Letter from Majuro
The Donor Game is Unsustainable
Common Sense Dictates People Participation; Until This Happens, The Waste Will Continue
The Pacific Islands are littered with donor-aided projects that collapsed and died—most quietly withered away once outside grant funding dried up. The "project" mentality has crippled development in the region.
Until recent years, donors essentially drove development projects, bringing in consultants to write the goals and objectives and plans of action, while local agency officials sat by, heads bobbing, accepting whatever was recommended. From the 1970s until the early 1990s, there was rarely a requirement of accomplishment for projects to be funded in the islands. The hand-out mentality was at its zenith.
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Then, in the mid-1990s, all of a sudden, donors started noticing that nothing—or next to nothing—was working, despite the tens of millions of dollars being pumped into the region. For sure, in some countries, democratic institutions of government have prospered more than in others. But when you talk about development projects—in health, education, community development, income generation— it’s a pretty dismal picture everywhere. In general, the rule has been that everyone gets excited about a project as long as it’s being funded by Australia or the United States or some international foundation. But the money dries up and local interest disappears, too.
So lately the donors have begun saying money needs to be directed to non-governmental organizations, because there is more likelihood of success. This would replace handing large sums over to the lackluster government agencies whose staff show little commitment to sustainable development. It might be true that this would work better. But if donors and island leaders, whether in government or the nonprofit sector, don’t change their tune, development projects in the 21st century are not going to fare better than in the last. Why? Because donors still wave huge sums of money around at local groups, but few have changed their process to accommodate a ground-up approach. This would require that local groups identify their problems and needs and, based on this process, decide their own priorities. A revolutionary idea? Hardly. But the fact is that local participation, for the most part, is sorely lacking in today’s donor push for so-called "sustainable development."
We frequently hear of donors saying, "We’ve got funding for a project in your country over the next three years, identify a focal point and give us a project plan." What a backward approach.
The nongovernmental organization sector may be benefiting by an infusion of more international funding because of the ineptness of government programs, but if the present donor-directed aid system continues, the Pacific will continue to waste money on ill-conceived projects that have little chance of long-term success and sustainability. Why? Because island communities aren’t buying in or taking ownership of their own development. Until local organizations and communities start taking charge of their own development needs, the success stories will remain few and far between.
