International Development Committee
Oral evidence: Sustainable Development Goals, HC 337
Tuesday 8 September 2015
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 September 2015.
Watch the meeting: Tuesday 8 September 2015
Members present: Stephen Twigg (Chair); Fiona Bruce; Dr Lisa Cameron; Mrs Helen Grant; Fabian Hamilton, Pauline Latham OBE, Jeremy Lefroy, Wendy Morton, Albert Owen, Mr Virendra Sharma
Questions 1-33
Witnesses: Jonathan Glennie, Director of Policy and Research, Save the Children, Jamie Drummond, Co-Founder and Executive Director, ONE, and Melissa Leach, Director, Institute of Development Studies gave evidence
Q1 Chair: Good morning, everyone, and welcome. This is the first public evidence session of the new International Development Committee and part of our inquiry into the Sustainable Development Goals. I would like to thank our three expert witnesses for joining us today. Before we start some questions on the SDGs, I would just like to give our three witnesses an opportunity to say something on the refugee crisis. In particular, if they could briefly address two questions: first of all, the Government’s decision to focus on providing refugee status for those refugees who are in camps in the Middle East rather than those who have made their way to Europe; and, secondly, the implications for ODA and the 0.7% target—whether it is right that money spent on settling refugees in the UK should be classified as ODA. If I could ask each of our witnesses perhaps just to introduce themselves but also then to address those questions, and then we will move on to the Sustainable Development Goals. Melissa, do you want to go first?
Melissa Leach: I am happy to do so. I am Melissa Leach and I am Director of the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex. I am going to speak just briefly on the direction of the target. There is a justification for the focus on refugees from camps in the Middle East, partly because the argument that opening the gates to Europe can encourage traffickers simply to move more people is a real problem. I also think that it is reasonable to use part of the aid budget for refugees in this context, but with the proviso that this needs to be short-term and it needs to be linked to an approach that in the longer term—and this very much connects up with the SDGs—directs aid money and development towards addressing the longer-term structural causes of the crises that are generating these refugee flows, whether those are inequality, unemployment, lack of accountability in governance, climate change, or disenfranchisement. These are the things that have driven Syria, ISIS, Boko Haram and the other major conflicts and crises in fragile states that are now generating the flows into Europe.
Jamie Drummond: Jamie Drummond, Executive Director and Co-Founder of ONE. If I can focus particularly on the second question, the UK is in a good position because of 0.7%. Thank you all for your leadership in getting us here; it is historic and the British people can be really proud of the fact that we are in this situation. Our leadership on this really matters because other countries in Europe in particular are not at 0.7%—Germany, the Netherlands, France and others—and therefore when they talk about redirecting aid towards refugees it has different implications than it does for a country that has kept its promise. It is really important that we acknowledge that when we are talking with other countries. The Netherlands, for example, has just considered significant cuts to redirect aid to refugee costs. It is acceptable, as Melissa said, for the first year of costs; thereafter it should revert to normal DACable procedures. We at ONE are particularly concerned to make sure that everyone is aware that the UK gives 38% of its aid to the least developed countries. We do not think that is enough; we think it should be 50% and we think all nations should aspire to that target. That would do a lot to get significantly ahead of these crises as they unfold and to get at their root causes. In our analysis, there are these three extremes—extreme poverty, extreme climate and extreme ideology—that risk taking over certain parts of the world, and if we do not have a pretty enlightened and aggressive long-term investment strategy, including significant amounts of ODA, for those regions we will regret it in the long term and future flows of refugees will increase. We need enlightened policies right now to deal with this crisis, but we must not do that at the expense of long-term ODA for these regions.
Jonathan Glennie: Jonathan Glennie, Director of Policy and Research at Save the Children UK. On aid, I agree with the previous speakers; I have nothing much to add on that. On the British line on refugees, firstly, we very much welcome the direction the Government are taking to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees. It is a very welcome first step. However, with regard to those refugees already in Europe, we are also suggesting that the Government help to accommodate 3,000 of the most vulnerable unaccompanied children—those that have arrived in Europe without any family. We think that is doable, we think that should be additional, and it is very much in the British tradition. We have set out—some of you may have seen it—a five-point plan for how to deal with this crisis. There are five Rs, quite cleverly: regional response; search and rescue efforts; safe and legal routes in Europe; strengthening reception and processing of refugees; and resettlement. We can provide you with that detailed plan after this Committee.
Q2 Mr Nigel Evans: Jonathan, on that last point about 3,000 children that have already arrived in Europe, do you not believe that if the Government went down that route many parents would even consider sending their children on their own on boats to Europe in the vain hope that your policy will come to fruition and that they will have a safe haven in Europe? What I am saying in essence is: is your stance there not far more dangerous than getting youngsters who are already settled in camps or, indeed, in the community—I know 85% of the migrants in Jordan do not live in camps—whether they are in Turkey, Jordan or the various other countries that have taken in millions of people? Do you not think that is a far safer policy than the one that you have suggested?
Jonathan Glennie: The move to support 20,000 refugees and to focus on those refugees still in the region is a positive one and we support it as a first step. However, there is a crisis of refugees in Europe at the moment. We have to find a response to that as part of Europe, and Britain needs to play its part in that. There are incentives questions. Generally speaking, our view is that it is incredibly unlikely for parents to make those kinds of decisions unless what they are fleeing is far worse than the risk they are putting their children under. We do not buy very much the idea that parents are likely to make those decisions based on incentives offered by countries in Europe. It is really a push factor rather than a pull factor. We need to do something about the kids that are currently in crisis in Europe; it is not possible just not to play our part.
