MDGs Post-2015 – Why the Next Round Will Be Different

Gregory Chin

In 2015, the global community will witness the initiation of a new round of global development goals.

The United Nations is already declaring Round One of the MDGs a success, and they will continue to do so into next year. It will be left to future historians and scholars of international development to decide the accuracy of the official pronouncements.

Irrespective of the actual results from Round One, we will be onto Round Two.

Who are the most powerful actors for the next round? Who were the lead actors the last time? Who should have a louder voice this time? Who stands to gain, who stands to lose? Do developing countries have as much stake, this time? What does “the developing world” want?

These are the key markers that will tell us important lessons about the future of global development, and the world economy more broadly – what we should be watching as we transition, globally, to the next phase.

The next round of global development goals will look different from the last round.

How was it done before?

The last time, the G7 donors were the leading forces. The short, according to a former senior UK development official, is that last time, the leading Western donors developed and gave the goals to the UN bureaucrats, and the UN shepherded their acceptance on the UN floor.

The longer account is a more twisted road, of a succession of UN forums, the entre of the OECD-DAC with a parallel process, and then certain G7 development ministers intervening. The process that led to the Millennium Declaration, of September 2000, and the MDGs that followed in 2001, thus started with the wave of UN global forums for social development that ran from the early-1990s to the mid-1990s, starting with the World Summit for Children in 1990 (New York), then the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 (Vienna), the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 (Cairo), the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 (Beijing), and finally the World Summit on Social Development in 1995 (Copenhagen).

Despite all the wide-ranging stakeholder dialogue, the UN-led process resulted in a Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development (March 1995) that outlined a program of action - with the now familiar sounding goals, of eradicating poverty, promoting social integration, and achieving universal and equitable access to education and primary healthcare - but without quantitative targets.

Critics charged that “principled goals” was not enough, that hard targets were needed – quantitative goals that could be tracked, and where progress could be measured.

The competitors to the UN suggested that the UN-led initiative lacked real commitment – especially financial commitment.

Representatives of leading donor nations in the DAC membership, and leading economists in the OECD hammered on the need for quantitative indicators, in order for the global development goals to have real meaning. They stressed, that hard targets were important to marshal the political will needed to mobilize the financial resources for such an ambitious global campaign.

The OECD-DAC created a parallel process to come up with quantitative targets, to match some of the ‘aspirational’ goals from the UN-led process, and also suggested alternative goals that were more amenable to the OECD agenda at the time of promoting global opening and integration.

But the OECD-led initiative – which came to be called “International Development Goals” – did not receive financial support to go forward.

At that point, it looked like the campaign for global development goals, whether UN-led or OECD, would peter out.

However, a few proactive G7 development ministers then stepped up, and gave their support to the OECD-DAC process. G7 development ministers realized that their aid budgets were potentially marked for cutbacks in their national budgets, and they championed a global campaign to divert the cuts. A leading American official at the OECD (at the time) confirmed that the UK secretary for international development was particularly forthcoming with support. He was further recalled how German officials also stepped forward to back the OECD-DAC initiative.

A select group of G7 development ministers thus backed the blending of the OECD-DAC initiative with some of the aspirational goals from the UN track, and sold the idea of global development goals to their respective national political elites, and then to their domestic publics.

The OECD-DAC supported the G7’s public advocacy, in both the developed and developing worlds.

The G7 development ministers then took the lead again, and repackaged and delivered the global development goals to the UN - and in the end, pushed through what became the UN’s Millennium Declaration in 2000, and then the “MDGs” in 2001.

Could this happen again? It is unlikely.

One reason is the shift in balance of the world economy, which Helmut Reisen (formerly at the OECD’s Development Centre) and others have highlighted.

Currently, the Western donor governments are facing a budgetary crunch at home, especially with the sluggish recovery from the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

The rise of Brazil, China, India, South Africa, the sustained growth of a number of African economies, and in Latin America and Asia over the past decade, not to forget the transformation of South Korea, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador into aid providers, all suggest a different outcome this time around.

