Featured Research Project: ARC Linkage Grant

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: The Role of Foreign Aid, Trade and NGOs with a focus on the Asia-Pacific

RMIT Researchers Dr Simon Feeny, Dr Matthew Clarke and Professor Tim Fry are working together with linkage partner: World Vision of Australia, to identify the roles that foreign aid, trade and Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) will play in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. These Goals, committed to by all members of the United Nations in 2000, include halving of global poverty, the achievement of universal primary education and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS all by the year 2015.

Despite the international development community’s strong commitment to these goals there is currently little understanding on the most efficient ways to achieve them by 2015. This project aims to:

• develop insights and policy recommendations on how aid donors and international community can assist in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals;
• examine the impact of aid to the region and how foreign assistance should be allocated to maximise its impact; and
• address the factors involved in Australia’s response to emergencies and natural disasters.

The geographical focus of the research is the Asia-Pacific, a region of great importance to Australia. Adopting both quantitative and qualitative techniques, the Research Team has demonstrated that many countries in the Asian Pacific region are unlikely to achieve many of the Millennium Development Goals given their recent progress.

Publications:

• Clarke, M and S. Feeny (2007) “Education for the End of Poverty: Implementing all the MDGs in Asia and the Pacific”, Nova Science, (forthcoming).

Journal Articles

• Feeny, S. (2006) “Foreign Assistance and Fiscal Governance in Melanesia”, World Development, forthcoming
• Feeny, S. and M. Clarke (2006) “What Determines Australia’s Response to Natural Disasters?”, Australian Economic Review, forthcoming

Conference Presentations

• Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in the Asia-Pacific, Education for the End of Poverty: Implementing All the Millennium Development Goals, RMIT University, April, 2006.
• Do Pacific Countries Receive Too Much Foreign Aid? Development Economics Conference, Department of Economics, Monash University, June 2006.
• What Determines Australia’s Response to Emergencies and Natural Disasters? Development Economics Conference, Department of Economics, Monash University, June 2006.
• “Scaling-up Foreign Aid: Absorptive Capacity, Growth and Poverty Reduction Considerations”, Aid: Principles, Policies, and Performance, World Institute of Development Economics Research, Helsinki, June 2006.
• Feeny, S and B. Ouattara (2006), “What Type of Economic Growth Does Foreign Aid Support?” Nordic Conference in Development Economics, Oslo, Norway.

Media Coverage:

• Clarke, M and Feeny, S (2006), ‘Australian Government finally giving aid the prominence it needs’ The Canberra Times, Monday, February 13^th 2006.
• Feeny (2006), Is Australia’s Foreign Aid Effective? The Canberra Times, Wednesday, March 29^th 2006.
• Clarke, M (2006), ‘The World’s Financiers are Trying to Help the Poor’, The Canberra Times, Monday, September 18^th 2006.
• Clarke, M and Feeny, S (2006), ‘Aid Needs More Than Fine Words’, The Age, Tuesday, November 14^th 2006.
• Feeny (2006), ‘G20 summit a chance to rebuild aid’, The Canberra Times, Friday, November 17^th 2006.

Useful Links

• http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals

More information

Simon Feeny
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
simon.feeny@rmit.edu.au

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