Sustainable Development Goals – the new Framework for Development
July 2013
Sustainable Development Goals – the new framework for development
Cynnal Cymru is to make available information sheets, challenging pieces of thinking, good research and
other generally interesting publications.
It is part of our aim to inform and challenge current thinking, especially in the complex field of sustainability.
This is the first of at least two Think Pieces on the development of international protocols, this being a
generally informative “background” piece on the route to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)and then
towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The second will seek to expand on how Wales can respond to the SDG challenges.
This piece is written for us by Felix Dodds, an internationally renowned figure with significant expertise and
knowledge on sustainability, now based in the USA. Felix’s blog is at
http://earthsummit2012.blogspot.co.uk/
Introduction
The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, otherwise known as the
Earth Summit, agreed on two climate and biodiversity conventions: the Rio Principles to guide policy
making and Agenda 21,1 a forty-chapter blueprint for sustainability in the 21st century.
Agenda 21 had a number of goals, targets and action plans to help on the sustainable development
journey. It also identified nine stakeholder groups that they called Major Groups2, making the Earth
Summit the first UN Conference to identify stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities. These Major
Groups played an important role in bringing sustainable development to the local level through the
development of local agenda 21s and regional and national sustainable development strategies.
The United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 brought together the largest number of Heads of
State to ever attend a UN Summit and it is where they agreed to eight Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs).3 Designed to help address the development challenges facing developing countries,
the MDGs are a global monitoring framework to assess the progress in reducing poverty, using a set
of targets and indicators. In the period since 2000 to 2010, aid flows more than doubled and focused
at trying to deliver these goals and targets.
MDGs and their impact
Until the global financial crisis in 2008, it looked very likely that nearly all the MDGs would be
reached by 2015. The progress towards the goals had been uneven; there were significant changes
in large Asian countries that saw rapid economic growth, such as India and China, but large parts of
Africa in particular still needed considerable work. After 2000, developed governments’ aid
1
Agenda 21 can be read online here:
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
2
The Major groups are: Youth and children, workers and trade unions, Indigenous Peoples, women, nongovernmental organizations, farmers, scientific and technical community, business and industry and local
authorities
3
Millennium Development Goals can be read online at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
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Sustainable Development Goals – the new Framework for Development
July 2013
departments focused a large proportion of their aid to deliver the goals. There is evidence aid was
most effective in countries with strong policies and institutions4.
The financial crisis (2008) saw many governments reduce their development aid and the Netherlands
became the first country that had previously given aid above the UN target of 0.7 percent to fall
below the target. On the other hand, the UK – with all-party support -- will reach the 0.7 percent UN
aid target for the first time in 2013 having ring-fenced the aid budget.5
The overall assessment in 2012 was that:
MDG1, on halving those in absolute poverty, had been reached. MDG2 on education parity of girls
and boys has been reached at the primary level. MDG 7’s target on halving those without access to
water was reached, although the sanitation target was not. MDG7’s target on slum dwellers was also
reached eight years ahead of its target date of 2020. Many of the other targets are in danger of
backward movement as we approach 20156.
In preparation for the 2015 United Nations Summit to review progress and set new goals, the UN
Secretary General set up a number of processes. These were:
 National consultations in over 100 countries – the European Union ran an online
consultation;
 Eleven thematic consultations7
These would feed into a High Level Panel on post-2015, chaired by the UK Prime Minister and the
Presidents of Liberia and Indonesia
What about Rio+20?
Rio+20 was painted by much of the media and some NGOs as a failure. It was not, and may go down
as the turning point in securing sustainable development as the main organizing concept of the
twenty first century. The process leading up to Rio had looked hopeless: the previous five years had
seen the failure at two UN Commissions on Sustainable Development (CSD) in 2007 and 2011 and
the failure at the Copenhagen climate meeting in 2009. But Rio+20, instead, put in place a new set of
building blocks to move towards a more sustainable future.
