When it comes to getting the most for your international development dollar (or pound, as the case may be), the United Kingdom doesn’t think the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction is much of a bargain. The feeling could be mutual, considering the trifling amount—less than US$900,000 in 2010—that the UK contributes.

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) announced last week that it would end UNISDR funding after a review process found that the UN agency “performed poorly or failed to demonstrate relevance to Britain’s development objectives.” Three other groups—the UN Industrial Development Organization, UN HABITAT, and the International Labour Organisation—and 16 countries will also get the funding ax.

“Aid can perform miracles but it must be well spent and properly targeted,” DFID Secretary Andrew Mitchell told the House of Commons on March 1. “The UK's development program has now been reshaped and refocused so that it can meet that challenge.”

It’s unclear what kind of miracles an extra $900,000 is expected to garner, but Mitchell said making the UNISDR and other cuts would allow the UK to focus on schooling and vaccinating children, providing safe drinking water, reducing infant mortality, and planning fair elections. Disaster risk reduction measures weren’t listed.

The DFID based its restructuring decisions on an extensive Multilateral Aid Review, according to Mitchell. The review considered if the UK was getting “value for money” in funding more than 40 international programs, using criteria such as control of costs, delivery of outcomes, focus on poor countries, and accountability and transparency.

Some agencies—UNICEF, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, the Private Infrastructure Development Group, and others—made high marks and will keep their funding. Others, such as the UN Development Programme and the World Health Organization, were put on notice and will have to step up their British game if they want to stay on the money rolls. Still a third “special measures” category, which includes UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization, performed poorly but will keep their funding because they fill a special aid niche.

Although Secretary Andrew Mitchell assured the House of Commons that the review had been “thorough, rigorous,” and “evidence-based,” a thoughtful analysis by Tom Mitchell of the Overseas Development Institute on an AlertNet blog indicated the UNISDR review was not a fair comparison.

“The MAR assessment methodology included country visits, surveys, questionnaires and external evaluations,” he writes. “I would argue that the MAR was comparing apples and oranges—very different types of agencies—where a bottom-up evaluation of ‘value for money’ will never favor an international inter-agency coordination mechanism.”

The UNISDR said much the same thing in its expectedly amenable response, adding that the review had mischaracterized it as a humanitarian organization, rather than one situated in the field of sustainable development—and in doing so DFID had mischaracterized Disaster Risk Reduction as a humanitarian issue.

“DRR requires the concerted action of a variety of governmental and non-governmental actors across humanitarian, developmental and environmental fields,” the response states. “The interdisciplinary nature of DRR initiatives is still to be fully captured by national and international cooperation frameworks, plans and actions.”

Time will tell whether the UK’s snip of UNISDR purse strings turns out to be a sweet savings or penny wise and pound foolish. Although it would be a shame to see, with the average contribution coming in under $2 million and countries like the United States and China contributing as little as $300,000 a year, it seems as if nations might need a reminder that you get what you pay for. “While many in the disasters community would agree UNISDR has considerable shortcomings and has suffered from mission creep,” Tom Mitchell writes, “its aim to guide and co-ordinate the efforts of a wide range of partners to achieve substantive reduction in disaster losses remains vital.”