Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals

A transformational agenda for an insecure world

Felix Dodds, Ambassador David Donoghue, Jimena Leiva Roesch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315527079
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal set of seventeen goals and 169 targets, with accompanying indicators, which were agreed by UN member states to frame their policy agendas for the fifteen-year period from 2015 to 2030. Written by three authors who have been engaged in the development of the SDGs from the beginning, this book offers an insider view of the process and a unique entry into what will be seen as one of the most significant negotiations and global policy agendas of the twenty-first century.

The book reviews how the SDGs were developed, what happened in key meetings and how this transformational agenda, which took more than three years to negotiate, came together in September 2015. It dissects and analyzes the meetings, organizations and individuals that played key roles in their development. It provides fascinating insights into the subtleties and challenges of high-level negotiation processes of governments and stakeholders, and into how the SDGs were debated, formulated and agreed. It is essential reading for all interested in the UN, sustainable development and the future of the planet and humankind.

1
A New Beginning

Conceiving the Sustainable Development Goals

Introduction

The story of sustainable development is a remarkable one. The year 2015 not only saw the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development (AAAA) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Coincidentally, these three processes originated in Rio de Janeiro at the Earth Summit in June 1992. Together, these three political agreements define a vision for a more sustainable, equitable world and a roadmap for achieving it.

Although the path to agreeing on the SDGs was not easy, it managed to mobilize an important number of governments, intergovernmental organizations and stake-holder groups from around the world. To understand why this process generated such mobilization, it is important to go back to the 1990s and the origin of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The Millennium Development Goals

The 1990s was a decade of important UN conferences and summits. It started with the World Summit for Children (New York, 1990) and continued with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development or the Rio Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Istanbul, 1996) and the World Food Summit (Rome, 1996). Each conference or summit agreed on a comprehensive action plan. In addition, the Rio Earth Summit introduced legally binding conventions such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). During the same decade, two further legally binding agreements were approved: the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD, 1994) and the United Nations Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (UNSFSA, 1995).

In the context of these conferences, the turn of the new millennium was seen as a great opportunity to secure renewed commitments from governments to implement these action plans. As such, the General Assembly decided to articulate the outcomes of these past conferences and bring them together in the Millennium Summit. In preparation for this summit, the United Nations Secretary General produced the ‘Millennium Report: We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century’ (April 2000). The report put forward a list of goals and objectives for poverty eradication. This report, together with the International Development Goals that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) agreed to in 1996 (Hulme, 2007), fed into the outcome of the Millennium Summit. In September 2000, 189 United Nations member states adopted the Millennium Declaration as a set of values and broad objectives for poverty eradication to guide international relations in the twenty-first century.

It was not until August 2001 that UNDP and other United Nations departments, the OECD and the World Bank came together to create the eight MDGs and their twenty-one quantifiable targets (and subsequently sixty indicators). The goals were presented in September 2001 in the report ‘Road map towards the implementation of the Millennium Declaration’ by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The goals were not negotiated by governments, nor was input given from stakeholders.

It is important to recognize that the MDGs were the first time that international cooperation would focus around a set of goals to put poverty eradication at the center of a global development agenda. It would acknowledge the multidimensional character of poverty, i.e., that this was beyond just the issue of below US$1.25/day.

At the time, there was a great deal of criticism of the way the MDGs came into existence. In particular, they were seen as addressing the symptoms of poverty rather than its underlying causes. This, along with the lack of ownership in their development, is the reason it took a number of years before stakeholders and many governments focused on them. What later helped with their implementation was that, after a decade of reduction of Official Development Assistance (ODA), ODA started to rise again. It returned to 1992 levels of US$64 billion in 2000 and grew to approximately US$150 billion by 2014 (US$135.4 billion of this from developed countries). Furthermore, it also started to be refocused around the MDGs.

The progress toward delivering the MDGs was reviewed by United Nations General Assemblies three times: once in 2005, again in 2010 and at a special event in 2013 to accelerate progress toward their full implementation by 2015.

The 2005 Heads of State UN review of the MDGs established a formalized monitoring and review system by setting up an Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) within the United Nations Economic and Social Council. This would create a formal space for progress on the MDGs to be monitored annually to help keep governments focused on delivering the goals and to learn from one another’s experience.

Box 1.1 2015 UNDP Review of the Millennium Development Goals and their Targets

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Target 1A: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than US$1.25 a day.

By 2015: Extreme poverty has declined significantly over the last two decades. In 1990, nearly half of the population in the developing world lived on less than US$1.25 a day; that proportion dropped to 14 percent in 2015 (United Nations, 2015).

