Announcing release of the final MDG progress report last week, Forum Secretary General Dame Meg Taylor praised Pacific governments for their ‘substantial progress’ in meeting the development goals, and offered a modest excuse for the lack of performance measured in many areas, particularly in poverty reduction, gender equality, and environment improvements: ‘The MDGs were global goals and applying them at the national level was difficult. In addition many of the MDG indicators did not suit the national context.’

I suggest a different way of evaluating lack of progress on MDGs. Juxtapose the Forum’s MDG assessment with the following headlines: ‘Another PNG MP to stand trial for fraud,’ ‘14 Vanuatu MPs heading to jail,’ ‘Eight sacked over government fraud in Solomon Islands,’ ‘Widespread fraud suspected in Marshall Islands government departments,’ ‘Green light for former Cooks minister to be tried,’ and so on.

It starts from the top and rolls down the line of government workers who view ‘government money’ or aid funding as a pot of money to put in their own pockets. Unfortunately, anti-corruption institutions and enforcement systems are weak in most islands such that there are more government leaders and workers focused on manipulating government finance systems for their own benefit than there are people and resources attempting to enforce accountability and rule of law.

Speaking last week about the Marshall Islands’ membership in the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, Auditor General Junior Patrick confirmed this concern about the reliability of enforcement systems. He said the initial UN review of government systems shows there is a framework in place for preventing corruption. But, he added, he would like to see the UN anti-corruption review go a step further “to see if implementation is effective, what is the time frame for investigations and prosecutions, and what resources are available (for accountability efforts). We have a framework, but is it functional?” For small island countries in particular, where enforcement capability is modest, this is the $100 question.

These same political leaders and personnel in government ministries and agencies—mentioned in the headlines above—were supposedly responsible for delivering performance on the Millennium Development Goals, development plans, and a host of other government services. But when large numbers of government officials are focused on personal instead of national interests, it is obvious their nations are not going to be effectively implementing poverty reduction schemes or gender equality goals.

In an earlier blog in this space, I commented: ‘Corruption comes in many forms: coming late and leaving early but getting fulltime pay, not carrying out the mission of a government office, manipulating tenders and funds for personal interest, and seeing some or all of the above and doing nothing about it.’

From the many corruption investigations, some of which have led to high-profile prosecutions in the region, we now know that leaders in many countries are running government as if it is their personal business. So when people talk about island leaders and saying things such as, ‘Strong political leadership and commitment’ is what is needed to make progress, are we simply kidding ourselves? Political leadership and commitment for what agenda? We simply cannot continue to ignore the fact that widespread corruption is undermining rule of law and slowing progress to a crawl in many countries. The imprisonment of 14 Vanuatu MPs is a landmark anti-corruption development for the Pacific. But over recent past years, penalties in the region for corrupt actions by politicians have been modest to non-existent in many islands, reinforcing a prevailing message, at least at high levels of government, that crime does, indeed, pay.

So eight of the 14 Forum members managed to implement only two or fewer MDGs. In September, all the countries in our region signed onto the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promising to implement these over the next 15 years. We could not manage seven MDGs and now we’ve got 17 SDGs, with 169 targets—who exactly is going to make these 17 SDGs a reality in our islands? This is not to say that public health professionals, doctors, educators, community development specialists, and staff at the Forum Secretariat are not committed to making improvements in their respective islands. The point is that for them to be successful, they have to have the attention and support of political leaders. Yet many of these leaders appear to be more focused on self-interested business deals or embezzling aid funding than they are on implementing national development priorities.

Only two nations—Cook Islands and Niue—met all seven MDG targets, while Palau accomplished six. These nations should be recognized for this laudatory performance and probably the most helpful development for the rest of the Pacific islands would be for this trio to convene a working group to identify and share the ingredients that allowed for their success so that other countries in the region can see if there is anything in the Cook Islands/Niue/Palau models that would work elsewhere. Still, until corruption is minimized and rule of law is emphasized, getting traction on the new SDGs is going to be a challenge in many islands.

Caption: The Vanuatu bribery case has made headlines across the region (pictured here). The Vanuatu Appeal Court will deliver its ruling next Friday on appeals by 14 MPs jailed on bribery convictions.

We want to hear what people across the Pacific think about these new goals. This short survey explains the new goals and gives people across the Pacific the chance to rate their relevance and help track progress. The more we know about the goals, the more we can hold our leaders to account to implement them.

