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June 9, 2015

Sustainable Development Goals are not fit for purpose, experts warn

SPECIAL REPORT/ The United Nations has drawn up a list of 169 targets to replace the Millennium Development Goals, which expire at the end of this year. Experts have warned that this will stretch development budgets too far, and not provide value for money. EurActiv France reports.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 169 targets defined by the United Nations (UN) will be presented for adoption at the organisation's New York summit in September.

But the new SDGs, which will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), are not to everyone's taste. Critics argue that quality should not be sacrificed for quantity.

Excessive list
The sheer scale of the proposed objectives has already drawn criticism from many quarters. "We can say they are ambitious, too ambitious perhaps, when you consider the failures of the last 15 years," a source from the NGO Aide et Action stated, in reference to the moderate success of the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs were just eight goals and 21 targets.

The new SDGs are not only more numerous, but also more complex and more difficult to implement than their predecessors. One side effect of this abundant new list of targets may be to reduce the priority of issues like poverty, nutrition and education, which were the backbone of the previous MDGs.

Bjørn Lomborg, the founder of Copenhagen Consensus Centre, said, "Promising everything to everyone gives us no direction. Having 169 priorities is like having none at all."

Another concern is the extent of the finances needed in order to achieve such a long list of targets. Estimated at $135 to $195 billion per year for the eradication of poverty, and $5 to $7 trillion a year for infrastructure investments, the cost of the new SDGs would massively exceed the current global development aid budget.

Read more at EurActiv.com.

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