This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
New Video from AI in Context: The Fall and Rise of Sam Altman
If you want to skip straight to the video, here it is!
AI in Context is excited to be back with our fourth video! For those just hearing from us, we make videos for 80,000 Hours, telling stories about transformative AI...
(You can read this post as a Google Doc, which may be easier to share with global health focused non-EAs)
The UK Parliament’s International Development Committee is a cross-party group which scrutinises the work of the UK government on international development. There is a current consultationby the Committee which presents an critical and tractable opportunity for people to push the UK government to give greater focus to lead elimination. The consultation closes in three days on Monday December 9th and anyone can make a submission, you don't have to be an expert or a UK citizen to do so.
Context
The committee is able to focus on specific policy areas and make recommendations for the government, which may be accepted or rejected. Even when recommendations are rejected, scrutiny of a particular policy area increases the attention which government ministers give to the policy area and to the teams of civil servants working on this policy area.
The International Development Committee is seeking max 500-word recommendations for policy areas to focus on. Some of the questions they want answered are:
Why should the International Development Committee examine this area?
Why is it the right time for the Committee to examine the area?
Why does the Government need to act in this area?
How could Government policy in this area be developed or improved?
The UK is notably not a member of the recently announced Partnership for a Lead Free Future. Given momentum in the lead poisoning space, an enquiry in this area may be sufficient to push the UK government to join.
Making a Submission
If you agree with the argument put forward below, it would be valuable for you to personally make a submission. The simplest way to do this would be plug the following prompt (or one similar) in to an an AI tool (e.g ChatGPT, Claude), asking it to rewrite the wording. Then simply review the output very carefully, write an introduction to yourself and submit to the page via a Word document.
Prompt: "Please rewrite the text below while keeping it in a personally written style, maintaining a persuasive and informed tone. Ensure the language is clear and engaging."
The International Development Committee should examine lead poisoning because it is a policy area that enables a focus on partnership over paternalism, on improving the health of women and children, and on achieving value for money through aid spending.
It is the right time to examine this area because of growing momentum in this policy area, including the recent announcement of the “Partnership for a Lead Free Future” on 23 September 2024, supported by 20 national governments, including Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Norway and the USA.
Parliamentary scrutiny would increase transparency around the FCDO’s current approach to tackling lead poisoning. It would also support the development of recommendations based on the latest evidence to improve the FCDO’s work in this area, enabling the FCDO to catch up to the work of organisations such as USAID and NORAD.
The government needs to act in this area due to the devastating impacts of lead on women and children. Lead exposure kills 1.5 million people each year – more than annual deaths from HIV and malaria combined. 632 million children are lead poisoned worldwide. According to UNICEF, maternal exposure to lead, even at low levels, can result in reduced fetal growth, lower birth weight, premature birth and miscarriages. Researchers estimate that the damage lead causes to childrens’ brains accounts for 20 per cent of the learning gap between high- and low-income countries.
Government policy in this area could be improved by the UK government joining the “Partnership for a Lead Free Future”, recently launched by 20 national governments. The UK should throw its full diplomatic weight behind this partnership, and allocate a significant proportion of the expected 2025/56 ODA increase (worth £450 million) to this initiative to become the partnership’s largest national donor. This would support the partnership’s mission to end childhood lead poisoning by 2040. By supporting this partnership with LMIC governments, including Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana, the UK can further shift away from paternalism and towards partnership in its development work. Given the estimated annual GDP losses of $1.4 trillion from lead poisoning, supporting this partnership would improve the value for money achieved by the UK’s international development work.
This example highlights a focus on “partnership over paternalism”, which is a priority for the UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, and on women, which is a priority for the Development Minister, Anneliese Dodds, who is also the Minister for Women and Equalities. It also highlights the support of Bangladesh and Nigeria for the Partnership, due to large Bangladeshi and Nigerian diaspora communities in the UK.
A significant number of submissions could increase the chances that there is a focus on lead poisoning in an upcoming enquiry. All submissions may be publicly posted online, which then stays public forever.
Further Information
Online Workshop
I will be running a basic online workshop for people to join, make a submission with others using this forum post, and ask any questions they might have.
Why focus on lead poisoning over other priorities in international development and global health?
Tackling lead poisoning is important, neglected and tractable, but so are many other policy areas in global health. If you would like to make a submission pushing forward other important points - such as the 2025 replenishment for the Global Fund to Fight TB/AIDS or cash-benchmarking - that would also likely be very valuable.
However, we have selected lead poisoning because it seems especially tractable. This is because of the recently announced “Partnership for a Lead Free Future”, which the UK is currently not a part of, and Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s political focus on partnerships. Additionally, the UK’s diplomatic support could significantly boost lead elimination efforts by raising lead poisoning higher on the agenda for LMIC governments, even without significant additional funding being allocated.
Additional questions to be answered
Have you ever engaged with Parliament before (e.g. made other submissions)?
Do you have personal or field experience related to international development?
If you are invited to pitch your idea to the Committee, would you be able to travel to London and back within the same day?
Why am I (specifically) making this post?
There have been successful efforts in the Australian EA community over the past two years, in coordinating the community to make submissions to public governmental consultations. I am currently leading efforts to initiate similar work in Europe. I gave talks on this broader concept at EAGx Utrecht and EAGx Berlin this year, and ran seven workshops across the UK for a previous consultation.
Ideally in coordinating for consultations, workshops are organised and a variety of arguments are put forward, but due to the short time frame, coordination efforts for this consultation are more streamlined.
I have submitted based on the prompt of this post (passed on by Dave Bernard). Thanks Ben.