Your response will remain anonymous and will help assess where Pacific countries and territories currently stand in relation to the goals, and provide feedback to our leaders and policy makers as progress is made – or not as the case may be.

We aim to keep the survey running (online and offline) over the next couple of years and will periodically report on results. These reports will be made public and shared with national governments and regional organisations.

This survey is an initiative of the Pacific Institute of Public Policy in association with RMIT University, and has been approved by the RMIT Human Research Ethics Committee. More information about the survey is available in the Participant Information Sheet.

If you are 16 years or older, from a Pacific country or territory, and happy to participate you can have your say by starting the survey here.

Three years in the making, the new goals set an ambitious agenda to apply to every country over the next 15 years. Now the hard part – implementing the 17 goals and 169 targets in 193 countries.

The new agenda moves us on from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expire at the end of the year, and which were essentially a tool to focus aid delivery. This time, every country will have to apply the new goals to their own national context. Funding the new agenda will be a mix of domestic resource allocation and new development partnerships.

For small countries it will mean prioritising, without cherry picking, goals. What that means in reality is unclear as we are all charting new territory when it comes to implementing this agenda. What we do know, and the new agenda recognises, is that development is a continuing spectrum – not something that can be achieved by merely copying the practices of others. And history tells us that imposed solutions rarely get traction – no matter how well intentioned or how deep the evidence base may be. So the fact that the new agenda is founded on country stewardship is to be celebrated.

Unlike the eight MDGs, which were conceived behind closed doors, the new agenda is the product of exhaustive intergovernmental negotiations, which included extensive consultations with civil society and business groups. Given the competing national and issue-based interests, it is unsurprising then that the list of new goals is vastly expanded from their predecessors. There were many vibrant debates among UN member states and across civil society about what should and should not be included. Not all ideological differences were settled, and perhaps for the first time the agenda was not dictated by a small group of powerful nations. In fact in some cases, it was a small group of small countries that held sway.

The Pacific bloc in the United Nations (the Pacific Small Island Developing States – PSIDS) championed a goal on oceans, and as part of the Alliance of Small Island States (which was chaired by Nauru throughout the 2014 Open Working Group) led the call for a goal to tackle climate change. For our countries, perhaps more aptly referred to as large ocean states, these two goals are essential elements of sustainable development.

Our regional neighbour, Timor-Leste, defied ardent opposition to be the primary proponent for a goal on peace, justice and strong institutions. Drawing on the reality of building a nation state from scratch, Timor-Leste’s recent experience of peace-building and state-building has demonstrated that without sustained peace there can be no sustainable development. Without capable and accountable institutions we cannot make the leap from goal setting to managing our economies to deliver the services and build the infrastructure our people need. Goal 16 on peaceful, inclusive societies is now widely viewed as being the ‘powerhouse from which all other action will flow’ and underpins the success of the whole agenda. Perhaps not surprising given the state of the world, most recently exemplified by the massive displacement and migration of people from Syria.

Our governments will be the primary custodians of this new agenda, but they cannot operate in isolation of national, regional and international partners. If we are serious about being the first generation to eradicate extreme poverty and the last to suffer the scourge of climate change, then we must hold our leaders to their national and international commitments to properly resource the implementation of this agenda. We will have to track our progress, and share our learning at home and abroad. More than ever, we need an active civil society to be actively engaged in renewed national conversations that will chart our own development pathways.

To start these conversations in the Pacific, PiPP has teamed up with RMIT University to launch a short survey that will tell you about the goals and what they seek to achieve, and give you the chance to rate the relevance of the goals and how your country is fairing against the targets. We aim to continue this survey (both online and offline) over the coming years and to periodically extract information in public reports to national governments and regional organisations. The aim is to get a broad understanding of the goals and how best to prioritise actions in our region, and to provide feedback to our policymakers and implementers on our progress.

We should be very proud of the achievements of our representatives in New York. The contributions from the PSIDS and Timor-Leste were instrumental in ensuring the transformative nature of this agenda. Not only for the inclusion of the goals on peace and institutions, oceans and climate change, but by ushering in a new era of global engagement. By showing that no matter how small and under resourced, small island countries can shape the international agenda.

Now all of us at home need to take the lead and actively shape the means of implementation. Otherwise the hard fought gains will be lost, and it will be back to business as usual – leaving others to determine our fate for us.

The 17 new sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets are intended to provide the ‘transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path’ and in doing so ‘free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet’ by 2030.

A tall order perhaps, but the transformation has already commenced.

