The context for aid is changing. Globalization has spurred economic convergence, upending the twentieth century economic balance and creating a smaller world where both problems and solutions spill across national borders more readily. This has given rise to a legion of new development actors, including emerging economies, NGOs, private businesses, and coordinating networks, who have brought fresh energy and resources to the field while rendering the prospect of genuine donor coordination ever more difficult. Global integration and competition for resources has raised the prominence of global public goods, whose equitable and sustainable provision requires international collective action. Meanwhile, poor countries are demanding a new form of partnership with the international community, built upon the principles of country ownership and mutual accountability.
From G-20 meetings and the upcoming High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Korea to unfolding events in the Middle East and North Africa, leadership from the United States is crucial, placing pressure on the Obama administration to deliver on its promise of far-reaching reforms to U.S. global development efforts. And amidst this shifting global landscape is the issue of effectively communicating the importance of global development cooperation to both a national and global public, at a time when budget pressures are being felt across many of the world’s major economies
At the eighth annual Brookings Blum Roundtable, co-chaired by Kemal Derviş and Richard C. Blum, 50 thought-leaders in international development came together to discuss a new role for global development cooperation, one that employs inclusive and innovative approaches for tackling contemporary development problems and that leverages the resources of a large field of actors.