The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued a report card today meant to underscore deep worries that the world is in danger of backsliding on a broad range of international-development objectives.
The report by the nation’s largest grant maker, which has already directed billions of dollars to global development and has more than $40 billion at the ready, is meant to guide international efforts to achieve the United Nations sustainable-development goals, a set of 17 targets to improve health, the economy, the environment, and human rights worldwide by 2030. It charts poverty, infant mortality, maternal mortality, HIV rates, and 14 other health and economic measurements related to the goals.
The report, and two events the Gateses will host next week in New York alongside the United Nations General Assembly meeting, are meant to showcase the importance of international aid in an era of retrenchment by the U.S. government and to inspire people worldwide to get involved, Mr. Gates told reporters on a conference call previewing the report.
“We’re trying to not only drive awareness of the progress and what’s at risk but actually galvanize people to raise their voices about pushing forward,” he said. “We’re trying to draw in a lot of young leaders to get engaged in this.”
The couple plans to release updates to the report, titled “Goalkeepers: The Stories Behind the Data,” each year through 2030.
Federal Cuts
President Trump’s proposed budget, released in May, would mark a retreat from international commitments. It would cut funding on international HIV programs, a key Gates priority, by more than 16 percent. It would reduce the total international aid and diplomacy budget by more than one-third.
Some describe the Gateses’ leadership as much needed and the new report as one way to hold global leaders accountable. While private giving doesn’t come close to matching government aid, philanthropy can serve as a safety net for international aid programs threatened by a loss of government support. And philanthropy has proven it can get private industry involved in global development efforts.
But some critics take issue with the Gateses’ approach. Sophie Harman, a professor at Queen Mary University of London who specializes in the politics of global health, worries that the foundation and its small board — which consists of Bill, Melinda, and William Gates Sr. (Mr. Gates’s father) and investor Warren Buffett, will have too much sway internationally. By tracking global progress and holding nations to account, the Gateses will have an outsize political voice, she predicted.
“This seems like a real extension of power by the Gates Foundation,” she said. “Who actually appointed them to that position?”
Forecast Scenarios
Using data from the World Bank, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation — which has received hundreds of millions of dollars in Gates funding — and other sources, the new Gates report projects the progress that will be made on global development goals if current investments are maintained. It also forecasts the impact of spending cuts.
One scenario detailed in the report, for instance, projects global HIV deaths four ways: under current international funding levels, with increased investments, with an unspecified decline in funding levels, and with a 10 percent budget cut for prevention and treatment programs. Under the current funding-level scenario, the foundation projects 0.09 deaths per 1,000, a decline of more than one-third of the current rate. But with a 10 percent budget cut, the rate would surpass current levels, putting at risk progress that has been made over the past decade fighting the disease.
“If countries do not think about these global problems and you get cuts, or if you have setbacks in terms of pandemics and things like that, you can have reversals,” Mr. Gates said.
The reversals aren’t just lines on a chart, he said. They represent the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.
Billions Spent
The Gates Foundation spent nearly $19 billion from 2010 to 2015 on efforts in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, which went into effect in 2015. It was far more than any other grant maker committed, according to the SDG Philanthropy Forum, a group of foundations that work internationally.
And Bill and Melinda Gates look poised to devote even more money to their global-development priorities. The couple, who helped pioneer the Giving Pledge, a commitment by the world’s richest people to give away the majority of their wealth before death, is worth more than $85 billion, according to Forbes. Their foundation earlier this year listed assets of $40.3 billion, and the couple adds to that total regularly. In August, the Gateses gave an additional $4.6 billion to the foundation.
Still, the foundation holdings represent about one year of spending on international aid by the U.S. government.
Mr. Gates’s influence stretches beyond the dollars he’s willing to spend, however. In his conference call, Mr. Gates suggested that the report card will be used to illustrate needs in various countries and regions. Using Africa as an example, he said the report card could be used to cajole and pressure leaders to increase health budgets and change policies where needed.
“I don’t think we have a direct effect on governance, but hopefully we’re enabling other actors — voters, media on the continent itself — to take this data and push for improvement,” Mr. Gates said.
Soft Power
Mr. Gates will put some of that clout to work next week as he and Ms. Gates host former President Obama and other world leaders at their Goalkeepers event in New York. Ms. Harman of Queen Mary University said Mr. Gates’s status as a business icon and his commitment to global health put him in a good position to connect corporations, donors, and nonprofits working to achieve the development goals.
“There’s a growing diplomatic role for Bill Gates,” she said. “He has the soft power of his network. He is Bill Gates. He can get into those meetings. He also has the hard power because of how much money he’s bringing to global health.”
Robin Rogers, a sociologist at Queens College in New York who studies rich donors, worries that wealthy people from the business world will import an international-development approach that focuses only on markets, which could leave goals like building strong democracies and improving human rights by the wayside.
“The power that used to be purchased through international aid by the U.S. government will now be purchased by this philanthropy-business partnership,” she said. “I don’t necessarily think business will be a force for human rights.”
Others contend that poverty, disease, and a lack of opportunity are such vexing problems that only a huge series of investments will make a dent. That money, says Edmund Cain, vice president for grant programs at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, can only be supplied by getting large companies and investment funds involved.
“The only way you’re going to crack this nut is to get the marketplace engaged,” he said. “That’s a role philanthropy can play.”
Mr. Cain dismissed the notion that the Gateses’ involvement in tracking the United Nations goals was a power move. The goals, he said, are the product of years of international debate and negotiation. By attaching themselves to an approach authored by an international collective, Mr. Cain said, the couple is owning up to the fact that they don’t have all the answers.
“They’re showing some humility and a recognition that this is a sound agenda,” he said. “These goals weren’t crafted overnight.”
