The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

(Inspiring many people around the world)

The question is, how can the stakeholders work together more effectively to achieve them?

Let’s look at the set of 17 goals set by United Nations. The SDG covers a broad range of social and economic development issues. These includes:-

1.      Poverty

2.      Hunger

3.      Health

4.      Education, and gender equality

The SDGs are also known as “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” or Agenda 2030 in short. The goals were developed to replace the “Millennium Development Goal” which ended in2015. Unlike MDGs, SDGs framework doesn’t distinguish between developing and developed nations, instead the goals apply to all countries.
The SDGs built upon the principles agreed upon in the Resolution A/RES/66/288 entitled “The Future We Want”. This was a non-binding document released as a result of Rio+20 conference held in 2012.

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General has stated that “We do not have plan B because we do not have Planet B”. This has guided the culmination of SDG on the forefront. On 25^th September 2015, 193 countries of UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) adopted the 20130 Development Agenda.

The 17 Goals

There are 169 targets for 17 goals, each has 1-3 indicators used to measure progress towards reaching the targets.

Goal-1	No Poverty	End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Goal-2	Zero Hunger	End Hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
Goal-3	Good Health and well-being	Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Goal-4	Quality Education	Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Goal-5	Gender Equality	Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Goald-6	Clean Water and Sanitation	Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Goal-7	Affordable and Clean Energy	Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
Goal-8	Decent work and Economic Growth	Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
Goal-9	Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure	Built resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation ad foster innovation.
Goal-10	Reduced Inequalities	Reduce income inequality within and among countries.
Goal-11	Sustainable Cities and communities	Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
Goal-12	Responsible consumption and production	Ensure sustainable and production patterns.
Goal-13	Climate Change	Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts by regulating emissions and promoting developments in renewable energy.
Goal-14	Life below water	Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Goal-15	Life on Land	Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystem, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reserve land degradation and alt biodiversity loss.
Goal-16	Peace, Justice and strong Institution	Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institution at all levels.
Goal-17	Partnership for Goals	Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the goal partnership for sustainable development.

These are related directly to human development.

All stakeholders recognize the need for effective partnerships. However there exists disagreement among stakeholders as well as among diverse experts. Their perspectives are also divergent, who must come together to address complex issues, otherwise it will make progress difficult.

There are three problems with this approach:-

1.      The first is that one size does not fit all.

2.      The second is that the many different capabilities that must be brought together to address systemic issues, are unable to collaborate with each other easily on the ground when all of them, whether in government, an international NGO, or a global philanthropy, are “reporting up” to their respective bosses at their centres.

3.      The third problem is that the people who must be the ultimate beneficiaries of the solutions, and who can contribute significantly to their design and implementation, have inadequate voices in the design and management of expert-driven, top-down programmes.

The Club of Rome warned in 1972 that humanity would face a “Tragedy of the Commons” if it persisted with its paradigm of economic growth. Its warnings were largely ignored. Since then, more reforms within the prevalent paradigm enabled long periods of economic growth around the world.

Meanwhile, systemic problems of environmental degradation, climate change, and economic inequities got worsen. The SDGs are a realization that humanity cannot postpone much longer the development of new strategies for the management of the commons.

The history of humanity’s progress is a history of evolution of institutions that have enabled societies to achieve what they want. New forms of institutions of business, such as the limited liability company invented in the 17th century, enabled capital to be accumulated more efficiently to grow economies. Innovations of elected parliaments of the people enabled the implementation of ideas of democracy that societies began to aspire for since the 16th century, first in small pockets in Europe and North America, and then in a flood by the 20th century.

Faster progress towards the SDGs will require new models of enterprises in which the people must have a much greater say in governance. The tragedy of the commons is caused by the clash of two sets of rights along with two fundamental principles of good governance. The fundamental principle driving democracy is human rights. Every individual, rich or poor, has a right to fundamental human needs such as health and education, and also to equal political rights in the governance of their societies.

The fundamental principle driving the growth of capitalist economies is the right to private property—which is consonant with a concept in economics that human beings are self-interested agents who will take care of only what they own.

These two principles lead to very different principles for the governance of enterprises. Whereas in democratic governance every human being, even if she owns nothing, must have equal voice, in capitalist enterprises, those who own more (e.g. shares of a company) must have proportionally more weight in governance.

An innovation in enterprise design to reconcile this dilemma is the concept of “social enterprises” promoted by Muhammad Yunus and others. The owners of social enterprise are the beneficiaries of its services and profits. Social enterprises stand in between the domains of for-profit corporations on one side (which extract and accumulate wealth from the commons) and charity, philanthropy, and CSR on the other side (which then “give back” to repair damage to the commons and “do good”).

The last two SDGs could be the keys to progress on the rest. More such innovations in the design of cooperative institutions—of the people, by the people, for the people—are required to reconcile the democratic principle of equal human rights, with the capitalist principle of sacrosanct property rights.

I acknowledge the content taken from Mint Newspaper and Wikipedia