WHEN United Nations’ member states adopted the 2030 Agenda, they signalled with the title, “Transforming our World” that it should trigger fundamental changes in politics and society.
But, three years after its adoption, most governments have failed to turn the proclaimed transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda into real policies.
Even worse, the civil society report, “Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2018”, shows that policies in a growing number of countries are moving in the opposite direction, seriously undermining the spirit and the goals of the 2030 Agenda.
The problem is not a lack of global financial resources. On the contrary, in recent years we have experienced a massive growth and accumulation of individual and corporate wealth worldwide.
The policy choices that have enabled this unprecedented accumulation of wealth are the same fiscal and regulatory policies that led to the weakening of the public sector and produced extreme market concentration and socio-economic inequality.
The extreme concentration of wealth has not increased the resources that are available for sustainable development. As the World Inequality Report 2018 states, “Over the past decades, countries have become richer, but governments have become poor” due to a massive shift towards private capital.
But, even where public money is available, all too often public funds are not allocated in line with the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, but was spent for harmful or dubious purposes, be they environmentally harmful subsidies or excessive military expenditures.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), global military expenditure rose again in 2017, after five years of relatively unchanged spending, to US$ 1.739 trillion (RM6.98 trillion). In contrast, net ODA (Official Development Assistance) by members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) was only US$ 146.6 billion in 2017, thus less than one-tenth of global military spending.
“The world is over-armed while peace is underfunded,” states the Global Campaign on Military Spending. Particularly alarming has been the decision of North Altlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) member countries to increase military spending to at least two per cent of their national gross domestic product.
For European Nato members, this meant a minimum increase of €300 billion (RM1.413 trillion) per year, most likely at the expense of other parts of their national budgets. The two per cent goal represents a kind of “Un-Sustainable Development Goal”, and, is in sharp contradiction to the spirit of the 2030 Agenda.
Gaps and contradictions exist not only in fiscal policy and the provision of the financial means of implementation for the SDGs. The most striking examples are climate and energy policies.
Instead of tackling unsustainable production patterns and taking the “polluter pays principle” seriously, action is postponed, placing hope on technical solutions, including research on geo-engineering, that is, dangerous large-scale technological manipulations of the earth’s systems.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently called on member states to address the “dark side of innovation”. This includes the new challenges of cybersecurity threats, the intrusion into privacy by artificial intelligence, its impact on labour markets, and the use of military-related “cyberoperations” and “cyberattacks”.
The “dark side of innovation” could also be the leitmotif characterising the dominant fallacies about feeding the world through intensified industrial agriculture. While the prevailing industrial agriculture system has enabled increased yields, this has come at a great cost to the environment as well as to human health and animal welfare.
But, despite these gloomy perspectives, there is still room for change. Contradicting policies are not an extraordinary phenomenon. They simply reflect contradicting interests and power relations within and between societies, and these are in constant flux and can be changed.
Bold and comprehensive alternatives to business as usual exist in all areas of the 2030 Agenda, and it is up to progressive actors in governments, parliaments, civil society and the private sector to gain the hegemony in the societal discourse to be able to put them into practice. Some of the necessary political action and reforms are:
IMPLEMENTATION of 2030 Agenda and SDGs must be declared a top priority by heads of government. To date, the mainstream approach has been one of tackling its three dimensions in their own zones, complemented by (occasional) coordination between them. There is a need for a whole-of-government approach towards sustainability;
STRENGTHENING public finance at all levels. Widening public policy space requires, among other things, the necessary changes in fiscal policies. Hence, governments have to formulate SD Budgets in order to implement the SDGs. This includes, for example, taxing the extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources, and adopting forms of progressive taxation that prioritise the rights and welfare of poor and low-income people. Fiscal policy space can be further broadened by the elimination of corporate tax incentives, and the phasing out of harmful subsidies, particularly in the areas of industrial agriculture and fishing, fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Military spending should be reduced, and the resource savings reallocated, inter alia, for civil conflict prevention and peace-building;
IMPROVING regulation for sustainability and human rights. Governments have too often weakened themselves by adopting policies of deregulation or “better regulation” and trusted in corporate voluntarism and self-regulation of “the markets”. Hence, there is a need for a legally binding instrument. The Human Rights Council took a milestone decision in establishing an intergovernmental working group to elaborate such an instrument (or treaty). Governments should take this treaty process seriously and engage actively in it. The expected start of the negotiation process in October 2018 offers an historic opportunity for governments to demonstrate that they put human rights over the interests of big business; and,
CLOSING global governance gaps and strengthening the institutional framework for sustainable development. The effectiveness of the required policy reforms depends on the existence of strong, well-equipped public institutions at national and international levels. It is essential to reflect the overarching character of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs in the institutional arrangements of governments and Parliaments. IPS
The writer is director of Global Policy Forum, and coordinates the Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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