In September 2000, world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit recognized a collective responsibility to work toward “a more peaceful, prosperous and just world”. The Millennium Development Goals reaffirmed this vision and launched an ambitious global partnership for development, setting specific targets to be met by 2015 and using numerical indicators to measure progress. The MDGs (SDGs) recognized the stark reality of widespread human deprivation and environmental degradation, and galvanized support to reduce poverty, achieve basic education and health, and promote gender equality and environmental sustainability. Now with the ushering in of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) there is a consensus that the aim or the vision of reducing human suffering and improving human sustainable development in all parts of the world will be a reality. In this article I am going to explain why the two development policies mechanisms (MDGs and SDGs) are more like a coin with the same features on both sides.
One analyst noted that the question is not whether to abandon global targets but rather how to improve the MDG architecture and how to adjust them to the priorities beyond 2015. The MDGs have been criticized as a partial vision of the West and other developed rich countries hypothesis which is lacking a pro-poorest emphasis. Undeniably, the MDG averages does not accentuate the plight of the world’s poorest because they ignore initial conditions, mislabel high performers as losers (for example, Mozambique is considered way off track, despite strong advances in most of the sectors), undermining improvers and feeding doubters. The MDGs arguably disregard inequality and empowerment. Refining or extending the MDGs is criticized as perpetuating the existing yet failed development approach. The current model of development lets aid in either dollars or other currencies go to Northern institutions instead of directly to Southern dwellers. The ongoing criticism by radical and moderate development analysts is that the governance framework and arrangements of the Bretton Woods Institutions are never questioned but rather, heap failure to develop as weaknesses of the people, systems and governments of the Global South.
On one hand one of the main outcomes from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012 was the international agreement to negotiate a new set of global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide the path of sustainable
development in the world after 2015. The Rio+20 Outcome Document Indicates that the goals are intended to be “action- oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries, while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities.” They should be “focused on priority areas” for the achievement of sustainable development. These new set of goals aim to achieve what the MDGs failed to, through a correctional measure of the MDGs failure. Therefor I view the SDGs as a supposed means to an end to realistic sustainable development based on the failure of MDGs. The SDGs, comprising 17 goals and 169 related targets, are the result of extensive political negotiations, and will set the benchmarks over the next 15 years for achieving the international community’s overarching objective: to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” As the former Prime Minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt stated, “the SDGs are noble and certainly ambitious”, is a necessary observation that should get world leaders thinking especially African leaders.
Read Also:
As it looks the world is currently faced with not less than 10 sustainability issues that needs to be effectively and courageously tackle to make it better place to live in. Firstly the issue to do with Climate Change need to be tackled with the global caution it deserves. While the Copenhagen Summit, “Climategate” and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s errors are seen as public relations disasters for the campaign to address climate change, the issue has not gone away. It was no real surprise that a global agreement on carbon caps was not reached in Copenhagen owing to the different priorities and interests of countries globally. The challenge is that climate change has impacts that are not uniform globally, and the mitigation and adaptation plans need to factor such into serious consideration. If the issue of climate is addressed properly it means SDG 1: End poverty in all forms everywhere, SGD2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, SDG6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all SDG 13: Combat and take urgent action to compart climate change and its impacts, SDG14: Conserve and sustainability use the oceans and marine resources for sustainable development. SDG 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss. There is no dought that climate change is has an effect in all of the above mentioned SDGs. Therefore, it is the issue of effective climate change action that is needed to be looked at so as to tackle the above goals. The real issue is that, since, climate change is already built into the planet’s system. Therefore, mitigation and adaptation for climate change are required holistically, but this issue is not being addressed seriously or with sufficient urgency.
Water is another sustainability issue that is both directly and indirectly linked to issues to do with climate change. Water, more specifically its availability and quality, is a major issue. It is predicted that water conflict will occur owing to the differing demands of people, agriculture and industry. This demand will increase as its supply will decrease due to the impacts of climate change, this constitutes a risk for any country and any continent, including food producing industries and their value chains that sources products requiring water. For sustainable development to be a reality, SDGs need to take the issue of water extremely.
Although climate change will have a momentous impact on the accessibility of water, so will the way countries will manage their ecosystems. Biodiversity is intrinsically linked to ecosystems, and it was refreshing to see the importance of biodiversity being stressed being stressed in so many conferences around the world. Why does biodiversity matter to the world economy? The natural world gives us clean air, water, food and an immense range of natural resources; without these, there are obvious problems for businesses and life on earth. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure that the provision of all the above is kept balanced for sustainable development.
World leaders must consider that SDG16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels is the quite important. In Africa 27 countries and 188 militias are involved in some war of some strife, In Asia 16 countries and 150 militia groups are involved in some war, in Europe 9 countries and 75 groups are involved, the Middle East has 8 and 225 militias and other separatist groups, Americas has 5 countries and 25 drug cartels and anarchic groups, total countries involves in wars around the globe is 65 and number of guerillas is 665. One of factors that led to MDGs being unattainable are the wars that are going on all over the world. Wars do not promote sustainable development at all but actually increase poverty and reduce the standard of human living. Therefore, for SDGs to be realistic their architectures should think of eliminating or stop strife around the globe to promote global partnership for sustainable development which the last Goal number 17.
Tapuwa O’bren Nhachi is a Programme Coordinator with the Institute for Sustainability Africa in Zimbabwe. He can be contacted at [email protected]/[email protected] twitter @onhachi
