International Development in Practice Millennium Development Goals

1. International Development in PracticeMillennium Development Goals Steve Reifenberg University of Notre Dame April 4, 2013

2. Millennium Development Goals • 1) MDGs • What’s striking about them? • Historical context • Negotiated outcome • 2) Post 2015….SDGs • What are they? • Where are they likely to go? • 3) Development Advisory Team Projects

3. Millennium Development Goals“The World’s Biggest Promise” In September 2000, 189 member states of the United Nations adopted the Millennium Declaration, which included concrete commitments and targets for poverty eradication, development, and protecting the environment. Photo credit: www.kremlin.ru. Some rights reserved.

4. Millennium Development Goals • Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger • Achieve universal primary education • Promote gender equality and empower women • Reduce child mortality • Improve maternal health • Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases • Ensure environmental sustainability • Global partnership for development

5. How will the world look in 2015 if the Goals are achieved? • More than 500 million people will be lifted out of extreme poverty. • More than 300 million will no longer suffer from hunger. • Dramatic progress in child health. Rather than die before reaching their fifth birthdays, 30 million children will be saved. • Lives of more than 2 million mothers.

6. MDG -- Supporters • ‘Time is short. We must seize this historic moment to act responsibly and decisively for the common good.’ - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, speaking of the 2015 deadline • ‘The end of extreme poverty is at hand – within our generation…’ - Jeffery Sachs, 2005

7. MDG – A More Critical View • ‘The setting of utopian goals means aid workers will focus efforts on infeasible tasks, instead of the feasible tasks that will do some good’ - William Easterly, 2006 • ‘I do not believe in the MDGs. I think of them as a Major Distracting Gimmick…’ - Peggy Antrobus, 2003

8. MDG Big Picture • Historical, political, economic, social, cultural and religious context in late 1990s • 8 Goals, 21 Targets, and 60 Indicators • Fiercely negotiated outcome • Enormously promising • Enormous challenges

9. MDG Big Picture • Important role of “human development” • Human beings are the ends and means of development • Challenges per capital economic growth of many policy makers and economists • UNDP Human Development Report hugely influential

10. Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Target 1A: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day. 1.1 Proportion of population below $1 (PPP) per day 1.2 Poverty gap ratio 1.3 Share of poorest quintile in national consumption Target 1B: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people. Target 1C: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer hunger.

11. Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education Target 2A: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. 2.1 Net enrollment ratio in primary education 2.2 Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach last grade of primary 2.3 Literacy rate of 15-24 year-olds, women and men

12. Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women Target 3A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015. 3.1 Ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education 3.2 Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector 3.3 Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament

13. Goal 4:Reduce child mortality Target 4A: Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate. 4.1 Under-five mortality rate 4.2 Infant mortality rate 4.3 Proportion of 1 year-old children immunized against measles

14. Goal 5:Improve maternal health Target 5A: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio 5.1 Maternal mortality ratio 5.2 Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel Target 5 B: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health5.3 Contraceptive prevalence rate 5.4 Adolescent birth rate 5.5 Antenatal care coverage 5.6 Unmet need for family planning

15. Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases Target 6A: Have halved by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. 6.1 HIV prevalence among population aged 15-24 years 6.2 Condom use at last high-risk sex 6.3 Proportion of population aged 15-24 years with comprehensive correct knowledge of HIV/AIDS 6.4 Ratio of school attendance of orphans to school attendance of non orphans aged 10-14 yearsTarget 6B: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it. Target 6C: Halve halved by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases (especially malaria and TB).

16. Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability Target 7A: Integrate principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources. Target 7 B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss. Target 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Target 7D: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

17. Goal 8:Develop a global partnership for development Target 8 A: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory lending and financial system. Target 8 B: Address the special needs of the least developed countries Target 8 C: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing states. Target 8 D: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries. Target 8 E: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries. Target 8 F: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

18. Historical context leading up to 1990 • Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 • “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well- being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care…” (Article 25) • 1960s declared the first “UN Development Decade”… • “rash of target setting” ….education, food, small islands, drugs • few plans of action and little monitoring • 1980s… stalling of global summitry and goal setting • IMF and World Bank -- structural adjustment policies • “getting prices right”

19. Historical Context – 1990 • 1990 a pivotal year (against backdrop of end of Cold War) • World Development Report, 1990 • UNDP Human Development Report, 1990 • Re-activation of UN Summits and Conferences • World Summit of Children, 1990 • Set specific goals for infant survival, under five mortality, education, etc. • UNICEF executive director James Grant travelled the world asking leaders what progress they were making

20. Historical context – early 1990s • UN Conference on Environment and Development, Earth Summit or Rio Summit, 1992 • Mobilized public attention • Failed in grander objective of global consensus on climate change and deforestation • International Conference on Food and Nutrition in Rome, 1992 • Lower profile • Commitment to a world “free from hunger” • International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, 1994 • Moves beyond “population control” • Includes “development” when discussing population

21. Historical context – mid 1990s • World Summit on Social Development, Copenhagen, 1995 • Agenda for market friendly state intervention • Poverty reduction, employment & social integration • UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995 • Not just another conference -- represented a movement • Strong opposition -- conservative Christians and Muslims • Focus on rights and social relations did not lend itself to goal setting and performance management • Second UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) in Istanbul, 1995 & World Food Summit in Rome, 1996 • Sense of overload and over engagement • “Summit fatigue”

22. Historical context – late 1990s • OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) • Development Assistance Committee (DAC) • International Development Goals (IDG), 1995 • By late 1998, UN actively re-enters game of global target setting • Plans for the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations • “Mother of all summits,” in NYC in September 2000 • “If you’re not a Millennium Development Goal, you’re not on the agenda.” • UN Secretary General Kofi Annan takes responsibility • Creates “We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century” • Different set of goals than the IDGs • As in almost all negotiations -- “winners” and “losers”

23. Results-based management • SMART • Stretching • Measureable • Agreed • Realistic • Time-limited

24. MDG negotiations • Over summer 2000, frantic negotiations • Resolutions Paragraph 19 – “we resolve further” – will be implemented • Resolution Paragraph 20 – “we also resolve” – will not a be concrete item • Negotiation strategy • all or nothing • “paragraph 20” compromise

25. Historical context – MDG negotiations • “Winners” • Poverty reduction • Education • “Losers” • Gender equality (primarily related to educational disparity) • Reproductive rights/birth control/domestic violence • Requiring commitments for aid • Policy implications guidelines (look at Target 8a – 8f)

26. MDG – Optimistic • Raises world’s awareness on addressing extreme poverty in all its dimensions • Sets aspirations high (major progress on specific issues through annual reports and the scorecards) • Mobilizes international collaboration • Defines quantifiable targets that build off a baseline • Adds urgency through deadline (2015) • Creates new institutional mechanisms – such as the Global Fund for Aids, TB and Malaria, and the Millennium Villages • Pushes for greater financial investments in MDG

27. MDG – Challenges • What and how you measure • What you can’t measure or leave out • Who is engaged? Who is accountable? • Challenge of reporting by region and country • Policy linkages and expectations • Resource commitment

28. What and how you measure • Data availability and quality varies widely for several MDG indicators. • Accurate figures for the percentage of people living on less than a dollar a day is unavailable for many countries during the early 1990s. • In more recent years, reporting for this target indicator has remained spotty with only sporadic data points for most countries. • Regional averages can produce significant volatility, inconsistency, and misleading results due to • the inclusion or exclusion of different countries.

29. What you can’t measure or leave out… “There is evidently widespread awareness of their limitation: theirinadequate targets and indicators; their restriction to indicators that arequantifiable, when much of what is most important – such as Women’sEquality and Empowerment – is not easily quantifiable; their omission ofimportant Goals and Targets, such as Violence against Women and Sexualand Reproductive Rights.” Peggy Antrobus, ‘Presentation to Working Group on the MDGs and Gender Equality’, UNDP Caribbean Regional Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Conference, Barbados, 7 July 2003.

