World leaders have launched their ‘partnership’ blueprint to succeed the Millennium Development Goals

Critics had expected a final report on the UN's post-2015 development framework to be bogged down by political bargaining. For one year an esteemed 27-member “high level panel” had gathered input from an exhaustive list of civil society participants, including parliamentarians, indigenous people and local communities, businesses, trade unions and governments.

Tasked with the responsibility of laying out a blueprint to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, the panel – a grouping of world leaders appointed by the UN secretary-general and co-chaired by Indonesia’s president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the UK prime minister, David Cameron – had a tough challenge.

Confounding some expectations, what arrived was an ambitious yet clear-headed and concrete set of global development goal proposals.

The substance of that future agreement – aimed at replacing the expiring Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 – came in a 65-page report: A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development.

We now know, in large part, how to reduce poverty, the high level panel argues,through a combination of inclusive economic growth and targeted policies that ensure a social safety net for the most vulnerable in society. And while the 13 years since the millennium have seen the fastest reduction in poverty in human history, there is still work to be done.

An end to poverty?

It does seem likely that extreme poverty – defined as people living on less than $1.25 a day – can be ended in the world’s poorest countries by 2030. But, can the new post-2015 framework do that in a way that doesn’t exacerbate already widening inequalities? Can economic development advance human development outcomes much further in the face of rising greenhouse gas emissions? And what role in all this might the private sector play beyond creating jobs and economic growth?

“Without environmental sustainability we cannot end poverty,” the high level panel says. And unlike the MDGs, which relegated the environment to just one of eight goals, the high level panel offers four goals – on energy, water, food, and natural resources – that mark a merging of development and sustainability.

As for inequality, development professionals say they are pleased with the inclusion of “zero goals”, for example in poverty and child mortality, and the recommendation to “only consider a target reached if it is achieved within all key economic and social groups”. Inequality did not in itself become a standalone goal (as many wanted), but is nevertheless thoroughly integrated into the document.

For more than a year the high level panel worked in consultation with civil society organisations and the business community, hammering out what amounts to 12 goals broken down further into 54 concrete targets. Driving the agenda are what the panel calls five transformative shifts:

  • leave no one behind (focused on ending extreme poverty);
  • put sustainable development at the core;
  • transform economies for jobs and inclusive growth (including significant reform of business, taxation and education);
  • build peace and effective, open and accountable institutions for all (a focus on good governance and peace as a fundamental demand of governments); and
  • forge a new global partnership (a call for more ambitious and innovative ways of working together).

The new agenda is decidedly a global one. Responsibilities are universal in scope, placing demands equally on developing and OECD countries alike.

“Most of the money to finance sustainable development will come from domestic sources,” the panel says, noting a needed shift away from an agenda often overseen and financed by wealthier, industrialised countries. In return for this shift in responsibility, developed countries are expected to implement trade reforms, new tax and transparency policies, as well as pledges to tackle illicit capital flows and regulation of global and commodity markets.

Many are applauding the panel for its boldness. Yet, simultaneously, some are wondering how, in practice, the private sector would get itself involved.

Global partnerships

“The UN high level panel report talks about forging a new global partnership, and finding new ways of working, including with the private sector,” says Karen Ellis, head of the private sector and markets programme at the Overseas Development Institute. “However, it doesn’t really provide any ideas on how that potential partnership between government, business and other partners might look.”

With regard to the environment, for example, the panel proposes goals with quantifiable 2030 metrics, such as doubling the share of renewable energy in consumption, phasing out harmful fossil fuel subsidies and doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency from buildings to transport. As for global partnerships, there is little in the way of this kind of specificity.

Ellis highlights the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and the Beira Agricultural Growth Corridor in Mozambique as “symbiotic partnerships” that might have been held up as guidepost examples. “This new and exciting form of partnership is already beginning to emerge between business, government and donors, in which they collaborate in the design of a development strategy for a particular region or sector, and make mutual commitments to deliver those goals,” says Ellis.

But to Francis West, senior private sector adviser at Save the Children, a precursor to more robust partnerships is a minimum level of corporate transparency and accountability – which is still lacking.

“Voluntarism in corporate reporting has failed,” West argues. “Of roughly 20,000 companies that Bloomberg has examined, over three-quarters still do not publish even one datapoint on business sustainability performance issues. Without legislation it will be decades before sustainability reporting is common practice. This has support in the business community.”

West refers to a paper presented at a UN-sponsored 2012 Sustainable Stock Exchange Global Dialogue, in which more than half of respondents said responsibility for increased sustainability reporting was shared between the exchange and government.

The high level panel explicitly supports this view in its report, saying “integrated reporting on their social and environmental impact, as well as their financial performance,” is essential if business is to be “trusted partners of governments and CSOs [civil society organisations]”.

There could not have been a clearer admonishment of the business community. Essentially, if business wants to be let in the door, it had better take on baseline reporting requirements.

Mandatory reporting

Unfortunately, the high level panel has failed to lay out any guidelines and performance indicators – apart from calling for a mandatory “comply or explain” regime to companies with a market capitalisation of $100m equivalent.

For more clarity one must look to the G8, which in its June meeting in Northern Ireland strongly tipped its hand towards adoption of the Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative. Thirty-nine countries have already signed up to the EITI, with the G8 leaders confirming candidacy applications by the US, the UK and France.

The G8 also announced partnerships with developing countries to improve transparency and governance in the extractive sector by 2015. Participants will include Peru, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Mongolia, Ghana, Burma and Guinea.

Save the Children applauds these initiatives but wants to extend the remit through adoption of the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, but going beyond the GRI’s voluntary approach towards a baseline reporting requirement.

Might such a mandated reporting requirement be burdensome? Financial reporting is also onerous, responds West, but it is accepted given its importance to a company’s effective functioning.

“I don’t think that asking for [mandatory] reporting across the board before such [global] partnerships can be established is very realistic,” argues Ellis. GRI is probably the best resource to build on here, she adds, “but measuring [social and environmental impacts] properly is very resource intensive and expensive. Only big multinationals are likely to have the resources to develop this kind of reporting; SMEs and developing country enterprises will find it much harder. So we shouldn’t let the best be the enemy of the good.”

In September, these arguments will undoubtedly be made at the UN Global Compact’s leaders’ summit executive sessions. Perhaps, then, a new, more inclusive and openly transparent partnership paradigm will emerge.

[Mandatory sustainability reporting] is an important first step to minimising the negative impacts of a business,” says West. “Only by capturing and measuring non-financial information can companies hope to control these impacts and subsequently build sustainable business models.”

Responsibilities are universal in scope, placing demands equally on developing and OECD countries alike

“Voluntarism in corporate reporting has failed” Francis West, Save the Children

Eric Marx  G8  millennium development goals  partnerships  world strategy 

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