SDGs: A paradigm shift?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of Global Goals with three major aspects: Economic, Social and Environmental. SDGs emphasise that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty and hunger, inclusive and equitable quality education, gender equality, inclusive and sustainable industrialisation are pre-requisites for sustainable development in the coming decades. Other global goals such as ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, taking actions to combat climate change, ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for everyone at all ages are also important components of SDGs.

SDGs build on the legacy of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Though countries in Europe, North America and a few developing countries have been able to eradicate absolute levels of poverty and achieve certain levels of standard of living for their mass population, the reality is that, uneven developments and serious disparities between and within the countries remains. This is also reflected by the fact that in a large number of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, majority of the people are still far from securing any decent standard of living. The aspiration for MDGs and SDGs emanates from the understanding that such serious uneven developments and disparities both at the country and global levels are unsustainable, and these uneven developments and disparities lead to periodic and long lasting economic, social and environmental crisis. Therefore, specific actions are needed to combat such crisis.

Though, both MDGs and SDGs seek to address the aforementioned crisis, what is the paradigm shift under the SDGs? Three major changes characterise the paradigm shift under the SDGs. The first key change brought by the SDGs is that, while MDGs emphasised primarily on the aspects of social development, the SDGs, in contrast, represent a much wider agenda which, in addition to social development, also address the other two pillars of sustainable development: the economic and the environmental. The second major change is the shift in the focus from an agenda which was applicable to a group of countries (under the MDGs) to one that is applicable to all countries irrespective of the differences in their levels of development. The third major change is that while MDGs were characterised by a 'North-South' model dependent on typical 'donor-recipient' relationships, SDGs emphasise on domestic resource mobilisation as the key to achieving the goals. It is evident that global 'dissatisfaction' with the MDGs' processes, deliveries and progresses also led countries to go for such goals under the SDGs.

The 'discontent' with the performance of MDGs is reflected by the fact that a large number of countries lagged behind in implementing the MDGs by some considerable margins. According to the MDG Track Global Index (published by TAC Economics, www.mdgtrack.org), out of the 140 countries, only 6 countries could implement MDGs between 70 percent and 77 percent, only 18 countries could implement MDGs between 60 percent and 69 percent, 30 countries could implement MDGs between 50 percent and 59 percent and the rest 86 countries could implement less than 50 percent of the MDGs.

It is important to note here that, while the MDGs had eight goals with 18 targets, SDGs have 17 goals with 169 targets. Therefore, given the weak performances of the MDGs and the very wide coverage of SDGs, questions will remain whether achieving such wide and 'ambitious' goals and targets within next 15 years by majority of the countries is feasible and realistic.

One of the major challenges of the SDGs is that among the proposed indicators, related to the targets, many of them are non-quantifiable. This will be problematic while monitoring the progress in achieving SDGs. Also, there are indicators that do not specify any targets for the year 2030. Besides, there are unavailability of data as relevant data for some of the indicators are not available or readily available, and a number of indicators appear to be overlapped or repeated.

One of the most critical issues related to the implementation of the SDGs is the resources needed for implementing SDGs. As mentioned before, domestic resource mobilisation is the key to achieving SDGs, the question is how to mobilise required amount of resources domestically when a large number of countries suffer from weak institutions and infrastructure. It is also important to note that mere generation of resources would not ensure implementation of the SDGs if institutional and governance related aspects are not properly addressed.

The changing global scenario is a major challenge for the SDGs. The MDG period and whatever success it achieved was coined with growing globalisation and trade integration among the countries. However, recently emerging strong scepticism in such globalisation and trade integration process, as reflected by Britain's BREXIT and the presidential election in the United States, has casted shadows on the future of the 'global partnership' for SDGs. There are risks of trade wars between the dominant countries in the coming years, which will certainly undermine the prospects of such 'global partnership'.

Despite the aforementioned challenges, the SDGs have the promise of bringing some very important changes in the lives of millions of people across the world. There is a need for a strong political commitment for negotiating with the challenges in the implementation of SDGs. Generating political capital for SDGs, both at the country and global levels, will remain the most critical task over the next one and half decades.

The writer is Professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Executive Director, South Asian Network on Economic Modelling (SANEM). Email: selim.raihan@econdu.ac.bd