(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Of: Ingrid Kvangraven
The new sustainability goals launched by the UN in New York this fall are likely to have major implications for how development is understood, funded and implemented. But why should one have development goals at all? Systematic attempts to answer this seemingly basic question have sparked their absence.
While the debate over what should be included in the new sustainability goals has been going on, Professor at The New School Sanjay Reddy and I have pondered about good reasons for designing development goals, what kind of function they can have (if any), and under what conditions the goals can play a constructive role.
Uncertain effect. We see at least three good reasons to have global goals. First, goals can influence how you understand, measure and think about development. Second, goals can motivate individual and collective efforts. Third, the goals can serve as a common point of reference that actors can coordinate their actions from (for example, this may be the case for coordination of assistance).
Instead of seriously considering the different roles global goals can play in development processes, the UN bureaucracy has set out a main argument for development goals: the outgoing Millennium Goals were a success. However, UN statistician Howard Friedman, one of the few who has analyzed the effects of the Millennium Development Goals, claims that there are no grounds for claiming that the Millennium Development Goals were successful. He relates to the global poverty reduction before the Millennium Development Goals were adopted, and shows that global poverty reduction did not accelerate after the year 2000. Friedman refused to publish these results through the UN's own channels, and eventually ended up publishing work as a researcher at Columbia University in New York.
A key element in this regard is causality. Although poverty reduction has accelerated in some countries and regions during the MDGs, this does not mean that the MDGs have caused poverty reduction. Low-income countries have also experienced unprecedented economic growth, an investment boom and high commodity prices (especially between 2000 and 2009), which probably has more to do with strong Chinese economic development and demand than the Millennium Development Goals.
Specifying Paradox. In addition, the potential benefits that global development goals can create must be weighed against the potential costs. For example, the intense focus on goal achievement and monitoring can lead to less focus on more open, process-oriented understandings of development. In addition, any formulation of goals must involve consistency between main goals and sub-goals, as well as between goals and means.
In practice, one will be faced with a specification paradox. It can be easy to create agreement on very abstract goals, such as improving the health of a group, but without further specification, such goals will not be concrete enough to have particular significance in practice. On the other hand, the danger with highly specified goals or sub-goals is that they do not provide sufficient room for variation between contexts or flexibility in the face of new learning. Examples of such over-specification can be found in the sustainability goals, where, among other things, information and communication technology are pointed out to strengthen gender equality, and to strengthen the implementation of the World Health Organization's tobacco convention to ensure human health. These instruments may be relevant in some contexts, but not necessarily in all.
Restrictions are overlooked. Furthermore, the love for what can easily be counted and measured that has been present in the debate about development goals, can divert attention from important issues that are more difficult to measure. For example, a focus on combating a few diseases without strengthening national health systems may result in the overall goal of better health not being achieved (the Ebola crisis is an example of the consequences of such neglect).
Perhaps the most striking thing about the sustainability goals is that little attention is paid to the real limitations that many developing countries face.
However, the sustainability goals address several key issues in terms of development, and in a more comprehensive way than what we saw in the Millennium Development Goals. For example, there is no longer just a focus on how many children go to school, but also the quality of schooling. In addition, it is a step in the right direction that structural, broad areas such as inequality, job generation and sustainable consumption and production have been included in the new development goals.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the sustainability goals is that little attention is paid to the real limitations that many developing countries face. How prosperity and power are produced and reproduced in the global economic system or within national borders is not even discussed. Even structural factors such as inequality, production and jobs are dealt with in a very limited way, as the associated sub-goals and resources do not sufficiently identify the structural causes of poverty. For example, none of the sub-goals related to the goal of reducing inequality within and between countries deals with sensitive issues such as class relations, redistribution policy or analysis of why economic inequality arises and increases at all.
A better world. In other words, the sub-goals and the funds do not correspond in a realistic way with the 17 ambitious development goals. So regardless of whether the framework creates motivation and coordinating behavior, it is unlikely that the achievement of sub-goals and the use of the means mentioned in the framework will actually lead to goal achievement.
Nevertheless, the overall goals represent a holistic vision for a better world, and they can therefore play a constructive role by changing our understanding of development – from development as poverty reduction to development as change in a number of structural areas that must be considered in context. Furthermore, a strong focus on the goals, and a lesser focus on some of the sub-goals, can provide increased flexibility, innovation and democratically anchored development policy, especially if they are also combined with adapted national sub-goals and strategies.
Kvangraven is a doctoral student in economics at The New School in New York.
kvani263@newschool.edu.
