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From Sustainable Development Goals to Basic Development Goals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2020

Kenneth A. Reinert
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Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals have attracted both defenders and critics. Composed of seventeen goals and 169 targets, the overly broad scope of the SDGs raises the question of whether there are priorities that need to be set within them. This essay considers the SDGs from the perspective of a “basic goods approach” to development policy, which takes a needs-based and basic-subsistence-rights view on policy priorities. It focuses on a subset of SDGs that directly address the provision of nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, and human security services. In doing so, it proposes a set of seven “basic development goals” and ten associated targets. It argues that this more focused approach can better protect basic rights, more effectively contribute to progress on human wellbeing, and make accountability more likely.

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goalsbasic needsbasic rightssubsistence rights
Type
Essays
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Summer 2020 , pp. 125 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 Sachs, Jeffrey D., “From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals,” Lancet 379, no. 9832 (June 9, 2012), p. 2206CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

2 William Easterly, “The SDGs Should Stand for Senseless, Dreamy, Garbled,” Foreign Policy, September 28, 2015, foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/28/the-sdgs-are-utopian-and-worthless-mdgs-development-rise-of-the-rest/. See also “Development: The 169 Commandments; the Proposed Sustainable Development Goals Would Be Worse than Useless,” Economist, March 28, 2015. This article describes the SDGs as “a mess.”

3 See United Nations, “Millennium Development Goals Indicators,” mdgs.un.org; and United Nations, “Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform,” sustainabledevelopment.un.org. One original vision for the SDGs put forward by the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons called for only twelve goals and fifty-four targets. See United Nations, A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies and Sustainable Development (New York: United Nations, 2013), sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/8932013-05%20-%20HLP%20Report%20-%20A%20New%20Global%20Partnership.pdf.

4 On differentiating between determinants and outcomes, see World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2011), openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/4391.

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7 Target 12.8 in “Sustainable Development Goal 12,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg12; and target 16.6 in “Sustainable Development Goal 16,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg16.

8 “Sustainable Development Goals,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs (italics added); and targets 1.3 and 1.4 in “Sustainable Development Goal 1,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg1.

9 Targets 2.1 and 2.4 in “Sustainable Development Goal 2,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg2.

10 Targets 3.4 and 3.8 in “Sustainable Development Goal 3,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg3.

11 Targets 6.1 and 6.2 in “Sustainable Development Goal 6,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg6.

12 Target 4.7 in “Sustainable Development Goal 4,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg4.

13 Sachs, “From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals,” p. 2208.

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27 Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948, www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

28 Article 11, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, January 3, 1976, www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx.

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30 Ibid., p. 52.

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36 Beitz, Charles R. and Goodin, Robert E., “Introduction: Basic Rights and Beyond,” in Beitz, Charles R. and Goodin, Robert E., eds., Global Basic Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 1–24Google Scholar. See also Shue, Henry, “Mediating Duties,” Ethics 98, no. 4 (July 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which the author calls for “the design and creation of positive-duty-performing institutions that do not yet exist and for the modification or transformation of existing institutions that now ignore rights and the positive duties that all rights involve” (p. 703).

37 Christian Reus-Smit, “On Rights and Institutions,” in Beitz and Goodin, Global Basic Rights, pp. 25–48.

38 Neta C. Crawford, “No Borders, No Bystanders: Developing Individual and Institutional Capacities for Global Moral Responsibility,” in Beitz and Goodin, Global Basic Rights, pp. 131–55.

39 Simon Caney, “Human Rights, Responsibilities, and Climate Change,” in Beitz and Goodin, Global Basic Rights, pp. 227–47.

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