POINT OF VIEW/ Martin Dinham: Aid must be increased for our common prosperity

The human tragedy unfolding in Haiti as a result of the devastating earthquake there provides a stark example of how natural disasters hit the poorest hardest. As emergency aid pours into Haiti from all parts of the world, including Japan and the United Kingdom, it is also a telling illustration of the importance of the international community working together to tackle global challenges, from immediate disasters to longer-term development.

The British government believes strongly that, despite the global economic and financial challenges we all face, now is not the time to turn our back on the poorest. We will keep to the commitments we've made to increase the volume of our aid to developing countries. That means our aid will increase from about 7 billion pounds (1.015 trillion yen or $11.28 billion) in the current financial year to nearly 9 billion pounds next year and upwards beyond that.

We have confirmed that Britain will remain on track to meet the target of raising development aid to 0.7 percent of national income from 2013. (The rates for Britain and Japan stood at 0.43 percent and 0.19 percent in 2008.) The British government has just introduced draft legislation to make this target a permanent legal requirement.

We will have a general election this year. Among the three main political parties, there is agreement that the volume of our aid should continue to increase significantly.

When we ask the British public what they think about providing aid, the common reply is that it is right that we should be helping poor countries. But their question is how effective we are in targeting and spending our aid.

In order to explain better to the British public the case for aid, we published a white paper last year titled "Eliminating World Poverty: Building our Common Future."

People in Britain, like people in Japan, are obviously going through difficult times. We've got the economic downturn, there's greater unemployment, and social security costs are going up.

So we needed to make the case in our white paper that what we're doing in development really is making a difference.

The British government's Department for International Development (DFID), for which I work, has about 2,500 staff and its overriding goal is to reduce poverty through the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs were agreed at the United Nations in 2000. All the heads of government of the world committed to the eight goals of halving poverty by 2015, getting all children into primary school, tackling issues of maternal mortality, and so on.

There have been some big achievements. The last decade has seen real progress in the fight against poverty: the proportion of the world's population living in poverty has fallen from a third to a quarter. Aid increases and debt cancellation have helped to get 14 million more children into school. The number of people with access to AIDS treatment has increased from just 100,000 to over 3 million. So there's no question that aid saves lives.

Yet this progress aside, it's clear with 9 million children dying each year, with 70 million denied the opportunity to go to school, and a billion people around the world without enough food, the world remains very far from meeting the MDGs set by world leaders.

And now the very gains we've made are threatened by the global economic downturn, which may trap as many as 90 million more people in poverty.

The gains we have made are threatened too by the advance of climate change. If temperatures continue to rise at the current pace, an extra 600 million people will be affected by malnutrition by the end of the century.

Unless we take decisive action together on climate change, there is going to be less land available to cultivate; cyclones and other natural phenomena will get worse; and we will see troubling implications in the form of migration patterns, drought, less productive use of land and so on, which will affect us all.

The development gains we have made are also threatened by the effects of conflict and poor governance. Each year about three quarters of a million people are killed as a result of armed violence, with many more injured or disabled.

So unless all three of these global challenges are tackled, the MDGs will be pushed far out of reach.

Some people say, "Recession is hitting developed countries hard," "We can't afford to put more resources, more effort into international aid."

But the British government actually believes the opposite: that in fact this is the time we need to do more. Because if we don't put more effort into tackling these issues, it would blow back on ourselves in terms of less security, less prosperity and a bleak environmental future. So unless we tackle this in a determined way now, we are going to be the losers as well.

The international community needs to agree a new approach to achieving the MDGs. In September there is a major summit which will be hosted by the U.N. secretary-general. It will focus on how we are going to make sure that we get back on track to deliver the Millennium Development Goals.

Our white paper sets out how Britain will pursue the fight against global poverty and places new emphasis on four key areas--supporting growth, tackling climate change, tackling conflict and fragility, and improving the international development system.

We set up the International Growth Centre two years ago to support growth in developing countries. This center provides world-class professional expertise on growth in an independent capacity and can be accessed directly by developing countries.

Stimulating growth in low-income countries is essential; without growth we are not going to be able to tackle poverty.

At the same time it is vitally important that international institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the European Union, are as effective as they can possibly be in delivering finance and support to poor countries. It is important that they are close and responsive to their clients on the ground, and that their country offices have authority delegated to them so that they can make informed decisions quickly when they are needed.

Britain's contributions to global development raises 3 million people a year out of poverty. We are getting more children in school so that thousands of them in, for example, Bangladesh and Uganda, are now receiving primary education.

Our approach is to help build local capacity. The absence of governance and services exacerbates poverty and exclusion, fueling resentment and grievances.

That sense of grievance can feed into insecurity and in some countries can turn people away from the state and into being seduced by the narrative which is used by extremists.

So in this context, aid and development can be seen as part of what people sometimes call "soft power." By addressing grievances fueled by poverty, development policies, working alongside foreign and defense policies, can actually help to reduce insecurity and improve stability.

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The author is director-general of the International Divisions of Britain's Department for International Development.