Economics for Everyone - Sustainable Development Goals

“World leaders have an unprecedented opportunity this year to shift the world onto a path of inclusive, sustainable and resilient development" - Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator.

At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030.
 
Section I Introduction
 
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, are an inter-governmentally agreed set of targets relating to international development. They will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals and build on the sustainable development agenda that was finalized by member states during the Rio +20 Summit. The SDGs were first formally discussed at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 (Rio+20).
 
On 19 July 2014, the UN General Assembly's Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) forwarded a proposal for the SDGs to the Assembly. The proposal contained 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues. These included ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests. On 4 December 2014, the UN General Assembly accepted the Secretary-General's Synthesis Report which stated that the agenda for the post-2015 SDG process would be based on the OWG proposals.
 
The Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Post 2015 Development Agenda (IGN) began in January 2015 and ended in August 2015. Following the negotiations, a final document was adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit September 25–27, 2015 in New York, USA. The title of the agenda is Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Up to 2015, the development agenda was centered on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000. The MDGs encapsulated eight globally agreed goals in the areas of poverty alleviation, education, gender equality and empowerment of women, child and maternal health, environmental sustainability, reducing HIV/AIDS and communicable diseases, and building a global partnership for development.
 
The MDGs were supposed to be achieved by 2015, so a further process was needed to agree and develop development goals from 2015-2030. Discussion on the post-2015 framework for international development began well in advance. Formal debate concerning the SDGs first occurred at the 2012 United Nations conference in Rio de Janeiro. The 192 UN member states agreed at the Rio+20 summit to start a process of designing sustainable development goals, which are “action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities”.
 
The Rio+20 outcome document, “The Future We Want”, called for the goals to be integrated into the UN’s post-2015 Development Agenda.
 
On 25 September 2015, the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda titled “Transforming our world'.'
 
This included the following goals:

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
10. Reduce inequality within and among countries.
11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. 

As of August 2015, there were 169 proposed targets for these goals and 304 proposed indicators to show compliance.
 
Thus the Sustainable Development Goals, otherwise known as the Global Goals, build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight anti-poverty targets that the world committed to achieving by 2015. The MDGs, adopted in 2000, aimed at an array of issues that included slashing poverty, hunger, disease, gender inequality, and access to water and sanitation. Enormous progress has been made on the MDGs, showing the value of a unifying agenda underpinned by goals and targets. Despite this success, the indignity of poverty has not been ended for all.
 
The new SDGs, and the broader sustainability agenda, go much further than the MDGs, addressing the root causes of poverty and the universal need for development that works for all people.
 
All 17 Sustainable Development Goals are connected to United Nations Development Programmed (UNDP’s) Strategic Plan focus areas: sustainable development, democratic governance and peace building, and climate and disaster resilience.Some of the SDGs goals such as Poverty, inequality and governance are particularly central to UNDP’s current work and long-term plans.
 
Having an integrated approach to supporting progress across the multiple goals is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and UNDP is uniquely placed to support that process.
 
UNDP supports countries in three different ways, through the MAPS approach: mainstreaming, acceleration and policy support.

• Providing support to governments to reflect the new global agenda in national development plans and policies. This work is already underway in many countries at national request;
• Supporting countries to accelerate progress on SDG targets. In this, they will make use of their extensive experience over the past five years with the MDG Acceleration Framework; and
• Making the UN’s policy expertise on sustainable development and governance available to governments at all stages of implementation.
• UNDP is deeply involved in all processes around the Sustainable Development Goal roll out.According to UNDP sources, they are bringing our extensive programming experience to bear in supporting countries to develop their national SDG efforts.

 Section II Concept of Development: Theoretical Background
 
Economic theories and research studies have since long established a link between economic growth and economic development. According to various studies economic development plays a part in the history of human societies. They then enjoy a self-sustaining growth, which becomes the “normal function of the economy.”
 
Because of the potential for resource depletion, sustainability has always been a central element of the renewable natural resources economy. Over the last 20 years, the discussion on natural resources management has been taking a new turn as a result of greater awareness of global environmental issues.
 
According to some studies. The eco-development doctrine prefigures, and at the same time, is Concurrent with the term “sustainable development,” which was developed, at first, to respond to the unique dynamics of the rural economies of the Third World, and which slowly broadened, to become a general development philosophy. There was always debate between Growth and Development. The proponents of development theory, even though does not reject growth, state that growth must serve social progress and the reasonable management of resources and natural environments. According to experts, it is necessary to implement a “participative planning process” to find the right balance between market, government and civil society.
 
Concept of Economic Growth and Development
 
The study of economic development has become one of the most fascinating and challenging branches of economics and political economy. Though Adam Smith is known to be the first development economists with his Wealth of Nations (1776) being the first treatise on economic development, it was only after the Second World War that the economists undertook a systematic study of the problems and processes of economic development in the context of developing countries. Development economics is a rapidly growing area evolving its own theory and methodology. It has a wider scope than either traditional economics or political economy. A part from being concerned with efficient allocation of scare resources and sustained growth in their availabilities, development economic, is also concerned with the economic, social and institutional mechanisms- both private and public requirement to uplift the levels of living of the poor masses at a rapid and significant rate. Development economics lays due emphasis on the role of the government and development planning.

