SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
(SDGs): The Time for New Focus
-Sajan Rai
Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) are the historic decision on a comprehensive
far-reaching and people-centred, a set of universal goals committed to achieve
in its three dimensions-Economic, Social and Environment, with a deadline for
attainment of 2030. The SDGs will be the
guidelines for UN member states to frame their agendas and political policies
over the next 15 years and it aims to “end
poverty in all its form everywhere” by 2030. The declaration of SDGs
adoption was made at seventieth UN General Assembly after several drafts over
years by an intergovernmental Open Working Group (OWG) that comprised representatives
of seventy countries.
The
Global Goals or SDGs will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
eight anti-poverty targets that the world committed to achieve by 2015. The
sustainable development agendas was finalized by the UN’s 193 member states
during the Rio +20 summit at the United Nation Conference on Sustainable
Development held in Rio de Janerio in June 2012 (Rio +20).
As cited by Danielle
Renwick (2015); UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon says the SDGs are based on six
essential elements: “dignity, people,
prosperity, our planet, justice, and partnership.” The 17 proposed SDGs,
targets and indicators have broad and ambitious sweep of the goals. These
includes-ending
poverty in all its forms everywhere, ending hunger, achieving gender equality,
ensuring healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages, and ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern
energy for all.
The eight MDGs- reduce poverty and hunger, achieve universal
education, promote gender equality, reduce child and maternal deaths, combat
HIV, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, develop global partnerships – failed to
consider the root causes of poverty and made no afford on gender inequality as
well as the holistic nature of development. The MDGs did not focus on human
rights, natural resources, and specifically on economic development. Initially
MDGs were documented to be applied to all countries but it was focused on poor
countries financed from wealthy nations. Sarah Hearn, New York University’s
(NYU) Centre on International Cooperation remarked, “The MDGs
were about resource transfer from rich countries. The SDGs are
universal—they’re supposed to apply to all countries and try to overcome the 'West lecturing the rest' dynamic”.
Every country is expected to work towards achieving the sustainable development
goals.
Analysts have expected the SDGs are
to be costly-more costly than MDGs. Some analysts say it’d cost as much as $4.5
trillion per year in investments and to aid to meet the SDGs. Likewise, a 2014 UN report estimated $7 trillion
annually for infrastructure investments. Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economist and
director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre attributes $200 billion of $900
billion in aid spent between 2000 and 2014 to the MDGs; he says the SDGs could
direct as much as $700 billion in aid over next fifteen years.
The designs of the post-2015
development agenda, the SDGs goals have attracted widespread criticism. A
handful of member states including UK and Japan feel that an agenda consisting
of 17 goals is too unwieldy to implement. Speaking in New York in 2014, UK
Prime Minister David Cameron said he worried there were too many goals to
implement effectively. “There’s a real danger they will end up sitting on a
bookshelf, gathering dust,” he said. He wants 12 goals at the most, preferably
10.
Amina Mohammed, the UN secretary
general’s special adviser said it was hard fighting to get the number of goals
down to 17, and it would be better if they can further reduce.
Lomborg argues that some of the SDGs
targets-ending malnutrition, malaria, and tuberculosis, are “implausibly
optimistic and inefficient.” He said it will result better if they invest only
on 19 targets.
Jeffrey Sachs, one of the proponents
of the goals and the UN secretary general’s special adviser supported that the
post-2015 development planning goal serve to mobilize support and resources,
create ‘peer pressure’ for political leaders to work to end extreme poverty,
and other global issues that can be solved. “Global goals help to galvanize
a global effort,” writes sachs.
“World leaders have an unprecedented
opportunity this year to shift the world onto a path of inclusive, sustainable
and resilient development,” Writes Helen Clark, UNDP Administration.