Firstly, the extraordinarily inclusive and collegial process that has given rise to the new agenda has re-calibrated the norms of intergovernmental negotiations. A key aspect of the discussions that have taken place over the last two years has been the many and varied voices that have not just had their say, but have been heard and have shaped the new agenda.

Timor-Leste, for example, as one of the newest members of the UN, was instrumental in securing Goal 16 on peace, justice and effective institutions. The Pacific bloc doggedly pursued the inclusion of Goal 13 on climate change and Goal 14 on the conservation and sustainable use of our oceans.

While some have argued that the breadth of the SDGs is troublesome, it is the very inclusion of development issues such as peace, oceans and climate change that makes this agenda transformative. Reaching far beyond the MDGs, the new goals and targets map a necessarily wide range of economic, social and environmental objectives. For the first time this has been done in a manner that recognises the deep interlinkages and mutually reinforcing nature of the agenda. To put it plainly, development is complex and we should not apologise for the complexity of the agenda – we should celebrate it.

The elevated level of ambition of the SDGs is further marked by their universality. Unlike the MDGS, which were a set of actions to be done by or for ‘developing countries’, the new goals will apply to every country. But that does not imply uniformity in application, as each country will need to tailor the agenda to their own national context and priorities. This will add to the complexity of measuring global success (or otherwise) against the new goals. However, it should also move us beyond the neat, but somewhat simplistic, dashboard reporting system of the MDGs. The follow up and review of the new agenda is predicated on regional peer learning rather than a global naming and shaming exercise.

The 2030 agenda for sustainable development contains a number of transformative elements to deliver a much needed paradigm shift in how we go about the business of development. Much will hinge on how it is implemented – and for that to be successful our national and regional planners and policy makers must be focusing on that as a matter of priority. We need to build on the momentum of the last two years to continue to chart our own development path. In that light, the new goals can support – and not subordinate – national and regional development plans.

The new goals and targets will be formally adopted by world leaders at a special UN summit from 25-27 September in New York, and will come into effect on 1 January 2016.

After the usual preliminaries between a visiting reporter and a seasoned political figure, Mangefel offered a blunt evaluation of development progress in his nation. This was only a handful of years into the FSM’s first Compact of Free Association funding package with the United States and a period when producing five-year national development plans was the routine. ‘Western-style economic development won’t work in the FSM,’ Mangefel told me as we sat in his office in Palikir, the seat of the FSM government in Pohnpei. ‘Why not?’ was the obvious response. ‘It’s simple,’ Mangefel said. ‘In the FSM, if you work, you eat. If you don’t work, you still eat.’ His point was, of course, that there was little incentive for the 40-hour work week ethic required by strategic planners when local folks could eat at their uncle’s house anytime they wanted.

Although Mangefel was the national planner, in essence he was telling me that the lofty economic goals spelled out in the government’s five-year development plans wouldn’t be realized, not as written, not as carried out, for the fact that these paper documents had little relationship to the ‘lifestyle’—for lack of a better word—in the FSM, which mirrored how people lived in most islands in the region. Nevertheless, most people in government offices nominally charged with carrying out these development plans went through the motions of implementing western-style programs funded by donors, rarely offering as candid a view as the late Yap governor or attempting to reshape obviously unworkable plans. While island culture is often at odds with objectives laid out in modern planning, newer developments have added to the challenge of creating sustainable development or, even, delivery of essential health and education services.

Mangefel’s comment to me was 25 years ago. In the interim, a culture of overseas travel has engaged government workers, supported and funded largely by donors, that keeps many managers of government services away from their homes four—or more—months of the year. Needless to say, if you’re not at home, you’re not delivering a service or implementing development initiatives.

As the world and the Pacific prepare to embark later this year on a new 15-year regime of ‘Sustainable Development Goals,’ we need look no further than the record of ineffective implementation of the ‘Millennium Development Goals’ from 2000 to 2015. Ten of the 14 independent Pacific nations were unable to achieve a majority of the seven MDGs, and three failed to successfully implement a single one. So now the islands are signing up to implement 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This would be almost laughable were poverty and lack of opportunities not becoming a pervasive matter of fact in urban centers around the Pacific, exacerbating income inequality and causing a downward spiral in people’s quality of life.

