E.U., U.S. pledge to increase development assistance.

• Author: Bast, Elizabeth
• Position: Environmental Intelligence

Reversing a decade-long downward trend, the European Union recently announced an increase in foreign development spending of $4 billion to $29 billion annually, while the United States pledged to boost aid by $5 billion to $15 billion annually by 2006. E.U. countries will now be spending an average of 0.39 percent of GNP on development aid, and the United States 0.13 percent. The U.N. target is 0.7 percent, a benchmark exceeded only by Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Norway. Overall aid spending has declined in the past decade from $73 billion in 1992 to $54 billion in 2000 (in 2000 dollars).

Announced just prior to the U.N. Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002, the U.S. pledge represented a significant policy change. President George W. Bush reversed his earlier opposition to increased development assistance, expanded his anti-terrorism stance to include the connection between violence and poverty, and argued that "we...