The Sustained Delusion about the International Goals (SDGs)

Author: Detlef Palm, September 14 2023 - Are you ready to redouble your efforts to create a better world for all? This, or something like this, is the recommendation of The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023 [PDF], a special edition report by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, or DESA as we know it. According to SG Guterres, the report calls for a Rescue Plan for People and Planet, because "the Sustainable Development Goals are disappearing in the rear view mirror". This threw me off my rails and I woke up, because things are disappearing in the rear view mirror when you are ahead of them, not when they are still are distant dream in front of you.

The report suggests 48 priority actions, which is a proposition I find tough for those not good at multitasking. Here is but one of the 48: "Invest in public sector capacity and infrastructure to identify trade-offs and drive large-scale change, enable complex decisionmaking, leverage digital technologies and boost implementation partnerships". I can't find anything really wrong with such a statement, but I have my doubts that this hilarious piece of advice will move us forward. Having explained the failure of the global community to achieve the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals], the report now proposes an SDG Stimulus. This is, as you rightly guessed, a call for more money, especially for money from the usual donors for strengthening of the UN. It will be discussed during the SDG Summit on 18/19 September in New York.

The Chatham House think-tank instantly railed against the report, suggesting that the SDGs should be suspended in favour of better goals. Such as fighting climate change, protecting biodiversity, food security and fixing the international financing system. As much as I tried, I couldn't figure out what the Chatham House would do differently from the UNSG or DESA. Therefore, Back to Earth with a few clarifications:

1. Progress Happens. With or without the SDGs.
Development does not happen because someone or many proclaimed the SDGs. People want progress. People with aspirations drive change. Every mother and every father wants a better life for their children. This is what they demand from their governments. Most of them have no idea about the SDGs and they don't care about them. Whether or not a government has signed an agreement with other governments, including with dictators, war mongers, gangster governments, religious fanatics, lunatics or the United Nations, is of no concern to most people.

More significantly, the accountability of any government always goes to its own people first. This is true for any government, whether it likes the idea or not. Some governments may pay lip service, do nothing, or wait for the international community to restructure its financial system so aid keeps flowing.

2. Development happens, but not because of aid.
The appropriation of success is typical for the United Nations and the aid industry, including the cottage industry of self anointed development experts and consultants. They erroneously believe that, only because they provide aid, progress happens. Looking back on any country's success story, including any high income or donor country, none of these success stories had to do with aid. In contrast, everyone agrees that 'development success' has to do with good policies and good governance. The corollary is that in the presence of an uncaring government development does not happen, or only very slowly, with or without aid.

It is an illusion that an uncaring government can be more effectively swayed by the aid community to do the right thing, than by the will of its own people. If this sounds somewhat flippant, consider the role of aid in Niger, Sudan, or Afghanistan.

On rare occasions, aid may have given an extra spin to a national effort. UNICEF might have had a lucky hand being in the right place at the right time with an exceptionally good idea during the heydays of EPI [Expanded Program on Immunization]. This was by chance, not by design.

3. SDGs do not help to focus.
It is one of the great mysteries of this millennium why anyone believes that the SDGs concentrate  government or donor attention. The SDGs are the opposite of focus. Whatever you want to do or spend your money on, you'll find an SDG where it fits under. When politicians are in a fix - and all of them inevitably are because that is the nature of their job - they won't look at the SDGs for guidance. They do what pleases their citizens, their lobbyists or themselves. What difference do the SDGs make in Niger, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Iran, Russia, Myanmar, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, or any of your favorite tourist spots? Will the Taliban, the Junta, or Putin say: Oh well, I lost my priorities; let me see the list of the SDGs.

4. The Illusion of focus
Everybody focuses on their immediate and most urgent problems. For some it may be child survival, for others it may be care of the elderly. In one country some children are thin, and others obese. Someone is a scientist, someone else likes to watch movies. The world is multifaceted and colourful, and all things happen simultaneously all the time. The archaeologist is not re-training to become a public health specialist because his government signed up to Health for All. There is not 'one focus' that all citizens of a country would subscribe to as their top priority, except for having a decent government. Let WHO aid the doctor, and let UNESCO aid the archaeologist. The people of a country will determine their most urgent needs and priorities and we hope that they find ways to agree among themselves.

5. ...but the climate!
True. Climate change has become the most urgent concern - especially for large economies that are primarily responsible for carbon emissions, and those that suffer from the most devastating consequences. I am not quite sure, though, why the Maldives would need to articulate their own climate goals and carbon action plans, though of course they should remind others that they soon will be submerged. The 1.5 degree temperature threshold is not a compromise negotiated among 190 governments, but the result of scientific insight and supported by people who care. On a global scale, young people are doing more to keep the pressure up, than any new UN conference.

6. So what about the UN, then?
It makes sense to keep track of initiatives, successes and failures made by countries and record progress, so everyone can learn from each other. But the pursuit of the SDGs by UN agencies themselves has created a separate industry of civil servants and consultants operating in a parallel world, reporting on UN agency actions that nobody cares about. This distracts from the core functions of the UN, and undermines its credibility and significance. The UN creates more noise for raising funds that will ensure the survival of its ever expanding workforce and bloated bureaucracy, than for helping to solve disagreements between countries.

The UN is an intergovernmental body meant to solve issues BETWEEN countries. It's role is to mediate. It has to do with internationally accepted standards of behaviour such as justice, fairness, observation of human rights or non-violent conflict resolution, so that progress in one country does not come at the costs of another. The rest should be left to the experts.

Click here to read the blog as originally posted on XUNICEF.

Image credit: South Bend Voice via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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