And who, exactly, is going to implement government-approved strategic development plans? In my experience, it is a rare government worker who can avoid the offers of frequent international travel to stay at home and deliver work on the ground where it counts. In fact, the culture of travel and a general lack of engagement in creating a vision for national development has led to another, relatively new, phenomenon: that of handing the job of goal-setting and strategic planning to off-shore consultants who drop in for a few weeks at a time. For the most part, any plan that is not crafted by a range of the local citizenry, so-called ‘stakeholders’ at all levels of society, has no buy-in and even less chance of success. In fact, a classic example of how even locally-produced reports and recommendations are relegated to the waste basket was the Comprehensive Adjustment Program produced by local experts in the Marshall Islands under mandate of the president a few years ago. If government ignored recommendations of its own Comprehensive Adjustment Program task force, a largely homegrown effort, what level of implementation will result from strategies produced by expatriates?

These are challenges that face virtually every government and island group in the Pacific, be they independent or territory. The FSM, Marshall Islands and Palau have one additional development challenge unique to their relationship with the United States. By virtue of the Compact of Free Association, citizens of these nations have visa-free access to the U.S. to live, work and study. As island economies stagnate and lack of job and educational opportunities predominate, principally in the FSM and Marshall Islands, thousands of islanders are voting with their feet by transplanting themselves to U.S. states and territories. Various estimates suggest the number of FSM and Marshall Islands citizens living in the U.S. is between 30 and 40 percent of their populations. There is clearly a brain drain happening, particularly as islanders increasingly vacate remote outlying islands for the convenience first of urban centers and later for the U.S. But this is not necessarily a brain drain in the classic sense of western educated islanders seeking greener pastures. Yet this out-migration from the remote islands of people skilled in self-reliance and subsistence living is undermining hopes of a sustainable future because the only places in most Pacific islands that are self-sufficient to a high degree are the outer islands and rural villages—certainly not urban centers. Depopulate the villages and outer islands and what chance do islands have of implementing new Sustainable Development Goals?

If governments and donors that control the purse strings and access to technical assistance don’t start reinventing their development agendas and means of implementation, in 15 years’ time, we will again be lamenting the inability of our islands to make progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals soon to be adopted by the United Nations.

Image: Graham Crumb / www.imagicity.com

The United Nations has circulated a discussion paper on financing for development, which is guiding debate on the financing framework for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The financing framework is due to be considered in Addis Ababa on 13-16 July, and the SDGs themselves at the UN General Assembly in September.

Seven elements of the financing framework

The discussion paper canvasses a broad range of sources of finance to support the achievement of the SDGs, and proposes seven ’elements’, which are broadly as follows.

The first is domestic public finance. On the revenue side, this refers to the taxes and government income generated by developing countries themselves. Despite increases in revenue over the past decade, they are insufficient and problematic: tax can have a negative impact on inequality; it can be difficult to capture resource rents; and tax evasion and avoidance lead to large losses. On the expenditure side, budget processes are often weak and efforts to tackle corruption insufficient.

The second element is domestic and international private finance, which have both increased substantially over the last decade. Nevertheless, it is recognised that these flows are primarily profit-motivated and as a consequence leave gaps (e.g. there are important market failures in the provision of public goods). Remittances are important, but the cost of sending money is often high. Finally, financial markets are often inadequate, leading to limited access to finance for poor people, especially women, and small businesses.

The third element is international public finance. Net Official Development Assistance (ODA) has increased significantly over the past decade, but remains below commitments (especially if climate finance is netted out), often doesn’t reach the poorest countries, and further efforts are needed to improve effectiveness (e.g. through results-based aid, and ‘smarter’ aid that leverages other flows).

The fourth element, trade, has been an ‘engine’ of development in many advanced and emerging economies, yet it has been elusive for many poor countries and small island states, who face capacity constraints, struggle against subsidies in trading partners, and need to tackle tough trade rules and fragmented agreements.

The remaining three elements cover:

•  Technology, innovation and capacity building, which are constraints in many poor countries and negatively affect the productivity of the aforementioned flows.
•  Sovereign debt and the challenge of balancing debt financing against the need to prevent debt crises.
•  Systemic issues in global financial markets, essentially the need to be aware of the impact of liquidity, and prudential and regulatory policies on poor countries.

Towards an agreement on financing for development

The seven elements form the framework for specific commitments that are contained in the draft outcome document. There has been extensive consultation on the discussion paper and outcome document, and a number of countries, UN organisations and NGOs have provided comments (which are available here).

It’s beyond the scope of this post to fully review all of these. Nevertheless, it is instructive to consider some of the comments on the broad elements, especially ODA.

Broad elements

There seems to be general acceptance of the broad elements being proposed. At a very high level, they are hard to argue with, but important differences emerge in the emphasis, contextualisation and details.