New Building Blocks
The first building block was reform of the global institutions on environment and sustainable
development. Over the last forty years for UNEP and over the last twenty years for the CSD, it had
become clear that both were beyond their selling date. The UN Environment Programme was made
into a UN universal body and the CSD was to be closed down and replaced by a High Level Political
Forum (HLPF). The HLPF will meet every four years at Heads of State level.
4
UNDP Report:
http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/Poverty%20Reduction/Inclusive%20development/Towards%
20Human%20Resilience/Towards_SustainingMDGProgress_Ch5.pdf
5
Budget speech: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/budget-2013-chancellors-statement
6
UN Press Release:
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/Press%20Release%20MDG%20Report%202012.pdf
7
Eleven thematic consultations: Conflict and Fragility, Education, Environmental Sustainability, Governance,
Growth and employment, Health, Hunger, food and nutrition security, Inequalities, Population Dynamics,
Energy and Water. Available online at: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/area-ofwork/post2015.shtml
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Another very important building block that Rio+20 set in motion was an intergovernmental open
working group (OWG) to develop sustainable development goals (SDG). These SDGs would be at the
centre of any new goals agreed in 2015. Unlike the 2000 Millennium Summit where the goals only
applied to developing countries, and the environment was an afterthought, these new goals would
place due focus on the environment and would be universal – meaning ALL countries would have to
address them and would be judged on their progress. The SDG OWG would produce its report for
the United Nations General Assembly in September 2014. This would start a one-year process to
agree on new goals and targets by September 2015.
To finance these new goals, Rio+20 set up another intergovernmental process, an expert committee
on financing sustainable development, to work parallel to the SDG OWG. The financing process
would be undertaken parallel to the development of the goals instead of waiting until the new goals
are agreed upon to ensure the funding is already in place.
The world has measured gross in the past by the gross domestic product a country produces. Rio+20
also recognized the need for broader progress indicators to complement gross domestic product in
order to better inform policy decisions. The conference agreed upon a ten-year programme on
sustainable consumption and production, another important building block, to securing a more
sustainable future.
These building blocks were vital to help re-establish sustainable development as a credible concept.
In addition, Rio+20 dealt with the green economy but progress was not as successful in this sector.
This was the first time that the economy had been discussed in the sustainable development
conferences since 1972, even though the 1972 UN Stockholm Environment Conference did have as
an input the Club of Rome’s seminal report ‘Limits to Growth8’. Some developing countries were
worried about the commodification of nature, so they blocked the conference making long-term
green economy decisions. Rio+20, however, did see 50 companies and countries, including the UK,
agreeing to have natural capital accounts published yearly.
Concurrently to Rio+20 were a number of significant events and publications that will help shape our
approach to a more sustainable future. One of the most important was the work of the Stockholm
Resilience Centre to identify a set of nine planetary boundaries that we should not exceed. Three of
which, climate, biodiversity and nitrogen cycle, we already have exceeded to the detriment of the
health of the planet and its people9. This was supplemented by the work of Oxfam that suggested
any planetary boundaries would also need to recognise a set of social foundations10 and that
between these two was a safe and just operating space for humanity. To underpin the work on
planetary boundaries, the global science community reorganized themselves into a new front called
Future Earth11.
The Rio+20 outcome document also recognized the increased inter-linkages between food security,
energy security and water security – known as the Nexus. Over the last ten years it has become
clearer that there are a number of key drivers that are going to impact on the availability of water,
energy and food in the future. These include: growing urbanization, rising consumption rates in the
emerging economies like India and China and population increase of 2 billion by 2050. If things
continue this way:
8
Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth available online at: http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=326
Planetary boundaries available online at: http://www.stockholmresilience.org/planetary-boundaries
10
Oxfam Doughnut available online at: http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/video/2012/introducing-doughnutsafe-and-just-space-humanity
11
Future Earth available online: http://www.icsu.org/future-earth
9
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Sustainable Development Goals – the new Framework for Development
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July 2013
Agriculture will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050
Primary energy needs will increase by 50 percent by 2035
Demand for water will exceed global availability by 40 percent in 203012
High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the global development agenda beyond 2015
Set up in 2011 by the UN Secretary General, the High Level Panel was chaired by the UK Prime
Minister and the Presidents of Liberia and Indonesia. The panel met five times and conducted strong
outreach for input to over 100 national consultations on 11 issue-based themes, as well as additional
meetings with stakeholders throughout. The panel made its report on the 30 May, building strongly
on the previous panel set up by the UN Secretary General for the Rio+20 conference, the Global
Sustainability Panel. That panel had made a number of suggestions that were developed further by
this current panel. One of these was that all companies with a turnover of over $100 million should
by 2030 be producing sustainability reports. This was a campaign spearheaded for Rio+20 by AVIVA
from industry and Stakeholder Forum, an international NGO, both UK domiciled.