By 2015: Globally, the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half, falling from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015. Most progress has occurred since 2000 (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 1B: Achieve decent employment for women, men and young people.

By 2015: The number of people in the working middle class – living on more than US$4 a day – has almost tripled between 1991 and 2015. This group now makes up half the workforce in the developing regions, up from just 18 percent in 1991 (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 1C: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

By 2015: The proportion of undernourished people in the developing regions has fallen by almost half since 1990, from 23.3 percent in 1990–1992, to 12.9 percent in 2014–2016 (United Nations, 2016).

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

• Target 2A: By 2015, all children can complete a full course of primary schooling, girls and boys.

By 2015: The primary school net enrollment rate in the developing regions has reached 91 percent in 2015, up from 83 percent in 2000 (United Nations, 2015).

By 2015: The number of out-of-school children of primary school age worldwide has fallen by almost half, to an estimated 57 million in 2015, down from 100 million in 2000 (United Nations, 2015).

By 2015: The literacy rate among youth aged 15 to 24 has increased, globally, from 83 percent to 91 percent between 1990 and 2015. The gap between women and men has narrowed (United Nations, 2015).

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

• Target 3A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

By 2015: Many more girls are now in school compared to fifteen years ago. The developing regions, as a whole, have achieved the target to eliminate gender disparity in primary, secondary and tertiary education (United Nations, 2015).

By 2015: Women have gained ground in parliamentary representation in nearly 90 percent of the 174 countries, with data over the past twenty years. The average proportion of women in parliament has nearly doubled during the same period. Still, only one in five members is a woman (United Nations, 2015).

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality rates

• Target 4A: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.

By 2015: The global under-five mortality rate has declined by more than half, dropping from 90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 live births between 1990 and 2015 (United Nations, 2015).

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

• Target 5A: Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.

By 2015: Since 1990, the maternal mortality ratio has declined by 45 percent worldwide, and most of the reduction has occurred since 2000 (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 5B: Achieve by 2015 universal access to reproductive health.

By 2015: Contraceptive prevalence among women aged 15 to 49, married or in a union, increased from 55 percent in 1990 worldwide to 64 percent in 2015 (United Nations, 2015).

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Target 6A: Have halted by 2015 and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.

By 2015: New HIV infections fell by approximately 40 percent between 2000 and 2013, from an estimated 3.5 million cases to 2.1 million (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 6B: Achieve by 2010 universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.

By June 2014: An estimated 13.6 million people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) globally, an immense increase from just 800,000 in 2003. ART averted 7.6 million deaths from AIDS between 1995 and 2013 (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 6C: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

By 2015: Over 6.2 million malaria deaths have been averted between 2000 and 2015, primarily of children under 5 years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. The global malaria incidence rate has fallen by an estimated 37 percent and the mortality rate by 58 percent (United Nations, 2015).

Between 2000 and 2013, tuberculosis prevention, diagnosis and treatment interventions saved an estimated 37 million lives. The tuberculosis mortality rate fell by 45 percent and the prevalence rate by 41 percent between 1990 and 2013 (United Nations, 2015).

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

• Target 7A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources.

By 2015: Ozone-depleting substances have been virtually eliminated since 1990, and the ozone layer is expected to recover by the middle of this century (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 7B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving by 2010 a significant reduction in the rate of loss.

By 2015: Terrestrial and marine protected areas in many regions have increased substantially (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 7C: Halve by 2015 the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

By 2015: Over half of the global population (58 percent) now enjoys this higher level of service. Globally, 147 countries have met the drinking water target (United Nations, 2015).

By 2015: Worldwide, 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation. The proportion of people practicing open defecation has fallen almost by half since 1990. Ninety-five countries have met the sanitation target (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 7D: By 2020 achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

By 2015: The proportion of the urban population living in slums in the developing regions fell from approximately 39.4 percent in 2000 to 29.7 percent in 2014 (United Nations, 2015).

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

• Target 8A: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system.

By 2015: Official development assistance from developed countries increased by 66 percent in real terms between 2000 and 2014, reaching US$135.2 billion (United Nations, 2015).

By 2015: In 2014, 79 percent of imports from developing to developed countries were admitted duty free, up from 65 percent in 2000 (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 8B: Address the special needs of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

By 2015: The proportion of ODA to LDCs and SIDS only slightly increased from 1990, but did nearly double from 2000 (United Nations, 2015).

• Target 8C: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
• Target 8D: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.

By 2015: The proportion of external debt service to export revenue in...