There is debate in the various submissions about the relative emphasis on public versus private flows. There is also debate about the applicability of different flows to different country contexts (e.g. the scope of domestic resource mobilisation in small island states, or private investment in conflict-affected states). And there is debate about the detail, including who does what. Some countries, such as India, point out that the ‘South’ is being asked to do a lot, whereas the ‘North’ needs to offer to do much more (e.g. on trade, tax avoidance and climate finance).

ODA targets

There is a clear consensus that ODA has an important role to play in helping developing countries, especially the poorest countries, initiate and push faster rates of public spending to improve infrastructure and social services.

Given the important role that ODA plays, there is significant support across developing countries and civil society for the 0.7% aid target, with 0.15 to 0.2% of GNI to be directed to the least development countries.

Views diverge among donors though. For example, the EU, led by the UK and Scandinavians, reaffirms its commitment to the 0.7% aid target. While Australia, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes to great lengths to talk up the role that ODA can make in ‘leveraging’ other flows, whilst simultaneously sidestepping the issue of the aid target.

Another thorny issue is quantitative aid targets for emerging economies: something that the BRICS have baulked at so far, while at the same time enthusiastically pushing targets for advanced economies.

Rescheduling past aid commitments

Recipients are clearly aware that commitments to aid targets have not been honoured in the past.

The G77+China group have come up with an interesting proposal:

[T]he unfulfilled ODA commitments on the unfinished MDGs should be carried forward and be estimated in the context of the review of the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus and Doha declaration as a matter of urgency.

It’s a novel idea, and one that is sure to get the attention of donors—especially the more recalcitrant ones. But it is actually a milder form of my April Fool’s Day proposal, and no more likely to be accepted.

Aid predictability and monitoring

Developing countries and NGOs continue to express concerns that aid predictability is a problem.

NGOs have suggested the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), should be reflected in the framework. There are also calls for donors to make clear, time-bound commitments: both in aggregate and for individual countries.

India has suggested that this is an area where the multilateral system can help, and where independent monitoring of aid commitments could provide valuable feedback. More generally, there is a need to ensure that some countries do not get overlooked by the international aid system. This can especially be a concern for fragile states, which present more pressing challenges for donors to do business with. Monitoring of aid commitments needs to keep a close eye on these countries and draw attention to unmet needs, if some countries look like being ‘left behind’.

Final thoughts

The ‘elements’ and discussion paper provided a sound starting point for the debate on financing for development. The consultations that followed illustrate the importance of the issues, as well as some of the tensions and challenges.

Clearly a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work, but the framework provides enough scope for tailoring to the country context. So long as common sense prevails, then it can be applied in practice.

On aid targets, I share some of the concerns expressed by developing counties and civil society that some rich countries are using the framework to divert attention away from their failure to honour aid commitments, and that there are risks going forward. This needs to be managed by pressing for individual and binding commitments, especially for aid to least developed countries, and backed up by independent monitoring.

Looking beyond aid, the proposals to stimulate trade and non-aid financial flows look like they need more substance. In particular, I would like to see more tangible commitments from the major economies (i.e. G20) on actions to deal with tax avoidance and tax evasion, including in the resource sector; what steps they will take to tackle trade barriers, such as subsidies and standards; and how they will encourage their major companies to honour their corporate responsibilities when investing in developing countries. None of these issues are new, but past efforts have been insufficient.

Overall, I am cautiously hopeful though—not for a perfect plan, but for an evolution of existing commitments and a stronger consensus on financing for development

I believe this as a citizen of this planet. After all, I am really just a fisherman trying to protect his corner of the Pacific Ocean for his family and his country—no different from what my forebears have done for thousands of years. Our people have always understood that we are stewards of our rich and beautiful natural environment, and that Palau’s past, present and future are inextricably tied to the health of our natural resources, particularly the ocean.

Our traditions and culture date back many generations to when our ancestors first voyaged across the vast Pacific to settle these far-flung islands some 3,000 years ago. The foundation of our culture is respect, not just for one another, but for nature as well. Without respect for our Mother Earth, we would have never survived the journey—and the same holds true today. It is with this value of respect that our local traditional chiefs, without any institutional knowledge of the science we have today, developed conservation practices that have led our people to live in harmony with the environment. This is the heart of our culture, as depicted in the Palauan flag: a full yellow moon against a deep blue ocean. The combination of the moon and the ocean is a metaphor for nature’s balance and harmony.

