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Agreement Reached on Outcome Document for the UN’s Post-2015 Development Agenda; UN Conference on Financing for Development Completed

AGREEMENT REACHED ON OUTCOME DOCUMENT FOR THE UN’S POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA; UN CONFERENCE ON FINANCING FOR DEVELOPMENT COMPLETED

As reported in CES Musings in our immediately preceding issue, 2015 is a signal year for sustainability with these highlight events:

  1. June 4-7, 2015 – Conference on “Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization,” Pomona College, Claremont, California.
  2. June 18, 2015 – Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si’ On Care for Our Common Home.”[1]
  3. July 13-16 – Third International Conference on Financing for Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
  4. September 25-27 – United Nations Summit to Adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
  5. October 15-19, Parliament of the World’s Religions, Salt Lake City, Utah.
  6. November 30 to December 11 – United Nations Climate Change Conference, Paris, France

 See reports on Items 1&2 elsewhere in this issue. In this article, we will focus on Items 3&4.

 UN POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

 Agreement on the Outcome Document for the UN’s Post-2015 development agenda was reached on August 2, 2014. This occurred at the end of the Eighth Session of Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The document is titled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” and is available here. The document will be submitted to September 25-27, 2015, UN Summit to Adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda, in New York, where it will presented for adoption by the UN General Assembly. When the UN calls a meeting a “summit” it means that it is expected that 100+ heads of state of the 193 member nations will attend the meeting.

In 2000 the UN held the Millennium Summit and out of that event emerged the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs) to prioritize development efforts through 2015. In June 2012 at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, work on a successor set of Goals to be called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) began in earnest. The MDGs focused on poverty reduction and other issues in developing countries. The SDGs were also to address conditions in developed countries that adversely affected global development, such as sustainable consumption and production and greenhouse gas emissions among others.

After Rio+20 a global process began to come to agreement on the SDGs. This process is described in this report. What came out of the process was an expansive, integrated global program of development comprised of 17 Goals and 169 targets beneath those Goals. Adoption of these Goals and targets by the UN will not result in binding obligations by the member nations. Rather they will be recommended by the UN to the member states for implementation by them. In this sense the Outcome Document will be a “soft” power, rather than a “hard” power document, but both the adoption of the agenda and its implementation will have important consequences. With regard to consequences, among other things global statistics will be kept on each nation’s progress on the targets; the SDGs will influence grant making by both private foundations and governments; and the SDGs will shape the dialogue on the meaning of development.

The Preamble to the Outcome Document is significant and is repeated below:

Preamble

This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognise that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.

All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan. We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what these did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.

The foals and targets will stimulate action over the next fifteen years in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet:

People

We are determined to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment.

Planet

We are determined to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations.

Prosperity

We are determined to ensure that all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.

Peace

We are determined to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies which are free from fear and violence. There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.

Partnership

We are determined to mobilize the means required to implement this Agenda through a revitalised Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, based on a spirit of strengthened global solidarity, focused in particular on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and with the participation of all countries, all stakeholders and all people.

The interlinkages and integrated nature of the Sustainable Development Goals are of crucial importance in ensuring that the purpose of the new Agenda is realised. If we realize our ambitions across the full extent of the Agenda, the lives of all will be profoundly improved and our world will be transformed for the better.

The 17 Goals of the Post-2015 agenda are as follows:

Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*

Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

*Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.

UN Conference on Financing for Development Completed

The Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 13, 16, 2015. The conference was an intended prologue to the September UN summit on the post-2015 development agenda. In a colloquial way one could describe what this conference was about as: “Who’s going to pay for this?”

To say the least it’s an important question. Good intentions will not lead to realization of the SDGs. One ball park estimate of the cost of implementation over the next 15 years is $3-4 trillion. Whatever the actual number is, it’s big.

The official document released at the end of FfD3 was “The Addis Ababa Action Agenda” (AAAA).

There were a lot of issues involved in the financing negotiations. Developing countries felt that too much was left to the private sector and to same country resources in the AAAA and the commitments made by the developed countries fell short. Nonetheless, for those who maintain an optimistic stance toward the post-2015 development agenda and its implementation, FfD3 did its job by affirming the shared obligation of financing global implementation of the SDGs.

This report from Earth Negotiations Bulleting (August 5, 2015, vol. 32, no. 20, pages 24-25) gives a flavor of the negotiations:

Sustainable development still suffers from a lack of clarity. Is it different from the development track? Is it mainly about the environment? Is it something new, or a big umbrella that covers everything? Is it a step on the way to poverty eradication, or a result of it? Even at this meeting that was supposed to be elaborating a sustainable development agenda, comments indicated that not all delegates shared a common working definition of the concept.

This lack of consensus on the meaning of sustainable development was demonstrated when some delegates called for the title of the agenda to encompass “poverty eradication and sustainable development.” Doing so would have set poverty eradication as a counterpoint to sustainable development, and maintain the “silos” that so many wanted to dismantle. Instead, the agreed title, “Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” maintains sustainable development as the all-encompassing framework, in which “eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty,” is the greatest global challenge.

Differences in interpretation also pervaded the financial commitments around development and sustainable development. Until the last moments of the FfD3 negotiations leading up to the Addis Ababa conference in July, for example, governments argued about whether to title that outcome document “financing for development” or “financing for sustainable development.” (The agreed title was “financing for development post- 2015.”) And discussions in the final round of post-2015 negotiations were fraught with competing outlooks on the means of implementation to support the agenda. Had the AAAA succeeded in expanding the development financing framework to encompass the entire sustainable development agenda, to the point where no other arrangements were needed? Or did the SDGs require more? Many developed countries considered the AAAA to be enough. Many developing countries, on the other hand, asserted the latter, and called for greater attention on trade, debt and technology in order to implement the SDGs. This was a key difference of opinion underlying the debates over whether the AAAA would be described as “integral” to the agenda, considered the entire means of implementation pillar of the agenda, or as “supporting and complementing” the agenda.

The tension between the environmental and development tracks was also reflected in the heated debate on the scope of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR). Developed countries insisted that CBDR applies only in the environmental context and is not appropriate in the post-2015 development agenda, calling for it to be replaced by the principle of “shared responsibility.” Developing countries, in contrast, called for making CBDR the overarching principle of the post-2015 development agenda.

[1]The encyclical is dated May 24, 2015. It was published on June 18, 2015.