Is it time for Sustainable Development Goals? Alex Evans

September 6, 2011 | More on Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global system, Key Posts | 7 comments

From MDGs to… SDGs? That’s one of the ideas swirling around in discussions ahead of the Rio 2012 sustainable development summit next year, anyway.

You can see the attraction. With less than a year to go, there are precious few concrete ideas on the table for what the summit might produce, especially in the area of “institutional framework for sustainable development”, one of two key themes for the event (sure, there’s much talk of a new World Environment Organisation, but colour me very unconvinced of the case for that). So might SDGs help to fill the gap?

Well, that would depend on what they cover. The government of Colombia has set out a proposal for SDGs that would cover various sectors – atmosphere, climate resilience, land degradation, sustainable agriculture, biotech, waste and so forth. This would mainly be about ‘reaffirming’ (that awful word – who, other than diplomats, ever ‘reaffirms’ anything?) commitments made at Rio 1992. But you have to wonder: important though delivery of existing commitments undoubtedly is, is ‘reaffirmation’ of stuff agreed 20 years ago really going to set any pluses racing outside the sustainable development priesthood?

Much more interesting, on the other hand, is the idea that SDGs could provide an institutional foundation for the nine planetary boundaries identified – and quantified – by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (see also this previous GD post). The core idea in the boundaries approach is to define a ‘safe operating space for humanity’ – and, of course, the global economy. So if you’re looking for a serious synthesis of environment and economic development, this is ground zero.

Of course, a host of questions would still need to be answered. One would be about what timeline the SDGs would span: 25 years, like the MDGs’ 1990-2015 timescale, or much longer than that?

There’s also the small question of which countries would be covered, and how. The MDGs were basically about developing countries (Goal 8 notwithstanding) – an approach that clearly wouldn’t be possible with SDGs, given the huge sustainability impact of consumptions levels in rich countries. So would the SDGs apply globally, but not to specific countries – leaving them open to the charge that they’re rhetorical aspirations, not serious engines of change? Or would they apply to individual states – opening up the issue of how to differentiate countries’ commitments?

Then, of course, we’d need to know how the SDGs would relate to the MDGs. Some (greens, especially) would like to see SDGs replace MDGs beyond 2015. But lots of developing countries would be deeply suspicious of any perceived dilution of focus on poverty reduction, or anything that looked like it might ‘pull the ladder up after developed countries’ by denying them space to develop – and large and influential aid donors might well agree.

And we’d need to figure out an institutional home for the Goals, too. It would be crucial for them not to be ‘owned’ by the environment priesthood – if SDGs became seen as UNEP’s baby, they’d be stillborn at birth. Instead, it might be interesting to set up a new, independent, scientifically based international institution to monitor planetary boundaries – kind of like a global Congressional Budget Office for planetary boundaries. (Normally, I’m adamantly opposed to creating new international institutions, given how many we have already – but here, I think there’s a compelling case.)

Finally, there’s the question of process. It’s almost certainly too late to define any set of SDGs in time for Rio. Instead, the best option now would be for Rio to provide a launch pad for a process to define a set of SDGs – perhaps leaving open, for now, how they might relate to post-2015 MDGs further down the line. This would create valuable time for some serious outreach, above all to developing countries – though not too much time, given that you’d want to have the SDGs finalised before the US slides back into Presidential election mode from 2015 onwards. 12-18 months would probably be about right – with the Goals signed off at a UN summit in, say, spring 2014.

7 comments »

Alex Cobham on September 6th, 2011 at 10:46 am:

This is very timely Alex. With little else on the cards, it might be tempting to seek a semi-tangible ‘win’ by announcing the final SDG word, rather than developing an input to the MDG successor as you suggest.

Christian Aid favours this integrated approach; a successor framework to the MDGs that begins with a comprehensive baseline dataset covering a much broader set of indicators, including on sustainability and on well-being, and with sufficient detail and granularity to capture key inequalities in each area, including gender. Further details in our report, http://bit.ly/pOVERty .

This dataset should form the basis for local and national processes to identify priorities (rather than repeating the top-down imposition of the MDGs), and as discussed here should certainly be a global process, applying to all countries and not only those below some arbitrarily-determined level of per capita income.

The key question in relation to the planetary boundary sustainability goals would then be, as you highlight, around the overarching process that assessed and responded to global, rather than purely national, shortfalls in ambition.

You can imagine taking Bretton Woods institutions, rather than UN or national audit offices, as the model here- so that the body in question would have a mandate to consider national policies and performance, but focused on implications for global balance. Not, of course, that the BWIs have been a model of responsible and accountable global power, so you wouldn’t perhaps want to stick too closely to this…
Alex Evans on September 6th, 2011 at 5:44 pm:

Thanks Alex. I think the point in your first paragraph is especially important: to extend it one step further, there's also a risk that governments might see SDGs as 'the easy option' at Rio, which I think could backfire badly.

If the Goals aren't robust and – especially – underpinned by a serious Action Plan, then they'll be [rightly] derided as empty rhetoric, and worse, will end up further eroding the already damaged credibility [following Copenhagen, CSD this year, etc.] of multilateralism on sustainable development issues.

David Hulme's brief history of the MDGs (http://is.gd/6mGqxs – pdf) is interesting on this point: he underlines that no sooner had agreement been secured on the content of the MDGs than Kofi Annan's office moved rapidly to pull together a serious action plan, and that this was integral to the success of the agenda as a whole.
Viktoria Isaksson on September 16th, 2011 at 8:13 am:

Thanks, this was interesting to know about. When I read I got a gut feeling that there is a temptation to just change a name and then glorious things will start to happen! I remember a trip to New York for communications officers at CSOs, organised by our Foreign Ministry, to try to jump start the work with spreading the information about MDGs. Not much came out of this, because it was so difficult to get people to understand what MDGs was about – not the least politicians. "But why not change the abbriviation to SDGs – that might help…"
Sorry for this late comment – I just subscribed to this blog!
IVF on January 12th, 2012 at 12:41 pm:

I wonder what will be in Rio 2013 sustainable development summit…another disappointment perhaps?
kimbowa Richard on January 31st, 2012 at 5:12 pm:

Thanks for this analysis.
internet-marketing on April 19th, 2012 at 8:51 am:

The key question in relation to the planetary boundary sustainability goals would then be, as you highlight, around the overarching process that assessed and responded to global, rather than purely national, shortfalls in ambition.

With little else on the cards, it might be tempting to seek a semi-tangible 'win' by announcing the final SDG word, rather than developing an input to the MDG successor as you suggest.
Forex Revealed on October 23rd, 2012 at 5:40 pm:

What you don't mention is that Europe has run out of other people's money.

7 comments »

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