The SDGs

It's shortcomings and the need for solutions before time runs out

Priya Saxena

The SDGs are being implemented across the world and they are a priority by the UN but because of its shortcomings it is not certain that the real impact they are going for will actually happen. As a member that sees its issues it is important for them to be pointed out so that there will be something more concretely made.

The Origin

The creation of SDGs started in the year 2000 when the United Nations became awakened to the importance of protecting the Earth and the need to establish change to help overcome the recurring problems. The first 8 Millennium Development goals (MDGs) were developed. With a target by 2015 many countries were able to hit all of the 8 goals but with its shortcomings SDGs came to replace MDGs, having 17 goals instead. With its deadline of 2030, the massive project involves over 190 member-states and even more civil societies joining.

Compared to the MDGs, SDGs have clearer goals that not only tackle sustainable environment but more about climate change, marine life and clean energy. It has new goals related to reducing inequalities. “Progress has been made in the past few years, such as Brazil investing more in their Bolsa Familia Program, a social welfare program to reduce poverty [2]. In Canada, they started Low Carbon Economy Fund in December of 2016, with a fund of 2 billion CAD [3]”.  (Xiao 18) .

The Shortcomings

The SDGs are voluntary

Not being a mandatory code to follow, multinational managers are able to take the SDG framework lightly. It can lead to the misuse of the SDG logo and framework to only validate themselves, creating an illusion that they have good intentions to advance sustainable development agendas across the world. However, with no one to hold them accountable there are no concrete changes being made. “For example, the United Nations Global Compact introduced ten principles in 2000 to improve firms’ behavior in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and corruption. However, its lack of external validation and punishment seems to have perpetuated the status quo for sustainable development worldwide. Multinationals with a track record of human rights violations have nevertheless endorsed the United Nations Global Compact”.  (Fiaschi, Giuliani, & Nieri, 2015) .

One example is Russia. Even if Russia is committed to help with the thirteenth SDG (climate action) by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to 30% less than its initial post-Soviet Republic consumption rate, they actually went below it, creating a loophole that enabled them to increase their fossil fuels without any serious consequences.  (Sandev and Sanskriti 20) .

There are issues when assessing progress

“There are serious data gaps in assessing country-level progress towards SDGs. On average, countries had reported one or more data points on only 55% of the SDG indicators for the years 2015-2019. No country reported data on more than 90% of the SDG indicators, while 22 countries reported on less than 25% of the SDG indicators.”

Even with the small improvements in data reporting in the past recent years the pace of progress is insufficient. According to the graph on the right: “Fitting a linear trend on the data from 2015 to 2019, we find that for no SDG, we would expect countries to report data for all indicators. Data on gender equality are particularly scarce. And these predictions do not account for the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted routine data collection efforts and delayed censuses and surveys—with negative effects on data availability and quality in the years to come.”   (Kitzmueller,Stacy,Mahler 21). 

Along with the limited reporting, the progress that is reported is inadequate to begin with. “For example, in its VNR (2019) [1]  the government of Kazakhstan showed that almost 90% of the goals on water and sanitation (SDG-6) are covered (and 100% of the goals for health, hunger, sustainable energy, cities, education and industry). At the same time, an independent assessment shows that problems related to water resources in the country are only growing and water management (SDG6.5) is getting worse every year (an independent assessment of this goal showed only 30%[2] of coverage). The main drawback of the methodology proposed by the UN to governments is that it is based (with all the references to participation and involvement) on the assessments of the states of their own work and then the discussion with experts and the public[3].”  (ESP Secretariat 21) 

The SDG index is unreliable

The index averages the 17 SDG goals to combine into one complete score. While averaging the goals there is an issue when it comes to weighing each of the three indicators equally (ecological impact, social development, infrastructure development). “Most of the SDGs contain a mix of these, but the ecological indicators are almost always swamped, as it were, by the development indicators. For example, the SDG Index has  four indicators  for Goal 11 (on “sustainable cities and communities”); three of them are development indicators, while only one of them has to do with ecological impact.” Not only that but since 13 of the SDGs are based on development it makes it easy for countries to have good performance on the development goals instead of the sustainability goals, pushing them up in the rankings.   (Hickel 20) .

Countries on the top of the index are unsustainable

The SDG index was originally created to evaluate which countries have a higher chance in accomplishing the SDG goals. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany and other rich Western countries having the highest scores give the impression that wealthy countries have high levels of sustainability when that is not the truth.

Take Finland as an example. In 2020, when Finland was ranked third in the index: “Finland’s carbon footprint is about  13 metric tons  of carbon dioxide per person per year, similar to that of Saudi Arabia. This makes it one of the most polluting countries in the world, in per capita terms, and a major contributor to climate breakdown. For comparison, China’s carbon footprint is about 7 tons per person. India’s is less than 2.”

Another example is Sweden, who was number one on the index: “ecologists have long pointed out that Sweden’s “material footprint”—the quantity of natural resources that the country consumes each year—is one of the biggest in the world, right up there with the United States, at  32 metric tons per person . To put this in perspective, the global average is about 12 tons per person, and the sustainable level is about  7 tons per person .”  (Hickel 20) .

The wealth of a nation can depict a countries potential to drive change but that does not override the progress that it is supposed to make.

Obstacles That Block Potential

 Not only are there flaws within the SDGs themselves but there are ongoing obstacles that are blocking the goals' full potential. The  World Economic forum  state's three main obstacles.

