The World We Want: A Conversation with Amina J. Mohammed
on the Sustainable Development Goals
BY
This
post first appeared in TriplePundit
Editor’s Note: A number of conspiracy wingnuts believe the United Nations has a secret plan to take over the world – actually all they really worry about is they might take over the United States aided by our Kenyan, Muslim, Communist President – through a “Sustainable Development” plan they call “Agenda 21.” Crazies like local state Rep. Justin Price (R-Richmond) have used similar rhetoric to attack a similar Rhode Island-scale effort called Rhode Map RI. I think most reasonable people understand the difference between a plan and a plot or between a goal and a mandate. And ask yourself, when was the last time the UN was able to make anybody do anything? - W. Collette
This weekend world leaders met at the United Nations in New York City to define a sustainable development agenda through 2030, a process built on the successes, failures and lessons learned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) launched in 2000 and expiring at the end of this year. The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a global framework of 17 goals designed to address humanity’s most pressing problems, from poverty and hunger to health, education, gender equality, energy, climate change and environmental sustainability.
The premise is simple: what kind of world do we want?
Considering the seven billion people other people in the world and this
simple premise turns into a thorny nest of complexity. But we can agree on
what kind of world leads to basic human dignity and a healthy environment.
Without a set of goals mutually agreed upon that describe a world where we can
all live and thrive, we hobble our efforts in ever achieving it.
The aspirations of a new
century
At the Rio+20 UN summit on sustainable development in 2010
member states drafted the Future We Want
Outcome Document setting
in motion the process for post-2015 sustainable development, building on
the MDGs and extending back to the 1972 Stockholm Conference on
the Human Environment.
“Quite clearly we never would have embarked on this
process if we hadn’t had some success from the first goal-setting that we did
in 2000,” says Ms. Mohammed. “I think what we’ve learned from that is 193
countries could come together and agree in principle on a set of goals that
would move forward on things that really were important to people.”
At the turn of the century efforts on issues like poverty,
education, water and sanitation, gender equality, building partnerships were
scattered, lacking focus and a clear means of implementation, explains Ms.
Mohammed. “We didn’t see much over the past decades of the different UN
platforms.”
The Millennium Development Goals were a “brave attempt to try to
be much more hopeful and fulfill people’s aspirations,” says Ms. Mohammed. “A
review and prescription of what we ought to do in the next 15 years
to bring everyone together and get some movement.”
“Some things that happened on the MDGs we take
stock of. Things that didn’t happen, the unfinished business of the MDGs
you see in the first six SDGs,” Ms. Mohammed says. “So we don’t leave
anyone or anything behind. We take it forward and we face the more complex and
difficult challenges that are emerging today.”
Beyond
a Band-Aid, the big picture of sustainable development
Sustenance is the foundation of
sustainability. As long as people are hopelessly bound to hunger and
poverty, global sustainable development remains out of reach. As with the MDGs,
goal number one for post-2015 development is “ending poverty in all its forms
everywhere.” Easier said than done, but by meeting the goal of cutting extreme
poverty in half, the MDGs proved the concept. Poverty can be significantly
reduced.
“We set out a goal that would reduce
poverty by half,” Ms. Mohammed says, “and we got that as a global
goal. That’s a lot of people taken out of poverty.” But, as critics are quick to point out,
it leaves much work left to do. “I’d say the glass is half full in terms
of what we achieved in the reduction of poverty. That did happen, largely
because of China,”
The demographics and definition of
poverty have much to do with getting the glass half full. The lesson
is that poverty relief is not spread evenly and must start from the
bottom up by defining extreme poverty as surviving on the equivalent of no more
than $1 per day.
“We do know that the
underlying causes of many more remaining in poverty is the inequalities,” says
Ms. Mohammed. “…within countries, across countries, it really is a big issue.
You have a whole goal to represent that in the SDG.”
So it is with other MDG
goals like education. “We got kids into classrooms but we question
the quality,” says Ms. Mohammed. By accepting responsibility for both the
success and shortfall of the goal, the new goal encompasses and expands the
original development goals of of the MDGs.
As Peter Hazlewood writes in the World Resources Institute blog,
“…despite some impressive areas of progress along the way, nearly a quarter of
humanity continues to live on less than $2 per day, inequalities have worsened
dramatically, and unsustainable resource use, environmental degradation and
climate change march steadily on.”
Reviewing progress at the Rio+20 summit
in 2012 was critical to the process of building on the MDGs and
forging an iterative path forward. “Member states agree that we need to
change the paradigm because we need to do development beyond just a band-aid,”
Ms. Mohammed says. “We want to look at new courses, we want to integrate a
social economic and environmental perspective so that we will get
sustainability.”
“One of the first things
we sat down to do was to be very clear on what was the state of the world,”
says Ms. Mohammed. “What is the fabric that we want to stitch on the remedies
in the shape of goals.
I think having an agreement of what existing challenges
there are and what are the emerging ones. Conceptually, the sustainable
development discourse came of its time in 2012 and that’s because we’ve been
discussing it for over two decades. This is where it comes to fruition.
The two main takeaways for member
states from Rio+20 are the need for an integration and ownership
of efforts and goals, built on a common, shared belief that partnership
and trust will lead to a better world.
Universal, transparent
The new SDG framework is built on
transparency and universality. All sectors of society must be involved in the
process of sustainable development, including institutions, government, the
private sector and civil society. Beyond this integrated approach is
transparency. “It’s something that really hasn’t happened before,” Ms. Mohammed
says.
Adoption of the SDGs marks the
culmination of two years of negotiations involving 193 member states and, perhaps
more importantly, an exceptional degree of public participation from civil
society, the private sector and all stakeholders.
“Two-and-a-half years is a long time
to address a single issues and keep the momentum going,” says Ms. Mohammed, but
the result is widespread ownership from all sectors in laying the shared
groundwork for the success of the SDGs.
Achieving sustainable development is
simply not possible without inclusion, transparency and partnership.
The role of business
“Business has a role to
play in every one of the goals we set,” Ms. Mohammed says. “Any agenda that
looks to have transformation in their economy that needs to be inclusive,
business will be an integral part in the way their core business model is taken
to task. That they are much more aware of how their business must not be
detrimental to people and certainly not the environment.”
“There’s no cookie cutter for this,”
she says, but one essential element Ms. Mohammed mentions for inclusive
business is through the financial sector allowing more avenues for women and
young people to access credit for entrepreneurship. All have a role to play in
this regard, from community and national banks to multinational and
development banks.
“I think we’re going to
take a two year transition where we reflect on how best to partner with
business. The issues that business needs to address as they become fit for
purpose on the sustainable development agenda.
No peace without
development, no development without peace
The new development agenda succeeds,
says Ms. Mohammed, to the degree that development, human rights and peace are
understood as three pillars of human progress.
“I think it’s a difficult discussion
to have because the mandates are so clearly delineated,” says Ms. Mohammed.
Over the years we’ve managed to speak to them in silos. The fact that
we’re talking about an integration of issues brings us to how the three pillars
themselves are inextricably linked.”
“We’re cognizant of the
fact that the UN itself is held up by two other pillars. The human rights
pillar and the peace and security pillar,” she explains.
The human and financial resources are
available to move toward a shared vision of peace, equality, human rights and
sustainable development, Ms. Mohammed says. She does not imply the task will be
easy, nor that there are flaws, suspicion and doubt remaining in the process.
We’re only human.
But the process of the past two years,
the past two decades and indeed back half a century and more of building the
world we want takes a big step forward with the Sustainable Development Goals.
We each have a part to play in seeing these ambitious goals come to fruition.