30. Who’s engaged? Who’s accountable? “United Cities and Local Governments calls upon their members to write to national governments requesting that they give serious attention to the role of local and regional governments in writing their national MDG report, and asking them to consider our proposed amendments which focus on the areas of local ownership, the importance of governance and the cultural dimension of the MDG’s.” cities-localgovernments.org/news

31. Regional reporting tends to mask dramatic intraregional variations • China’s impressive achievements and size drive the overall MDG performance picture for East Asia. • Poor performance of large African countries – such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – weigh down regional Africa aggregates. • Nonetheless, many African countries have made tremendous strides in achieving development outcomes.

32. Country Reporting • MDG Progress Index developed by the Center for Global Development to country progress toward MDG targets. • Evidence of dramatic achievements by many poor countries, such as Laos, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Cambodia. • Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for many of the star MDG performers such as Uganda, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. • Least progress largely consists of countries devastated by conflict over the last few decades, such as Afghanistan, Burundi, the DRC, and Guinea-Bissau. • Most countries fall somewhere in between, demonstrating solid progress on some indicators and little on others.

33. Policy linkages “In fact, a major problem of theMDGs is their abstraction from the social, political and economic context inwhich they are to be implemented – the ‘political economy’ of the MDGs… To the extent that all the goals relate to the role of the state, one must askhow feasible it is that states weakened by the requirements of policyframeworks of neo-liberalism and whose revenues are reduced byprivatization and trade liberalism can be expected to achieve the goals and targets of the MDGs?” Peggy Antrobus, ‘Presentation to Working Group on the MDGs and Gender Equality’

34. Failure of Commitments? • Failure to achieve necessary commitments to fund goals. • Failure of international donors to deliver funds committed. • “There’s a lot about the MDGs that is problematic in Washington or in London, Paris or so on, but that is mostly about us, not about the Millennium Development Goals per se,” Jeffery Sachs says. “Multilateral, accountable mechanisms exist to deliver development, but governments remain committed to working through bilateral programs, which are often governed more by politics than by development metrics.”

35. MDGs Big Picture • Historical, political, economic, social, cultural and religious context • Fiercely negotiated outcome • Enormously promising • Enormous challenges… post 2015 goals… SDGs

36. ROUND #2 MDGS to SDGs!Sustainable Development Goals Goals that address and incorporate all three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social, and environmental – to guide the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015 • Based on Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) • Agenda 21:1992 UN resolution that encourages sustainable development globally • Johannesburg Plan: affirms UN commitment to Agenda 21 and the MDGs

37. Process to Achieve SDGs: Plan of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon • Define a path to an inclusive green economy • Leaders must agree to define sustainable development goals with clear and measurable targets • Make decisions on key elements of the institutional framework • Need strong outcomes on a wide range of cross-cutting issues • Need progress on implementation • Need more partnerships with civil society and the private sector to get public support and drive change

38. Process to Achieve SDGs: Plan of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon • Define a path to an inclusive green economy • Leaders must agree to define sustainable development goals with clear and measurable targets • Make decisions on key elements of the institutional framework • Need strong outcomes on a wide range of cross-cutting issues • Need progress on implementation • Need more partnerships with civil society and the private sector to get public support and drive change

39. Differences between MDGs and SDGs MDGs SDGs Universal goals Require “buy-in” from all countries Developed and developing counties Strongly linked to Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, Agenda 21 Three Dimensions: economic, social, and environmental Different in scope and nature Post-2015 development agenda • Simplicity: Single set of goals of the 21stcentury • Single focal point for monitoring • Set “global poverty eradication/reduction as the international norm” • Apply primarily to developing countries • Prioritized social needs over economic and environmental ones • Seven social goals and just one environmental goal • Established in 2000, expire in 2015 From Brookings Institution presentation on May 2, 2012 entitled “What Should Sustainable Goals Look Like?”

