Is the U.N. plan to improve the world a failure?

The transition from MDGs to SDGs: a global vision for poverty, health, development and climate re-assessment

World leaders this week vowed to redouble their efforts on an ambitious plan to end poverty and protect the environment, which is woefully behind schedule.

The SDGs replaced the Millennium Development Goals, which expired in 2015. The new goals offered a different approach and an even more ambitious vision that applied to every country in the world, not just the so-called “developing” ones.

The UN Secretary-General has called for a plan to channel 500 billion dollars a year towards sustainable development. The World Bank is being reformed so it can lend more money to countries for health, development and climate- related investments.

An anti-poverty agenda dominated by a few experts was transformed into a more open, global discussion about what people around the world need to thrive. In the transition from the MDGs to the SDGs, a much broader range of voices took ownership of the agenda, and the mindset around development shifted from one of charity to one of common aspirations.

She is of the opinion that no final take-it-or- leave-it deadline should be seen in 2020. The end goal of the millennium isn’t an end goal according to the head of Latin American activites of the Nature Conservancy. It is a milestone.

One of the GSDR authors agrees with sociologists, including Shirin Malekpour. “What needs to change is what we are doing, not the targets and the goals,” says Malekpour, who is at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

She says that the Paris climate agreement is the same as the SDGs despite the fact that they were born of different political processes.

If you don’t deal withclimate you can’t meet theSDG, and she says that is the only way to deliver on climate mitigation and adaptation.

Does That Make It A Failure? The U.N. Plan to Improve the World by 2030 Is Failing. Does that make it a failure?

Not only are you way offtrack when it comes to achieving most of the things you committed to in your 15-year life improvement plan, but in some cases you’ve even slid back since the beginning of the plan. Maybe you faced an unexpected illness. Maybe you had a rough time in the past. Maybe you got some bad financial advice. Maybe you just didn’t try hard enough.

What conclusion would you make? Would you be worse off without your goals? Should you scrap your detailed plan or double down and try to make up for lost time?

It should be meaningful that the world leaders who got together in 2015, agreed to ambitious goals, but failed to take action to achieve them.

169 are the specific targets for the countries to achieve through the goals. One of the seven different targets for ending poverty is to create social protection systems, as well as guaranteeing equal economic rights for males and females, and delivering reliable amounts of international aid to countries that need it.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global inflation and debt distress, a food security crisis and worsening climate-related disasters — what many have called a “perfect storm” of challenges that have left the SDG agenda nearly underwater.

In the last year, half of the 140 targets that the United Nations can measure has been weak or insufficient according to a report by the UN. If current trends continue, 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, 128.5 million children will still suffer from stunting — developmental issues that result from chronic undernutrition — and 84 million children and young people will still be out of school.

“Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said earlier this year.

Most world leaders have responded to the dire picture by renewing their agenda and calling for more money and political will to get the goals back on track.

“Now is the moment to recommit to bold and transformative change, and to do this with urgency,” Linda Thomas Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., said last week.

Source: The U.N. plan to improve the world by 2030 is failing. Does that make it a failure?

Top-Down Development Planning in the Era of U.N. Aid and Security: a Conversation with Benjamin Easterly and Michael Igoe

Professor William Easterly of the New York University says that top-down development planning is not really a useful approach to meeting goals.

“Maybe it is helpful for some things,” he conceded, noting that he was encouraged by the shift away from paternalism.

The reasons we’re falling behind are because they were so ambitious. Kenny said that while they might have had the technical ability to deliver on them, we didn’t follow that up with a huge policy agenda all over the world.

Kenny said it would be a miracle if the world were on track to achieve the goals, but the powerful people should not get away with not trying hard enough.

The adoption of the SDGs also marked a turning point for the U.N., said Minh-Thu Pham, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was closely involved in the agenda’s creation.

“There was a moment of unity, and you don’t have to think hard to recognize it,” he said. TheSDG remind us that there is a path to get back on track for global trust between governments, people and their governments.

Michael Igoe is a senior reporter with Devex, where he has covered foreign aid policy and politics since 2013. He holds a variety of education degrees, including an undergraduate degree in Russian and a graduate degree in international development from the University of Montana.