Bjorn Lomborg writes: \u00a0Some $1 trillion was\u00a0lost to corruption\u00a0last year. This is money that was not available for expanding health care, broadening access to education, improving nutrition, or cleaning up the environment.\u00a0According to Transparency International, 68% of the world\u2019s countries have a serious corruption problem, and no country is completely immune.<\/p>\n
Corruption is one facet of\u00a0poor governance; indeed, it correlates with ineffective public administration, weak accountability, low transparency, and inconsistent implementation of the rule of law. So it is little wonder that the United Nations\u2019 brand-new Sustainable Development Goals, coming into force this year, aim to fight it. Nonetheless, the SDGs represent a departure from the previous development framework, the Millennium Development Goals, which contained no explicit targets relating to corruption.<\/p>\n
The problem is that the SDGs have so many targets \u2013 169 in total \u2013 that they promise virtually everything to everyone. Without enough time or resources to focus on everything, countries will prioritize.<\/p>\n
Nobel laureate economists identified\u00a019 super-targets\u00a0that would do the most good for the world for each dollar spent. These include achieving universal access to contraception, stepping up the fight against tuberculosis, and expanding preschool access in Sub-Saharan Africa. The economists recommended that the world\u2019s donors and governments focus first on these investments.<\/p>\n
The UN\u2019s 12 corruption and governance-related targets weren\u2019t among these phenomenal investments. One reason is that several of the UN\u2019s \u201ctargets\u201d in these areas are so broad as to be meaningless. Indeed, it is all very well to say that we want to \u201cdevelop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels,\u201d and to \u201csubstantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms,\u201d but where do we start?<\/p>\n
Higher wealth and economic growth lead to better governance. \u00a0A\u00a0study\u00a0of 80 countries where the World Bank tried to reduce corruption revealed improvement in 39%, but deterioration in 25%. More disturbing is that all of the countries the World Bank\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/i>\u00a0help had similar success and failure rates \u2013 suggesting that the Bank\u2019s programs made no difference.<\/p>\n
But the experts enlisted by the Copenhagen Consensus Center\u00a0found\u00a0one governance-related target that actually\u00a0would<\/i>\u00a0do some good for each dollar spent: \u201cBy 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Achieving this target requires functioning public services to provide registration facilities and maintain records. Establishing such institutional capacity would create a clear model for how other services could be provided effectively. In practice, a functioning registration service would almost certainly not exist in a vacuum, and thus would be a sign of emerging administrative competence.<\/p>\n
But this is not just about bureaucracy; there are real benefits for citizens. They can claim legal rights, including property rights, which are vital to allow individuals to prosper and the economy to grow. Likewise, elections become less vulnerable to corruption and fraud when voters are properly registered.<\/p>\n
If we want to place a high priority on fighting corruption, we should not settle for overly broad, well-meaning slogans. We should work on specific, proven, and effective approaches such as providing legal identity for all.<\/p>\n
But we also have to confront the possibility that when it comes to helping the world\u2019s poor, anti-corruption policies may not be the best place to spend our money first. This is partly because there are much more effective ways to tackle problems like tuberculosis or access to contraception, and partly because current anti-corruption policies are expensive and do little or no good.<\/p>\n
This is not to deny that corruption hits the world\u2019s poor hard. But there are many challenges, from lack of healthcare to starvation and pollution, that also hurt the poor but that we can address more effectively.<\/p>\n
Focusing on what we can do well seems less impressive than promising everything to everyone \u2013 until it\u2019s time to deliver. Those who prioritize properly will end up helping many more people.<\/p>\n
Bjorn Lomborg writes: \u00a0Some $1 trillion was\u00a0lost to corruption\u00a0last year. This is money that was not available for expanding health care, broadening access to education, improving nutrition, or cleaning up the environment.\u00a0According to Transparency International, 68% of the world\u2019s countries … Continue reading ![\"Corruption](\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Corruption-in-Spain.jpg\")
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