Water and Agriculture in U.S. Foreign Assistance

Coalitions With New Partners - Water and Agriculture in U.S. Foreign Assistance

Mon, Mar 30, 2009

Fair enough. Now I wanted to ask a question about the U.S. government writ large, and relationships with other partners. To what extent is the government helping put together coalitions with new partners, to deal with this? Is it leveraging its impact, and how can it help facilitate dialogues between companies, NGOs... we heard a little bit about this, this morning, going forward. How would you describe the state of affairs there?

Well, we're looking better, because our last administrator, Henrietta H. Fore, was trying to get global development alliances. She called it the global commons, bringing more and more people together to do things, because of the synergies and the multiplier effect, the money that comes in. And so USAID, as far as I know, is still looking at alliances, and it doesn't matter who our administrator will be. The main way we try to do business these days is trying to bring in other parties. Now, maybe the biggest disadvantage is that USAID is not involved in some of these organizations that have longer-running histories. Because we haven't been involved in that field, that means we don't put money into the organizations that need support, and so AID will have to reintroduce itself into some of those broader international organizations. So the things that we do in the private sector are much easier. I mean Coke is doing a huge initiative with us, and Rotary has just started up a big initiative with us, and so bringing the private sector into these things is something that AID is focusing on. It's a little bit labor-intensive. I have a very small staff of people, and each one of these alliances takes some time to get running. I think, I'm not sure whether Rotary... Rotary was three years to put together. And so each one of these takes a lot of effort. And so the short answer is USAID is looking at all kinds of alliances and partnerships. There has been a sloughing off, I mean we don't get together with the World Bank often enough, we don't have two hundred thousand dollars to buy in to some organization and so it leaves us out of the discussion, away from the table, which isn't good. Now, again, I'm hopeful that this is going to be reversed.

As a point of information, I should note that Henrietta H. Fore has rejoined the CSIS board. But I can assure you, ladies and gentleman, that she did not inspire me to ask that question. Michael, what would you like to add?

I would just -- as I mentioned before, I think the opportunity to look at biotechnology as part of the solution, but only a part of the solution, is one that we can explore as a public-private partnership. There is sufficient industry momentum to kind-of develop these products. We need to make sure that they're used responsibly, in the right places, with the right goals in mind, and also that this is a balanced approach. We need to get the science and education behind these products to know that they will be safe in the environment, and that they are, in fact, to the advantage of those folks who would use them. So there are plenty of places where we can benefit from these public-private partnerships. And then the government agencies partnering better, I think, is another solution to that, using the expertise that we have available across the government in these bigger international development projects.