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Lost in Transformation? The Politics of the Sustainable Development Goals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2016

Malcolm Langford
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Extract

On September 25, 2015, the world's leaders adopted a new suite of development goals—the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—that are to guide policymakers for the next decade and a half. On first inspection, the declaration is breathtaking in its scope and ambition. Constituted by a list of 17 goals and 169 targets, it is arguably the most comprehensive global agenda adopted since the UN Charter in 1945. Its thematic repertoire ranges from poverty, health, education, and inequality, to energy, infrastructure, climate change, marine resources, peace, security, and good governance. The UN Secretary-General welcomed the SDGs by praising their “universal, transformative, and integrated agenda” that heralded a “historic turning point for our world.”

Type
Roundtable: Human Rights and the Post-2015 Development Agenda
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , Summer 2016 , pp. 167 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2016 

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References

NOTES

1 Consensus Reached on New Sustainable Development Agenda to Be Adopted by World Leaders in September, UN Department of Public Information, August 2, 2015.

2 Vandemoortele, Jan, “If Not the MDGs, Then What?” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2011), pp. 9–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Jan Vandemoortele's comment was in response to my presentation in Brussels in June 2009, which was later published as “A Poverty of Rights: Six Ways to Fix the MDGs,” IDS Bulletin 41, no. 1 (2010), pp. 83–91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Charles Kenny, “MDGs to SDGs: Have We Lost the Plot?” Politica Exterior, No. 163 (2015), www.cgdev.org/publication/mdgs-sdgs-have-we-lost-plot.

5 See my discussion in The Art of the Impossible: Measurement Choices and the Post-2015 Development Agenda, OHCHR/UNDP Expert Consultation, New York, November 13–14, 2012, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2208314.

6 Ibid. Notably, it is difficult to find any causal evidence that the MDGs contributed to progress in areas that were already highly visible, such as extreme poverty or HIV/AIDS. See the argument on the improvements in extreme poverty in Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, The Developing World Is Poorer than We Thought but No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty, Policy Research Working Paper 4703 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2008).

7 Mark Malloch Brown, “Foreword,” in Richard Black and Howard White, eds., Targeting Development: Critical Perspectives on the Millennium Development Goals (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. xviii–xix, at p. xviii.

8 See, e.g., Pogge, Thomas, “The First United Nations Millennium Development Goal: A Cause for Celebration?” Journal of Human Development 5, no. 5 (2004), pp. 377–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crossette, Barbara, “Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals: The Missing Link,” Family Planning 36, no. 1 (2005), pp. 71–79 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Amnesty International, From Promises to Delivery: Putting Human Rights at the Heart of the Millennium Deve lopment Goals (London: Amnesty International, 2010). See also Fredman, Kuosmanen, and Campbell in this issue.

9 Saith, Ashwani, “From Universal Values to Millennium Development Goals: Lost in Translation,” Development and Change 37, no. 6 (2006), pp. 1167–199CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Peggy Antrobus, “MDGs—The Most Distracting Gimmick,” in Women's International Coalition for Economic Justice, Seeking Accountability on Women's Human Rights: Women Debate the Millennium Development Goals (New York: WICEJ, 2004), pp. 14–16, at p. 14.

11 See Langford, Malcolm and Winkler, Inga, “Muddying the Water? Assessing Target-Based Approaches in Development Cooperation for Water and Sanitation,” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 15, no. 2–3 (2014), pp. 247–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Vandemoortele, Jan and Delamonica, Enrique, “Taking the MDGs Beyond 2015: Hasten Slowly,” IDS Bulletin 41, no. 1 (2010), pp. 60–69 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Alston, Philip, “Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the Human Rights and Development Debate Seen through the Lens of the Millennium Development Goals,” Human Rights Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2005), pp. 755–829 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 755.

14 Vandemoortele, Jan, “The MDG Story: Intention Denied,” Development and Change 42, no. 1 (2011), pp. 1–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 4.

15 See A World That Counts: Mobilising The Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, Report prepared at the request of the UN Secretary-General, by the Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, November 2014.

16 I suggested this approach in Langford, ‘Poverty of Rights’, note 3 above

17 In the June 2015 session, a mostly Northern grouping argued that there should be flexibility to revise the goals and targets (Japan, Norway, Iceland, U.S., Mexico, Canada, Latvia, EU, New Zealand, Australia, U.K., and Turkey). But the opposite view was expressed by a Southern grouping with two European states (Group of 77 and China, Egypt, Turkey, Timor-Leste, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, South Africa, Brazil, Peru, the Russian Federation, Switzerland, Arab States, Ecuador, Colombia, Korea, Greece, Argentina, and Israel).

18 Pogge, Thomas, “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty,” Ethics 103, no. 1 (1992), pp. 48–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 49.

19 Inga Kaul, Pedro Conceição, Katell Le Goulven, and Ronald Mendoza, eds., Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

20 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

21 Sumner, Andy, “Where Do the Poor Live?” World Development 40, no. 5 (2012), pp. 865–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 See our discussion in Malcolm Langford, Alicia Yamin, and Andy Sumner, “Back to the Future: Reconciling Paradigms or Development as Usual?” in Langford, Yamin, and Sumner, eds., The Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights: Past, Present and Future (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 539–58.

23 Target 17.1.

24 Although the draft only refers to sexual health. Nonetheless, it does refer to reproductive rights.

25 See, e.g., Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko, “The 2030 Agenda and SDGs—A Course Correction?” African Agenda 18, no. 4 (2015), pp. 5–6 Google Scholar. At a minimum, an apologist might claim that the SDGs do not regress on most existing commitments, unlike the MDGs. However, it is hard to imagine that so much was invested in a new agenda in order to simply hold the ideational line.

26 See also Ed Anderson in this issue.

27 See further comments on this by Way and Donald in this issue.

28 Mark Orkin, “Goal 9: Democratic Governance and Accountable Institutions for Realising Human Rights,” in W. Lim, ed., One World Goals: Post-2015 Development Agenda (Seoul: Korea Development Institute, 2014).

29 See discussion in Social Watch, “SDG Indicators: Counting the Trees, Hiding the Forest,” November 11, 2015, www.socialwatch.org/node/17100.

30 See discussion in Barbara Adams and Karen Judd, 2030 Agenda and the SDGs: indicator framework, monitoring and reporting, Global Policy Watch Briefing #10, 18 March 2016.

31 “Open Consultation on Grey Indicators, Compilation of Inputs by the Observers of IAEG-SDGs and Other Stakeholders, December 9–15, 2015.”

32 Report of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators, UN doc. E/CN.3/2016/2/Rev.1, 19 February 2016, para. 31.

33 Beth Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

34 Varun Gauri, MDGs That Nudge: The Millennium Development Goals, Popular Mobilization and the Post-2015 Development Framework, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 6282, presented at the OHCHR/UNDP Expert Consultation, New York, November 13–14, 2012.