Seminar Looks at the Role of DAC and What Japan Can Do at the New Development Cooperation Stage

The keynote speaker was Susanna Moorehead, chair of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), and the commentators were Mutsuya Mori, vice president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and Jin Sato, visiting fellow at JICA-RI as well as professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. With Izumi Ohno, director of JICA-RI serving as moderator, the seminar discussion focused on topics such as mobilizing private sector financing for development cooperation, working in concert with emerging donors and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) amidst changes to the global development cooperation landscape.

According to Moorehead, the mobilization of funds for achieving SDGs is one of the biggest challenges faced by the DAC. She said we need to mobilize financial resources from the private sector in developed countries, and to achieve that, innovative methods are required, while in developing countries, we must work to increase tax revenue and ensure debt sustainability. She also raised the importance of collaboration with emerging donors, such as China, saying that it’s critically important to engage with China because it is playing such an important role in countries where Japan and other donors aren’t investing and that it is important to establish prompt communication with China so that we could share our common values and aims.

Moorehead said that in the past, Japan was criticized for focusing on infrastructure assistance and economic development, while other DAC members worked mainly on technical cooperation. However, taking into account Asian success in poverty reduction on an unprecedented scale, Japan’s experience is of enormous interest to other DAC donors for its contributions to sustainable growth through job creation, expansion of the middle class and cultivation of human resources. She also noted that Japan’s significant contributions in the area of disaster prevention/reduction also deserve attention, adding that such technical cooperation is as important as infrastructure projects. Furthermore, Moorehead said that Japan is expected to play a leading part in development discussions by using its advanced ideas for working with the private sector for development cooperation, that Japan is a pioneer in triangular cooperation, and that going forward, Japan should share the enormous lessons that Asia has for the rest of the world.

He said that with regard to the former approach, the Asian ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investment market is still small-scale, and going forward, we need to apply knowledge from the EU and the US, where the ESG market is more active. With regard to the latter approach, he pointed out the need to cooperate with domestic development banks in developing countries to seek measures for mobilizing funds that originate within those developing countries into SDG-related investments.

During the question-and-answer session, a wide range of issues were raised regarding the possibility of China joining the DAC, on how to effectively communicate with China, and on the relationship between the DAC and the United Nations, and a meaningful discussion developed.

Lastly, Ohno concluded the seminar by saying that diversity is important because recipient countries need to have options, from government policy to procedures, in order to choose what is suitable for them.