When resources were under threat, the chiefs declared a “Bul”—what today we refer to as conservation moratorium. Reefs would be deemed off limits during spawning and feeding periods, or when fish stocks had become depleted, so that the ecosystem could replenish itself and marine life would remain abundant and in equilibrium. The customary rules in Palau are simple: think about tomorrow; take what you need from the environment and no more. A decade ago, when Palauans recognized that industrial commercial overfishing and rapid development were threatening the sustainability of our fragile marine ecosystems, we did not hesitate to act. In 2003, through extensive dialogue between government and community stakeholders, we passed the Protected Areas Network (PAN) Act, which set up a framework for a national system of protected areas. This collaborative conservation approach was necessary to ensure that local communities benefit directly from this national legislation.

In 2006 I issued a call to the Pacific Region—known as the Micronesia Challenge—to protect at least 30 per cent of their coastal waters and 20 per cent of their terrestrial resources to give biodiversity a safe haven. When we saw that sharks, which are key to a healthy marine ecosystem were being hunted to extinction, we established the first shark sanctuary in the world and were followed by many other nations.

More recently, we have come to understand the devastating impact that large-scale industrial commercial fishing has had on our ocean, and we have responded by proposing the Palau National Marine Sanctuary. With the passage of Sanctuary Law, Palau will effectively end all industrial foreign commercial fishing in 80 per cent of our Exclusive Economic Zone and create a domestic fishing zone in the remainder to meet local and tourism needs. We are doing this to allow our battered fish stocks to recover and to enhance our own ecotourism economy.

The goal of our latest and largest conservation effort is to help restore the balance between humans and nature. It is preserving the best of our environment and helping to restore the rest.

The national policies that we pursue today—the PAN Act, the Micronesia Challenge, the Shark Sanctuary and the Palau National Marine Sanctuary—are simply modern versions of our traditional conservation practices, the “Bul”. The work we do nationally will need to be amplified and augmented by work at the international level to make a difference. The unified nature of the ocean—and the importance of it being healthy, productive and resilient—is a key reason why Palau and the Pacific small island developing states (SIDS) advocated a stand-alone goal on oceans in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and a robust oceans component to the SAMOA pathway, approved at last years international conference on SIDS.

As a group, the Pacific has called on the international community to recognize the central role of oceans and seas in supporting food, jobs, health, and culture. We have similarly advocated for the means of implementation necessary to ensure that we can achieve our ideals: combating illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing; halting ocean acidification; addressing marine pollution; ensuring coastal management; supporting the creation of marine protected areas; building the right infrastructure for responsible tourism; ensuring sustainable fisheries; and recognizing special requirements and aspirations of developing states, particularly SIDS, and the least developed among them.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) proved that we can make historic gains by marshalling resources around a common cause and bringing stakeholders—governments, NGOs, the private sector, and local communities—together. Even the most cynical among us must marvel at the millions that were educated, vaccinated, and raised out of poverty as a result of the MDGs. The same success is needed for oceans.

Investment in sustainable ecotourism, domestic fisheries, marine resource management, data collection, monitoring and enforcement and surveillance of our waters can make a generational, transformative impact. These objectives—environmental health, food security, and economic prosperity—are the very essence of our sustainable development and the foundation of the future we want for ourselves and to ensure our children’s future.

This article was first published (March 2015) on OurPlanet, the official website of the United Nations Environment Programme – http://89.31.102.21/ourplanet/

Photo: Ben Bohane / wakaphotos.com. Palau patrol boats are enforcing the ban on commercial fishing in Palau waters.

In 2000, most of the world’s countries, including Pacific island nations, signed up to an ambitious development agenda—the Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs for short)—which set poverty reduction targets to be achieved by 2015. There were seven goals that corresponded to various dimensions of economic and social development and an eighth goal that put in place a global partnership to accelerate development efforts.

Fifteen years later much progress has been made: many of the goals have been met (if not at the national level, then at a global level), many lessons have been learnt, but a lot more remains to be done.

It is against this backdrop that experts have been meeting in New York and around the world to discuss how the sustainable development agenda should be taken forward during the period 2016 to 2030. The plan is for United Nations General Assembly to formally adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in New York later this year.

Unlike other global fora, such as the World Bank, IMF or G20, where the Pacific has little or no voice, the United Nations General Assembly provides the equal voting rights for all countries, so Vanuatu, for example, has the same number of votes as much bigger countries such as Australia, the UK and the US.

