from an organisation such as VENRO, the umbrella organisation of development and humanitarian aid NGOs, but from the BMZ itself. The result? Germany is ranked 24th of 30 DAC countries with regard to promoting development cooperation through civil society organisations, and the OECD is, for the second time, recommending that it structure cooperation with civil societies more strategically. We agreed, and so we made a concrete proposal in the Compass: a new budget item to promote programmes for implementing Agenda 2030 through civil society organisations. We have reason to be optimistic.

Hunger fighting efforts, on the other hand, can only improve during the next legislative period. Many of the 727 Bundestag candidates who replied to our query were elected. For 89% of them, fighting hunger and poverty is a priority, and 91% would increase funds for development cooperation. We would like to encourage them: WALK THE TALK! Of course, we will review their actions again in the next Compass.

About Compass 2030

“Compass 2030” represents the evolution of the annual report about the “realities of development politics,” which terre des hommes and Welthungerhilfe have been publishing since 1993. It continues to critically analyse German development policy with a particular focus on the demands made of German politics by the 2015 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development.

 

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