© CGD
The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) is published every year since 2003 and reminds the world that reducing poverty in developing countries is about far more than just giving money. The CDI assigns points in seven policy areas: aid (both quantity as a share of income and quality), trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology. A country receives points within each component for policies and actions that support developing counties in their efforts to build prosperity, good government, and security. The seven components are then averaged for a final score, which is adjusted for size of the country. The 2011 CDI is out today (see link below) with the scores for 22 countries.
Usually, government actions don’t change much from year to year. So, once again Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands take the top four spots while South Korea and Japan come last. The high scores of the top four owe above all to their generosity with aid. But aid only plays a part. Progressive policies on the environment and migration shall not be forgotten. Sweden and Norway have a particular openness to immigrants from developing countries, including refugees. Japan and South Korea are again the least development-commited, having high barriers to goods and workers from poorer nations as well as low contributions to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations.
Commitment to development is not always about one country's wealthiness: we can use the example of Portugal (9th in the ranking), which is facing right now with a bailout plan. Even if the country bears a small share of the burden of refugees during humanitarian crises and gives a very small share of its income in foreign aid, Portugal leads the technology component due to policies that support innovation at home and diffusion of technological advances abroad and has low greenhouse gas emissions per capita.
The CDI was improved but it is not an infallible measure of development impact. But we can observe trends and most of all we can increase public awareness about the policies that are affecting those living in the developing world.
read more: 2011 Commitment to Development Index Is Out
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