It may be pointed out here that economic development is not the same things as economic growth. Economic development involves something more than economic growth. While economic growth involves expansion of an economy through a simple widening process, economic development incorporates growth as well as essential qualitative dimensions appearing in the form of improved performance of the factors of production and improved techniques of production. Another qualitative change may appear in the form of development of institutions and changes in values and attitudes. Thus, while economic growth refers to sustained increase in per capita product, economic development refers to growth plus progressive changes in the socio-economic structure of a nation.
 
Section III Various Views
 
Overall, experts across world have welcomed the initiative by UNDP on SDG goals. According to them, the new set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals is a bold new step by countries to correct the short-sightedness of many of our existing policy discourses, including the gaps they did not address through the Millennium Development Goals. They aim to address not only the aspirations of today’s generations, but also the hopes and dreams of future ones. They are not just focused on a single dimension of well-being but cut across both its subjective and objective constituents. Focusing on the ends is definitely a step in the right direction. According to experts, The Millennium Development Goals have been a great success in many ways with all its limitations. Overall, the MDGs have a decent record.
 
However, some experts observe the following challenges

• Countries will need resources to achieve these laudable goals. Governments need to invest lager financial resources which could affect their public finance. The SDGs are unfeasibly expensive. Meeting them would cost $2 trillion-3 trillion a year of public and private money over 15 years. That is roughly 15% of annual global savings, or 4% of world GDP.
• For the international community merely to approve these goals and adopt them as guidelines unless they also build strong implementation frameworks rooted in the logic of national economic growth. If the SDGs are to succeed, they cannot merely complement national policies: they must become integral to economic policymaking.
• Some of the world’s top economists have warned the Secretary-General of the United Nations that the Sustainable Development Goals will not succeed without a stronger emphasis on the need for economic growth. According to them “Achieving the SDG targets will not be possible unless the agenda focuses squarely on individuals as active generators of their own income, lifting themselves out of poverty.”
• According to some critics, the proposed list of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is not concise.
• The need for meaningful accountability mechanisms. According to experts one of the limitations of MDG was the lack of accountability.This should be corrected in the SDG mechanism. 

Section IV UNDP

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. 

UNDP is present in more than 170 countries and territories, working with governments and people on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. As they develop local capacity, they draw on the people of UNDP and our wide range of partners that can bring about results, helping to achieve the eradication of poverty, and the reduction of inequalities and exclusion. It helps countries to develop policies, leadership skills, partnering abilities, institutional capabilities and build resilience in order to sustain development results.
 
World leaders have pledged to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including the overarching goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015. UNDP's network links and coordinates global and national efforts to reach these Goals. Their focus is helping countries build and share solutions to the challenges of the world. Thus, the UNDP focuses on helping countries build and share solutions in three main areas:

• Poverty Reduction
• Crisis Prevention & Recovery
• Environment & Energy
• HIV/AIDS
• Sustainable development
• Democratic governance and peace building
• Climate and disaster resilience 

In all their activities, they encourage the protection of human rights and the empowerment of women, minorities and the poorest and most vulnerable.
 
UNDP helps developing countries attract and use aid effectively. In all our activities, they encourage the protection of human rights, capacity development and the empowerment of women.
 
The annual Human Development Report, commissioned by UNDP, focuses the global debate on key development issues, providing new measurement tools, innovative analysis and often controversial policy proposals. The global Report's analytical framework and inclusive approach carry over into regional, national and local Human Development Reports, also supported by UNDP.
 
In each country office, the UNDP Resident Representative normally also serves as the Resident Coordinator of development activities for the United Nations system as a whole. Through such coordination, UNDP seeks to ensure the most effective use of UN and international aid resources.
 
Since 1966, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been partnering with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of live for everyone. UNDP works in four main areas: poverty reduction and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); democratic governance; crisis prevention and recovery; environment and sustainable development.
 
2015 is a critical year for the world. The UNDP, see 2015 as a huge opportunity to advance the global sustainable development agenda. World leaders have pledged to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including the overarching goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015. UNDP's network links and coordinates global and national efforts to reach these Goals, and to strengthen post-2015 frameworks for development, disaster risk reduction and climate change as they help shape global sustainable development for the next 15 years. UN Member States also met on 25 September to adopt the new Sustainable Development Goals, or Global Goals, which will guide global development priorities for the next 15 years.
 
UNDP also administers the UN Capital Development Fund that helps developing countries grow their economies by supplementing existing sources of capital assistance by means of grants and loans; and UN Volunteers, which fields over 6,000 volunteers from 160 countries in support of peace and development through volunteerism worldwide.
 
Sources:
 
- UNDP
 
- Economics For Everyone- Designing Development-Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Part 1 By Prof.M.Guruprasad, Aicar Business School
 
- Economist
 
- Wikipedia

Prof. M. Guruprasad,