40. Sustainable Development • More than 20 institutions participating in the global sustainable development governance • Most relevant bodies: UN General Assembly, Second Committee or ECOFIN, Economic and Social Council, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Environmental Management Group, UN Environmental Program, and UNDP • Agencies that will shape sustainable development and governance

41. Why This Matters • Money is being committed differently that it would have been otherwise • Broader public perception that these goals matter: legitimacy, credibility, ownership • Moving toward a more open and inclusive process with wider consultation • Call to action: SDGs put sustainable development at the center of global thinking and action Rio +20 will “help young people solve the triple-bottom-line challenge –economic well-being, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion—that will define their era” – Jeffrey Sachs We are nearing the end of the unprecedented, ambitious Millennium Development Goals, and the negotiations over the next two years will define the next generation of global development.

42. MGSs Sources http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/overviewEngi-1LowRes.pdf http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1424377 http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/overviewEngi-1LowRes.pdf Peggy Antrobus, ‘Presentation to Working Group on the MDGs and Gender Equality’, UNDP Caribbean Regional Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Conference, Barbados, 7 July 2003. http://web.thisisafricaonline.com/2010/09/22/mdg-interview-jeffrey-sachs/ cities-localgovernments.org/news http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/Articlehttp://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/Article/tabid/191/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/21712 Global governance campaigning and MDGs: From top-down to bottom-up anti-poverty work By Patrick Bond http://www.choike.org/documentos/bond_mdgs_2005.pdf

43. SDGs Sources • 1.) The Brookings Institution: What Should Sustainable Development Goals Look Like? • 2.) European Sustainable Development Solutions Network • 3.) Bond Development & Environment Group. Sustainable Development Goals: Building the Foundation for an Inclusive Process • 4.) “After Rio, we know,” 2012 • 5.) Jeffrey Sachs opinion piece: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a-rio-report-card • 6.) Rio +20: The Good, the Bad, and the Invisible by Megan Rowling (trust.org) • 7.) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6087/1396.2.full • 8.) HOMI KHARAS, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Global Economy and Development, The Brookings Institution • 9.) From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals, Jeffrey Sachs • 10.) CRS Report on Rio+20 • 11.) NGO Views – Rio +20: the good, the bad, and the invisible http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/ngo-views-rio20-the-good-the-bad-and-the-invisible • 12.) Press Conference by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Rio+20 http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/sgsm14336.doc.htm

44. Sources • 13.) Beyond 2015. The Sustainable Development Goals and their relationship to the Millennium Development Goals: the Beyond 2015 response to the Zero Draft • 14.) GLOBAL POVERTY REDUCTION TO 2015 AND BEYOND: WHAT HAS BEEN THE IMPACT OF THE MDGS AND WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS FOR A POST-2015 GLOBAL FRAMEWORK? (Summer andTiwari) • 15.) http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-09-28/developmental-issues/34147052_1_mdgs-sustainable-development-goals-sdgs/2 • 16.) http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/docs/7537.pdf • 17.) http://www.actionaid.org.uk/doc_lib/mdg_report.pdf • 18.) http://developmentalpathways.blogspot.com • 19.) http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2012/08/three-un-millennium-development-targets-reached-and-a-review-of-the-human-drivers-of-climate-change/ • 20.) Parr and Hulme (2009) International Norm Dynamics • 21.) Melamed, “Contexts. Politics and processes for a post-2015 global agreement on development” • 22.) http://www.ids.ac.uk/idsresearch/millennium-development-goals-mdgs-and-post-2015-agenda • 23.) http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/1362Concept_Note_for_Special_Event_on_SDGs.pdf • 24.) http://insights.wri.org/news/2012/10/4-key-factors-sustainable-development-goals • 25.) One of the criticisms of the MDGs is that the process to construct them was not sufficiently inclusive. Much greater effort is being taken this time to consult widely. \ • 26.) 16 October 2012 2nd Committee SDG Meeting, Notes of Ambassador Mootaz Khalil • Sustainable Development Website: http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org