As soon as the Cold War ended, development aid declined and humanitarian needs increased. Wars, civil strife, and natural disasters altered the scope of aid in the 1990s. As a result, aid agencies were reformed to become far more responsive to the dramatic changes that were occurring. But the needs of poor people living in peace in impoverished countries still remained.

There is no doubt that economic development is the engine needed to bring large numbers of people out of poverty, as Marco Verweij and Dipak Gyawali argue (“Against More Aid,” Winter 2006). But it is not the only answer. If it were, then the United States, for instance, would not need to spend over US$50 billion annually on food aid for poor Americans. If it were, then India would not still have hundreds of millions of desperately poor citizens, generation after generation. There is also no doubt that fair-trade policies are a critical component to economic development. But waiting not only for policy changes, but for their impact to be felt by even a small percentage of the poorest of the poor, is hardly an option. Then what is?

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a critically important step forward. They mark the first time that countries have agreed to work toward specific goals to end extreme poverty. Now everyone can be “singing from the same songbook” on what we are trying to collectively achieve. And those results can be evaluated.

Indeed, adequate evaluation is one of the big black holes in international development. With what little is budgeted for development aid, there has been little interest in establishing priorities for proper evaluation. Therefore, arguments that development is not effective (and some of it certainly is not) benefit because there are few counter arguments that certain aid has worked.

One of the strengths of the MDGs is that each person or community can find one or more challenges within their lives and societies for issues that they believe are important. MDGs can also be used to find like-minded people in a country who are working on that same objective. In this sense, the MDGs are truly global, and they are and will be an effective grassroots tool. It is the local people who will ultimately be the agents of change with support from international agencies, whether or not their own governments are helpful. Those local people must be the main decision makers on new projects.

To determine which communities are in greatest need, one may have to use untraditional methods. For example, the WFP has developed a Vulnerability Mapping System, (VAM). WFP takes data from a variety of official sources about income levels, agricultural production, education, health availability, etc. The data is entered into a computerized system which then identifies the most food-insecure regions of a given country. The next step is to determine what each region needs to increase food security. The answer is not necessarily food aid; it could be technical advice on agriculture, feeder roads, or any number of inputs. In targeting areas of greatest need, governments and aid agencies can work with local people to create and support long-term sustainable, popular programs.

For ten years at WFP I watched as development aid levels slipped each year. I saw hundreds of communities where small projects to provide education, health care, or food could have made huge positive impacts in many lives. But all we could do was provide support for people living in what the world deemed to be an “emergency.” Indeed, people in poverty live in “permanent emergencies.”

The response to more development aid should not be, as Verweij and Gyawali suggest: “Thank you, but no thank you.” Rather, the answer is: Just Do it Right, and with a lot more resources.