This is important, because it means that small island states can potentially have a big say on global issues, and that is what the Pacific Institute of Public Policy has been supporting over the last year: bridging some of the distance between the Pacific and the debates in New York.

As ‘Open Working Group’ has help the United Nations to put forward a proposal for 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which are listed below:

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

At first sight the proposed goals and targets are a bit cumbersome, but they are ambitious and broad and build upon the MDGs.

Building on MDGs. Those familiar with the existing MDGs will notice straightway that many of the goals build on MDG targets: for example halving income poverty has become ending poverty in all forms, universal access to education has become quality education and lifelong learning for all etc. (For those interested in seeking how the SDGs compare to the MDGs, the diagram below provides a useful summary that you can explore further.)

Source: The Guardian

A broader development agenda. The proposed SDGs are much broader than the MDGs, including more extensive goals and targets on climate change, environmental issues, including for managing forests, oceans, and marine resources. It also fleshes out in more details what is required to support economic growth, as a foundation for sustainable development.

Clearer intermediate steps. One of things that some commentators didn’t like about the MDGs was that they focused too much on development outcomes and not enough on the actions required to achieve them. This is being addressed in proposed SDGs through explicit goals on the steps for achieving development outcomes (e.g. improvements in governance and investment in infrastructure, including energy) as well as intermediate outcomes (such as economic growth) Whilst some might argue that this has made the SDGs more cumbersome, it also makes them more relevant and practical.

Global partnership. A big step forward, from a developing country prospective is that there is much more meat on the ‘global partnership’. In particular, it is good to see that the 0.7% of GNI target has been included in the goals themselves—though whether countries ultimately sign up to this or deliver it remains to be seen. The UK has enshrined the 0.7% target in law, whilst Australia has retreated the other way in the last year. From a developing countries perspective, and for NGOs, it will be important to keep pressure on rich countries to (re)commit to the 0.7% target—as an easily verifiable indicator of a global partnership. But more importantly will be the improvement to the ‘quality’ of aid, and ideally this would involve an overhaul of aid modalities and their archaic architecture—something that the IFIs, UN and donors themselves have long struggled to do.

Beyond aid, there is a lot more that can be done to improve the way that capital is allocated and used globally: action on money laundering, tax evasion, transnational crime, regulation of banks, as well as corruption in both developed and developing countries. These are not new items on the global agenda, but ones that sovereign states and global agencies have been either unwilling or unable to address—collective action on the provision of such global public goods (and others such as conflict prevention and climate change mitigation) are a core weakness of the UN/IFIs etc.

The proposed SDGs and the ideas on financing for development are a good starting point. They set out a bold vision for sustainable development, and without doubt the world has the resources and the know-how to make it a reality, but the question remains whether global institutions and sovereign states can rise to the challenge—the world will be a much better place if they can.

Additionally, PiPP has extended its support services to other Pacific delegations as they navigate this extraordinarily inclusive, global multi-stakeholder process. The OWG has proposed a set of 17 sustainable development goals and targets, drawing on inspiration from a number of sources, including the Rio+20 outcome, the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post 2015 Development Agenda, and a raft of contributions from academia, business and civil society.

In the end, however, the proposed SDGs were agreed by UN member states. That means there had to be political trade offs and compromises made. But it must be recognised that development is inherently political at the local, regional and global levels. There remains some pressure to reduce the number of goals and targets or to tighten the proposed language. But that would risk of omitting important issues just for the sake of easing communication, or risking a good political outcome in the search of technical perfection. It is very clear that amongst UN member states there is little desire to re-open what was an exhaustive and exhausting negotiation. Delegates recognise the political sensitivities of altering the agreed goals and the issues they address, which together form a comprehensive and mutually reinforcing development agenda. Add, remove or significantly change one goal, and the whole package is compromised.

The new agenda has more depth than the MDGs – and rightly so. This shouldn’t be seen as a problem. The general public will accept that any exercise that drives national, regional and global efforts toward coordinated, sustainable development is necessarily wide-ranging and complex. It will be up to governments, think tanks and other civil society stakeholders to distil the information such that citizens can to use the new agenda to hold their governments and international actors to account when undertaking development activities in their name.

Timor-Leste and Pacific island countries have especially welcomed new goals addressing climate change, oceans and marine resources, inclusive economic growth, ensuring peaceful and inclusive societies, and building capable and responsive institutions that are based on the rule of law. They will no doubt also welcome the shift in focus from quantitative measurements under the MDGs to metrics designed to improve the quality of outcomes, notably in health and education.