  • The first obstacle is related to how capital flows, international economic architecture and associated patterns of trade extend inequality. “The primary distribution of income, for example, has become more unequal around the world because of major national and multilateral legal and economic changes. These include the creation of new “assets” in the form of intellectual property rights, the emergence of new “products” like data analytics, the privatization of public or social assets such as nature, and the private delivery of public services. These changes have increased levels of market concentration and monopoly control, and encouraged additional rent-seeking by large companies. This, in turn, further intensifies inequality of asset ownership and concentration of income streams.”
  • The second obstacle is since governments are not able to produce enough revenue from direct taxes, they instead rely increasingly on regressive indirect taxation. “This is largely due to international tolerance of legal tax-avoidance measures by multinational companies and wealthy individuals, and the lack of proper coordination and information-sharing on national tax policies, which enable huge illicit financial flows across countries. Corporate tax avoidance denies governments the resources they need to finance SDG-related measures and meet citizens’ other pressing concerns. And inadequate financial regulation, including of cross-border capital flows, has further concentrated economic power and increased volatility.”
  • “Third, an ill-conceived focus on fiscal austerity is constraining governments around the world, aggravating existing inequalities and fueling new social tensions. Policymakers’ obsession with budget discipline is accentuating and prolonging cyclical downturns, and preventing a broad-based and sustained recovery in many economies. It is also choking off the green public investments required to decarbonize economies and make production and consumption more ecologically viable. Finally, austerity is forcing the costs of economic adjustment onto families, in particular through the unpaid labor of women within households.”

Potential Improvements

Along with numerous shortcomings there are several ways of improving the SDGs and other structures that involve it.

Accountability

Instead of being voluntary the SDGs should be mandatory. There needs to be mandatory codes that force countries to create progress and focus on their own specific issues that need to be solved. Reporting should also be mandatory and countries should report in a consistent manner throughout the year so that they obtain guidance and more feedback. This will create more consistency with countries progress.

Mandating cities to align budgets with the SDGs will immensly help: "The process by which cities make decisions on allocating their resources and public spending is a powerful tool to advance progress on the SDGs and make them an integral function of the city’s action. During and exiting the COVID-19 crisis, decisions over priorities will have important effects on the recovery. Within their budget constraints, they need to balance excellence in delivering basic services with their long-term aspirations and priorities. In particular, investing in an equitable and sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 crisis requires rethinking the process of budget formulation and decisionmaking...By mapping budgets to the SDGs, cities reinforce the durability of their efforts to achieve them.  For instance, Malmo developed a process to integrate the city’s SDGs objectives and planning into the city’s budgeting decisions: The budget cycle includes a strategic dialogue between specialists from the economic and sustainability units at the City Office to ensure budget aligns with the city’s commitment to the SDGs. Analyzing the development in Malmö with the SDGs has become an integral part of defining the city’s budget goals for each cycle."

Accountability is just as significant as mandating: "Using the SDGs in a participatory way helps create accountability that extends beyond an elected government. In Mannheim, the city government involved its citizens through a participatory planning process to define the city’s strategy,  using surveys, focus groups, and public engagement . Democratizing the process connects residents in a tangible way to the local sustainability objectives, and the hope is that this may increase its resistance to political turnover. Even creating a widespread public campaign that encourages citizen contributions toward the SDGs,  such as in Utrecht , can facilitate a shift in community mindset or norms that persists beyond one particular administration or elected leader."

There are several ways to redesign the structure of the index and goals

First there should be more of an emphasis on ecological impact. 13 of the goals are based on development, which creates an uneven balance of indicators being weighed (when involved with the index structure). There needs to be more goals that contribute to ecological sustainability. “This can be done by rendering the ecological indicators in consumption-based terms wherever relevant and possible, to take account of international trade, and by indexing the ecological indicators separately from the development indicators so that we can see clearly what’s happening on each front. This way we can celebrate what countries like Denmark and Germany have achieved in terms of development while also recognizing that they are major drivers of ecological breakdown and need urgently to change course, with rapid reductions in emissions and resource use.”

Second,“metrics of sustainable development need to be universalizable. In other words, the top performers on the index should represent a standard that all nations could aspire to achieve without this leading to a collapse of global ecosystems. That’s not the case with the SDG Index, where rich countries are held up as models when in reality, as the Leeds research shows, they are a big part of the problem.”

The real way to track progress

SDG progress is usually evaluated based on assessments of the states of their own work and discussions with experts and the public, however it should be done in the opposite way: “first, an independent expert assessment with the participation of the public should be made, and only then it should be discussed with government agencies, which would make it possible not to hide, but to identify and solve problems in a timely manner. In some countries, independent public assessments of the implementation of the SDGs are also carried out, but they are made either in a parallel way or after the completion of official reports and therefore have little impact on their content.”  (ESP Secretariat 21) 

The Ecosystem Approach will help with a number of systematic issues

“Only with this approach, the goals and actions of various economic programs, conflicting in the current management systems because of their imaginary independence, will take their place in the common system of natural and technological processes and create synergy to achieve the SDGs. The ecosystem approach also allows for the integration of public health objectives related to the disruption of the natural balance in order to avoid future pandemics.”  (ESP Secretariat 21) . In this way countries will be able to focus on their ecological impact and prevent futher destruction.