Achieving the MDGs: The Fundamentals

This 4-page Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Briefing Paper makes the case that attending to fundamental issues such as social exclusion and gender inequity is crucial to the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Author Andrew Shepherd argues here that the challenge is to inspire the public and professionals alike to step up efforts - not by focusing solely on the Goals themselves, but, rather, by broadening the perspective through linking the MDGs to leading global development debates.

As figures cited in the beginning segments of the paper make clear, several targets will definitely be missed. For example, MDG#7 includes the target of halving the proportion of people without proper sanitation by 2015. However, 1990 and 2006, the proportion of people worldwide without improved sanitation decreased by only 8 percentage points; at this rate, the world will miss the target by over 700 million people. Shepherd explains that "[t]he technology on sanitation is in place; it is the supporting political energy that is in deficit."

For the author, analysis of indicators of poor progress like this one highlights the need to explicitly attend to social protection, which he describes as "the foundation for the participation of the poorest in economic life on more favourable terms...and for their access to the health, education and other services that are critical for national economic, as well as social, development." But it is not only individual people - the extremely poor, those living in remote areas, and those who miss out because of their gender or ethnic group - who have been excluded; according to Shepherd, entire states are fragile and chronically deprived. The concept of social protection is again crucial, and external actors have a valuable role, says Shepherd, by "recognising and supporting the steps taken by a government towards a new social compact, helping with system development, and providing long-term and stable aid resources."

In this context, it is key to "focus on the fundamentals", Shepherd contends. Specifically,

• "It would be useful to develop a broad consensus on the power of gender equity to achieve several of the existing goals and develop a set of [United Nations] UN-blessed good practices in monitoring progress, leading to a set of potential interventions."
• "Framing humanitarian work within the MDGs would lead to a stronger focus on education - emphasised by few agencies at present - and its medium-term potential for empowerment, health, economic productivity and positive institutional development."
• "The suggestion here is that [economic growth]...is a key fundamental that should continue to be monitored at national level, but linked strongly to the national MDG discourse."

In the paper's final section, Shepherd explores the perceptive of the MDGs as a "northern" project, arguing that it is crucial to recognise and work in harmony with the "southern" preoccupation with economic growth. In the case of MDG #7, rather than emphasising indicators which are based on northern concerns, such as rainforests, the author holds that it is important to understand the southern perspective on environmental sustainability, which is often that this sustainability is only achievable at the expense of economic development. Similarly, international aid is not enough, for "the necessary public expenditures will only be made consistently over long periods of time if they are underpinned by a social compact between state and citizen, in which tax revenues are used to achieve public policy objectives. This social compact can be supported by international aid [only] if that aid supports southern-owned policies and goes 'with the grain' of national politics, de-emphasising political conditions in favour of stable, predictable, aligned aid." But, he stresses, "[g]oing with the grain should not mean the perpetuation of fundamental issues that threaten progress towards the MDGs, such as gender inequity and social exclusion. It is important to be aware of, and support, southern efforts to address these issues, while leaving the leadership in southern hands. If countries get the fundamentals right, the MDGs will follow..."