The core of the new agenda, the implementation mechanism, has yet to be finalised. There is a pressing need to rationalise and integrate many of the parallel processes that collectively set the global framework for development. Many small island countries struggle to deal with the multitude of international agreements, policy commitments and related reporting requirements. The new agenda should seek to streamline these, and not add to the bureaucratic burden. This, along with crafting a political narrative will be the focus of deliberations that will continue in New York over the next six months.

The current negotiation follows on from an extraordinarily inclusive process over the last 18 months led by the UN General Assembly’s Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals. Following a global, multi-stakeholder consultation, the OWG has proposed a set of 17 sustainable development goals and targets. The group drew inspiration from a number of sources, including the Rio+20 outcome, the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post 2015 Development Agenda, and a raft of contributions from academia, business and civil society.

In the end, however, the proposed SDGs were agreed by UN member states. That means there had to be political trade offs and compromises made. But it must be recognised that development is inherently political at the local, regional and global levels. There remains some pressure to reduce the number of goals and targets. But that would risk of omitting important issues just for the sake of easing communication.

We should be looking for more innovative means of communicating the agenda in its entirety. It can be done. The High Level Panel has done so already so through five transformative shifts, and the UN Secretary General has pointed to six essential elements for sustainable development in his recent synthesis report [pdf] of the process to date.

Within the UN system, it is evident that there is little desire to re-open what was an exhaustive and exhausting negotiation. Delegates recognise the political sensitivities of substantially altering the goals and the issues they address, which together form a comprehensive and mutually reinforcing development agenda. Add, remove or significantly change one goal, and the whole package is compromised.

The new agenda has more depth and nuance than the MDGs – and rightly so. This shouldn’t be seen as a problem. The general public will accept that any exercise that drives national, regional and global efforts toward coordinated, sustainable development is necessarily wide-ranging and complex. It will be up to governments, think tanks and other civil society stakeholders to distil the information such that citizens can to use the new agenda to hold their governments and international actors to account when undertaking development activities in their name.

There is now broad acceptance that the SDGs should be applicable to all countries. Rhetorically all the right noises are being made in this respect, although it remains unclear how this will be implemented, if it’s implemented at all. A significant divide still remains between a ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ world. Many still view this as an aid agenda, rather than a development agenda.

It will be important for all countries, regardless of their economic status, to apply the goals both internally against national development priorities and as a means of improving the global commons. Indeed, it is expected that each country will contextualise the global goals and targets to the national circumstance. While the SDGs are to be universally aspirational, clearly not every goal will be applicable nationally. For example, a goal on oceans is not directly related to the national planning of land locked countries: Nevertheless, all countries have a role to play in the protection of marine resources through multilateral decision-making.

The core of the new agenda, the implementation mechanism, has yet to be finalised. There is a pressing need to rationalise and integrate many of the parallel processes that collectively set the global framework for development. Many small island countries struggle to deal with the multitude of international agreements, policy commitments and related reporting requirements. The new agenda should seek to streamline these, and not add to the bureaucratic burden.

What we have before us is a set of new goals that are intended to finish the work left undone by the MDGs, address the main gaps and omissions of the millennial agenda, and to steer global and national development on a path to sustainability over the next fifteen years. Given the competing pressures and priorities, the current proposal, while not perfect, provides a solid basis for the final intergovernmental negotiation.

Pacific island countries especially will welcome new goals addressing climate change, oceans and marine resources, inclusive economic growth, ensuring peaceful and inclusive societies, and building capable and responsive institutions that are based on the rule of law. They will no doubt also welcome the shift in focus from quantitative measurements under the MDGs to metrics designed to improve the quality of outcomes, notably in health and education. There is definitely scope to enhance the proposed goals and cover some areas not covered –or not yet covered well enough– by refining the targets and indicators. This, along with crafting a political narrative and means of implementation, will be the focus of deliberations that will continue in New York over the next six months.

In September 2015, world leaders are expected to come together to adopt this new agenda, which is intended to be transformative. If that is to happen, then UN negotiators are going to have to continue to be bold, and resist the temptation to solely rely on the political safety of pre-agreed texts and agreements, which hardly represent a recipe for transformation. The robust exchanges in the OWG and the breadth of the outcome indicate a willingness to depart from business as usual. Never before have we had consensus around such a wide reaching agenda. So let us hope we don’t slip back into well-rehearsed policy positions as the finishing touches are put into place.