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COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Charting the Future of Global Development

by Stewart M. Patrick

November 7, 2012

For more than a decade, the global conversation about development has been dominated by

the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Established at the United Nations Millennium

Summit of 2000, these eight objectives focused on what the international community could

do to meet basic human needs in the developing world.

Over the past dozen years the MDGs have been attacked on numerous groundsfor setting

impossible goals (such as 100% primary school attendance), for neglecting critical

requirements like good governance and strong institutions, and for placing unrealistic

expectations on what foreign aid can actually accomplish. But whatever their shortcomings,

the MDGs mobilized unprecedented global attention and financial resources for poverty

alleviation, driving policy and budgetary decisions throughout the worlds aid agencies.Several of the MDGs have already been achieved (such as halving of absolute poverty) or are

on track to be met by 2015.

The global development community is now debating what should replace the MDGs when

they expire in 2015. What is crystal clear is that the inherited MDG model is increasingly

irrelevant to todays development landscape:

- First, the MDG approach focuses overwhelmingly on what Western donors can do to

deliver development through foreign aid. This ignores growing evidence that aid often pales

in comparison to foreign investment, trade liberalization, private sector promotion, and

technology transfer in laying the foundations for sustained economic growth. It alsooverlooks the growing role being played by non-traditional aid donors, including China,

India, Brazil, and the Gulf countries, and pays insufficient attention to aligning global goals

and targets to the national development priorities of the poorest countries themselves.

- Second, the worlds poor are not where they were when the UN establish targets for the

MDGS. In 1990the baseline date used for MDG targetsfully eighty percent of the

worlds poor lived in stable, low income countries. Today, only 10 percent do, whereas

nearly two-thirds (66 percent) live in middle-income countries and another quarter (24

percent) inhabit fragile or conflict-affected low-income countries. The implication? Making a

dent in global poverty will require unprecedented collaboration with governments in middle-

income nations, on the one hand, and new strategies to engage the worlds most conflict-

ridden and dysfunctional countries, on the other.

- Third, any successor to the MDGs must take a more comprehensive approach to

development. As the UN team spearheading global consultations has concluded, follow-on

goals must target not only inclusive economic and social development but also environmental

sustainability (given short shrift in the MDGs) as well as peace and security (completely

ignored by the MDGs, despite being a fundamental precondition for development).

So what should replace the current MDGs?

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2012/02/01/a-%e2%80%9cnew-deal%e2%80%9d-for-fragile-states-promises-and-pitfalls/http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2012/02/01/a-%e2%80%9cnew-deal%e2%80%9d-for-fragile-states-promises-and-pitfalls/http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

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The best practical answer to date comes from the Korean Development Institute (KDI) and

the Canada-based Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), which recently

released a glossy report, titled Post-2015 Development Agenda: Goals, Targets and

Indicators.Dont let the soporific title fool you. This short document is an engaging, incisive

and timely contribution to debates on the future development agenda.

The authors eleven goals include:

1. Inclusive growth for dignified livelihoods and adequate standards of living:The KDI-CIGI initiative wisely focuses on broadly shared economic growth as

thesine qua non of development.

2. Sufficient food and water for active living: This goal responds to growingconcerns about water scarcity and food price volatility, as well as the need for

adequate nutrition, not simply caloric intake.

3. Appropriate education and skills for full participation in society: Whereas theMDGs focused on grade school enrollment and childhood literacy, this

replacement goal encompasses secondary and tertiary education.

4. Good health for the best possible physical, mental, and social well-being: TheKDI-CIGI report wisely integrates all global health targets under one singlegoal. It also addresses not only infectious disease but the growing burden

posed by non-communicable diseases. Finally, it emphasizes the importance

of health system strengtheningas opposed to stove-piped, single disease

interventions.

5. Security for ensuring freedom from violence: Among the MDGs biggestlacunae was inattention to human insecurity (including war, crime, and

domestic violence) as a limiting factor to development. Closing this gap is

critical, particularly in engaging fragile states.

6. Gender equality enabling men and women in society to participate and benefitequally in society: Reflecting the importance of women in the development

process, the report calls for steps to advance the physical, economic, anddecision making autonomy of women across societies.

7. Resilient communities and nations through disaster risk reduction: Growingglobal vulnerability to natural disastersranging from drought to hurricanes

underlines the need for all societies to invest in preparedness and recovery

systems.

8. Quality infrastructure for universal access to energy, transportation andcommunication: In an age of globalization, development depends on

connectivity. The authors thus include targets for increased access to energy,

transportation networks, and communications technology.

9. Empowering people to realize their civil and political rights: This proposedgoal is both the most controversial and the most important. While authoritarian

regimes may bluster, long-term development requires that people participate in

the political process, possess civil rights, have access to rule of law, and can

hold their governments accountable.

10.Sustainable management of the biosphere, enabling people and the planet tothrive together: Building on the Rio+20 conference, the authors propose steps

to break from business as usual, including putting a price on the ecological

costs of economic activity.

11.Global governance and equitable rules for realizing human potential: Finally,the report proposes sweeping reform of international institutions to advance

development globally. This potential agenda is so massive and complex thatthe authors might wish to limit themselves to an even ten goals or focus on

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specific shortcomings in the global economy that represent enormous barriers

to development.

One of the reports most distinctiveand perhaps controversialrecommendations is that

progress toward these goals be measured in allcountries, including advanced market

democracies. While one can imagine outcries from some sovereignty-minded conservatives

about being judged by the international community, there is no reason the United States

should not voluntarily embrace, domestically, a set of universal, non-binding goals for humanbetterment broadly consistent with its own political and economic idealsas well as the

development agenda it has long pursued abroad. After all, as philosopher Amartya Sen has

written, the most compelling definition for development is freedom.

http://www.amazon.com/Development-as-Freedom-Amartya-Sen/dp/0385720270http://www.amazon.com/Development-as-Freedom-Amartya-Sen/dp/0385720270http://www.amazon.com/Development-as-Freedom-Amartya-Sen/dp/0385720270http://www.amazon.com/Development-as-Freedom-Amartya-Sen/dp/0385720270