It is especially unlikely that the BRICS nations will allow the previous approach to happen again, for post-2015. Brazil, India and China each self-identify with “the South”, and they want the least developed countries to affirm their “Southern” status. Their foreign aid budgets, as givers, are growing, and especially in the case of China, we see the deployment of waves of capital and lending throughout the South – this has created alternative options for developing countries to access large amounts of capital and technical assistance. The bulk of the new economic ties between these so-called emerging economies and the developing world are driven by a business-led approach, that seeks to maximize economic growth and income generation. One can understand the attractiveness for developing countries of having alternative options; and an exit option.

The UN has established a High Level Panel (HLP) of experts to advise the UN Secretary General on the MDGs post-2015. [http://www.un.org/sg/management/hlppost2015.shtml] At its first meeting in New York, the Secretary General charged the HLP to come up with a “bold yet practical” vision.

UN DESA has been working on the topic of post-2015 since about 2011. But part of the attention of DESA, and the UN more broadly, has been taken up with keeping account of the dual tracks of consultation on future global development goals within the UN process, the “Sustainable Development Goals” (Rio+20) track, and the post-2015 MDGs. There is obvious potential for overlap and duplication of effort in having dual processes that both aim to set the global development agenda for the future. It would make sense to have one process. This means overcoming vested diplomatic interests.

To the UN’s credit, the UNDP has been holding donor consultation exercises on the post-2015 MDGs in China, India and Brazil since late-2012, to prepare for the post-2015 discussions. The irony is that the BRICS countries do not need the next phase of MDGs for their own development. They didn’t need the last phase, but they were major contributors to the poverty reduction gains for the current Round.

Even more important, the recipients – arguably the main stakeholders in defining a new set of global development goals – want to have an appropriate say this time around. To help shape the agenda, the goals, and priorities.

The bureaucrats of the UN, like bureaucrats elsewhere, tend to be cautious and careful.

Their tendency is to avoid raising expectations.

As G7 governments, and their donor agencies, face budgetary constraints, they will also want to “manage expectations.”

But the problem for the UN and the G7 donors is that, for this time around, the less developed and least developed countries will want fundamental change. As a senior Ghanaian academician and State Senator remarked at an expert meeting in Geneva: “Only ambitious goals will do. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

The HLP of Eminent Persons is advising an “ambitious, yet achievable” framework (Bali, Indonesia, 27, March 2013). [http://www.un.org/sg/management/pdf/Final%20Communique%20Bali.pdf] What this means is not entirely self-evident. Striking such a balance point, in a way that is acceptable to the broad UN membership, including the “poorest of the poor”, will be a challenging task. The Report of the HLP (published 30 May 2013) recommends five so-called “big transformative shifts”: leave no on behind (poverty and opportunity); put sustainable development at the core; transform economies for jobs and inclusive growth; build peace and effective, open, and accountable institutions for all; forge a new global partnership. The Panel has provided illustrative goals and targets that “bold yet practical”. But much is to be decided in the actual negotiations that are forthcoming.

The UN reports that the UNDP has been facilitating eleven global thematic consultations and national consultations in over 60 countries; working in partnership with “multiple stakeholders”. The UN says that the consultations are “open” and “inclusive”, with civil society organizations from all over the world, academia, and think tanks and research institutes as active participants.[1]

However the dilemma for the UN is that if after all this consultation, the UN aims for low hanging fruit, if they set their proposals low with regards to the “achievable”, and suggest moving the yardsticks forward slightly - a strategy that would be amenable to the Northern donors – it runs the risk of the least developed countries opting out of the process in 2015.

Why would the people and governments of the least developed countries want a global development campaign that aims for marginal gains?

And this time round, the poorest of the poor have other options to go to if the emerging result is unsatisfying, and does not reflect their input. The developing countries have exit options. As the world moves on.

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[1] http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/beyond2015.shtml