Promises ...promises...always promises

The new global sustainable development agenda of the UN is taking shape

End global hunger and all forms of malnutrition and poverty by 2030, along with all urban slums around the world.  Make sure that the income of the bottom 40 percent of the population in all countries grows faster than the national average. Achieve “global resource efficiency,” and try to separate economic growth from “environmental degradation and resource use” everywhere over the next decade and a half. Halve the number of deaths from road traffic accidents globally (an estimated 1.24 million in 2010, according to the World Health Organization) by the same date—and “reduce levels of violence and halve related death rates everywhere” by then too.

Jens Martens, director of the Global Policy Forum, told Inter Press Service (IPS) that, in general, the current list of proposed goals and targets is not an adequate response to the global social, economic and environmental crises and the need for fundamental change. The proposed SDG list, he pointed out, contains a mix of recycled old commitments and vaguely formulated new ones (such as the goal 1.a. to “ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources to provide adequate and predictable means to implement programs and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions”). Martens told IPS “What we need, instead, are measurable goals for the rich,” said Martens. He said any post-2015 agenda must address the structural obstacles and political barriers that prevented the realization of the MDGs, such as unfair trade and investment rules (including the investor-state dispute-settlement mechanism) and the problems of tax evasion and tax avoidance by transnational corporations and wealthy individuals. “Why not have a target to close down all tax havens by 2020?” he asked.

Water and sanitation was not a “stand-alone goal” in the current MDGs but only a secondary goal under Goal 7 on “environmental sustainability.” Nadya Kassam, global head of campaigns at the London-based WaterAid, told IPS, “We believe water and sanitation must be a stand-alone goal for the post-2015 framework, and we are encouraged by what we’ve seen so far.” She said it is unthinkable that water, sanitation and hygiene could not be included—they are critical to so many other outcomes, such as good health, education and economic growth. Kassam said access to sanitation is lagging the furthest behind, and at the current rates of progress, it would take sub-Saharan Africa, as a region, over 150 years just to reach the existing goal of halving the proportion of people without.

The final set of goals is to be approved by world leaders in September 2015.