Light at the end of the tunnel

The present development agenda is centred on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations (UN) in 2000. The MDGs summarised 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.

 

As the target date of the MDGs, 2015, is upon us, a debate on the framework of international development beyond 2015 has started. As such, 192 UN member states agreed at the Rio+20 summit to kick 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”, also calls for the goals to be integrated into the UN’s post-2015 Development Agenda. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) refer to an agreement of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 (Rio+20), to develop a set of future international development goals.

The UN General Assembly's Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals on 19 July 2014 forwarded to the Assembly its proposal for a set of SDGs. The proposal contains 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues, including ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests.

In the Rio+20 outcome document, member States agreed that sustainable development goals(SDGs) must:

1. Be based on Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.
2. Fully respect all the Rio Principles.
3. Be consistent with international law.
4. Build upon commitments already made.
5. Contribute to the full implementation of the outcomes of all major summits in the economic, social and environmental fields.
6. Focus on priority areas for the achievement of sustainable development, being guided by the outcome document.
7. Address and incorporate in a balanced way all three dimensions of sustainable development and their interlinkages.
8. Be coherent with and integrated into the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015.
9. Not divert focus or effort from the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
10. Include active involvement of all relevant stakeholders, as appropriate, in the process.

It was further agreed that SDGs must be:

• Action-oriented
• Concise
• Easy to communicate
• Limited in number
• Aspirational
• Global in nature
• Universally applicable to all countries while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities.

The outcome document further specifies that the development of SDGs should:

• Be useful for pursuing focused and coherent action on sustainable development
• Contribute to the achievement of sustainable development
• Serve as a driver for implementation and mainstreaming of sustainable development in the UN system as a whole
• Address and be focused on priority areas for the achievement of sustainable development.

As the curtain of the MDGs comes down, more developmental activities and projects are lined up. More like an upgrade, we can only hope for the best. The loopholes and setbacks that hindered the MDGs from fully being achieved should not be witnessed with the SDGs.

Aluta continua!