An overview of what goals are being suggested
There are a number of lists of possible sustainable development goals that have already been
suggested. In Annex 2 there is a list of four sets from:




UN Secretary Generals High Level Panel
Stockholm Resilience Centre
Sustainable Development Solutions Network
UN DPI NGO Conference (2011)
What is emerging is a set of core thematic areas where goals most likely are:
 Poverty
 Education
 Health
 Water
 Energy
 Food and Agriculture
 Employment
It is unclear if gender or governance will have separate goals or will be cross-cutting or both. Beyond
this core group, we will see considerable pressure for additional ones on sustainable consumption
and production, sustainable cities, and possibly one on oceans and seas. It is also unclear how areas
that have conventions, such as climate change and biodiversity will be dealt with. Biodiversity
already has a set of targets and indicators agreed in 2010.
For further information, please see the United Nation’s SDG site:
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?menu=1300
Attached are two Annexes, one to help explain terms, the other to identify certain bodies and their
areas of competence.
12
Understanding the Nexus: http://www.water-energy-food.org/en/whats_the_nexus/background.html
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Sustainable Development Goals – the new Framework for Development
July 2013
Annex 1
Term
How it is used in this Report
Goal
Expresses an ambitious, but specific, commitment. Always starts with a verb/action.
Targets
Quantified sub-components that will contribute in a major way to achievement of goal.
Should be an outcome variable.
Indicators
Precise metric from identified databases to assess if target is being met (often multiple
indicators are used).
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Sustainable Development Goals – the new Framework for Development
July 2013
Annex 2
Stockholm Resilience
Centre
UN High Level Panel on
post-2015
Governance for
Sustainable Societies
Ensure Good Governance
and Effective Institutions
Universal Clean Energy
Secure Sustainable
Energy
Sustainable Food
Security
Ensure Food Security and
Good Nutrition
Sustainable Water
Security
Achieve Universal Access
to Water and Sanitation
Healthy and Productive
Ecosystems
Manage Natural
Resource Assets
Sustainably
Thriving lives and
Livelihoods
Create Jobs, Sustainable
Livelihoods, and
Equitable Growth
End Poverty
Empower Girls and
Women and Achieve
Gender Equality
Provide Quality
Education and Lifelong
Learning
Ensure Healthy lives
Sustainable
Development Solutions
Network
Transform Governance
for Sustainable
Development
Curb Human-Induced
Climate Change and
Ensure Sustainable
Energy
Improve Agriculture
Systems and Raise Rural
Prosperity
UN DPI NGO Conference
2011
Governance covering
access to information,
participation and
environmental justice
Climate Sustainability and
Clean Energy
Sustainable agriculture
Universal availability of an
acceptable quantity and
quality of water – right to
water and sanitation
Secure Ecosystem
Services and Biodiversity,
and Ensure Good
Management of Water
and Other Natural
Resources
Biodiversity and healthy
forests
Sustainable livelihoods,
youth and education
Ending Extreme Poverty
Ensure Effective Learning
for all Children and Youth
for Life and Livelihood
Achieving Health and
Wellbeing at all Ages
Ensure Stable and
Peaceful Societies
Create a Global Enabling
Environment and
Catalyze Long-Term
Finance
Achieve development
within Planetary
Boundaries
Empower Inclusive,
Productive, and Resilient
Cities
Green cities
Sustainable consumption
and production
Healthy seas and oceans
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