Comments on: The SDGs are just getting interesting – what needs to happen next to make them have impact?

By: Pedro Monreal

Pedro Monreal — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 19:02:20 +0000

One problem that might exist (for achieving traction) is the mismatch between the wording of some goals and the priorities that people have been indicating, as in the case of the MYWORLD 2015 Survey http://data.myworld2015.org/
The survey has consistently shown over many months that “an honest and responsive government” has been the top fourth priority, lagging only behind education, health and jobs, and even one place above “affordable and nutritious food”. However, the ADG # 16, usually called the “governance goal” (accountability, corruption, transparency, etc.) is being worded now in such a way that good governance has become invisible in the SDGs. Chances are that in the absence of good governance, the other goals would not be attained. Thus a research agenda should probably aso include why some important preferences did not find their way into goals during the negotiating process.

By: Duncan Green

Duncan Green — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 09:16:39 +0000

Look forward to your power analysis on that one, Chris……. All the messages from the SDG process are that northern negotiators still see this as about ‘them’ (i.e. developing countries), and not universalism. Absent any teeth, even the kind you get in ratified conventions, hard to see how the SDGs are going to galvanize action on global collective action problems from players that would otherwise not participate.

By: Chris Roche

Chris Roche — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 08:55:20 +0000

Duncan doesn’t the ‘leave no-one behind agenda’ and the universal focus of SDGs provide an opportunity to move the narrative from aid to international cooperation? Arguably we all need to co-invest in learning about how to address common problems (climate change, domestic violence, inequality, poverty etc). Such a narrative might combine enlightened self-interest and the common good in ways that are potentially more transformational and less transactional, than “raising money here to send over there to make ‘them’ more like us”.