Q3 Albert Owen: Along similar lines to what my colleague was asking, how did you arrive at the 3,000 figure? What sort of timetabling are you talking about here? Are you saying that we take 3,000 and other countries take an equal amount so that there is a European dimension to it?
Jonathan Glennie: I do not know exactly how we arrived at the 3,000 figure. I can definitely furnish you with that information later, but absolutely, this would be the UK playing its part along with a range of other countries in Europe. As you know, the countries neighbouring Syria have taken on far more than that; they are taking on in the order of hundreds of thousands or millions, so we think this is a very limited figure that the UK could start with to play its part in this crisis. Yes, there are longer-term issues and there are incentives issues and it is worth talking about them. Nevertheless, this is a crisis for children who have no education, no health and no safety, fundamentally. A lot of us have children; consider the situation they find themselves in today. We need a humanitarian response to that.
Q4 Albert Owen: I am just looking at the practicalities. It is 3,000 over what period of time? Are you saying immediate?
Jonathan Glennie: Very soon.
Q5 Fiona Bruce: Good morning. Melissa, you talked about money being directed to the longer-term causes of the refugee crisis, and you mentioned issues such as climate change, unemployment and inequality. Do you think now we also ought to be adding to that list persecution on the grounds of belief, bearing in mind that you then went on to talk about groups like ISIS and Boko Haram as being those who are causing so much of this trouble?
Melissa Leach: What the research evidence tells us from these places with extremely complex histories is that in general, while there are ideological factors that lie behind extremism, it is also politics and economy. When ideology turns to violence is when people—often particularly young people—feel deeply disenfranchised, alienated and excluded from the societies and economic settings that they are living in. This is where tackling things like unemployment, corruption, citizenship and accountability—things that the UK Government and DFID have been very strong in leading on in longer-term development efforts—will pay dividends in the future in tackling the root causes of conflict. Earlier this year, in July, Justine Greening approved a package; there is already an argument for directing development efforts to fragile states. That is well and good, but we need to be careful that that is not just, as it were, sticking plasters—“let us have water systems and food aid”—but that it is addressing some of these questions of economy, infrastructure, employment and governance that ultimately will pay dividends in the longer term.
Jamie Drummond: If you look at Africa, the population is just over 1 billion now and will go to 2 billion and then 2.5 billion by the middle of the century. The population of the Sahel is 100 million and will go up to 300 million to 400 million over that period of time. The population of Nigeria will go up from 180 million to 400 million and then 500 million. That is a significant increase in population. In particular, by the middle of the century, Africa will have two out of five of the world’s youth. Just as this country and this continent will be at its most senile demographically speaking, Africa will be the world’s youth and the supply of the world’s energy, creativity and dynamism—if we have invested properly in their education, governance and long-term security and the ability and belief that people can make a contribution in their economies and societies. If we fail to make those long-term investments because we are lurching in response from crisis to crisis or because we are indifferent, we will significantly regret the missed opportunity of having their engagement in a positive way and we will regret unfolding increased crises at that time, unfortunately.
Q6 Fiona Bruce: I absolutely agree. What I am saying is in addition to that list one of the root causes—look at the migrant crisis emanating from Syria—is the fact that people have certain beliefs that other groups are effectively attacking. I am saying that in addition to all the issues you have mentioned we cannot ignore that fact. Would you agree?
Melissa Leach: I would agree. This requires careful negotiation, deliberation and dialogue on the ground, informed by really good evidence and understanding of the political and historical dynamics of those conflicts, which are complicated.
Chair: Let us move on now to the main purpose of today’s evidence session. The Committee decided before the summer recess that our first major inquiry would be into the Sustainable Development Goals. It is clearly a very big agenda. We have about an hour to take the oral evidence today and we have quite a lot of questions, so I am going to make pleas both to my colleagues to keep the questions nice and concise and to our witnesses to do the same in terms of the answers. In particular, do not feel the need for all three of you to answer every question. If you feel you want to add anything to whichever colleague answers first, please do, but bear in mind we have about an hour and we are aiming to get through 17 questions in that time.
Q7 Fabian Hamilton: Good morning, everybody. My first question is this: how does the scope and purpose of the Sustainable Development Goals differ from that of the Millennium Development Goals? Do you think that the breadth and depth of the new goals is a good thing? How well do the SDGs reflect new challenges in international development, such as the number of poor people who live in middle-income countries?
Melissa Leach: I would love to answer that. There are four really important ways in which this is a new agenda and a very exciting, important opportunity. The first is that, unlike the MDGs, the SDGs are about addressing the underlying causes of development problems and really tackling some of these questions around governance, peace and inequalities with an overall emphasis on inclusive sustainable development. It is a far more transformative approach. Secondly, we are seeing, really importantly, the integration of the people-centred agenda of the MDGs with the planet-centred agenda that came about through Rio+20 and the other conferences, and that is absolutely necessary given what scientific evidence is showing us about the effects of climate change and the impending other planetary boundaries around biodiversity loss, land degradation and pollution. Business as usual is no longer an option. Future development needs to be sustainable development that integrates environment and people. Thirdly, they take a universal framing. This is a change. It is not just a north-south axis; it is about development now being as relevant in Brighton as in Bogotá and in Greece as in Ghana, and it is about mutual responsibilities. That opens up huge opportunities for joined‑up government and for learning between people and places and unleashing creativity from all parts of the world in partnerships. Finally, it signals a reinvigoration of international co-operation and multilateralism on challenges around finance, food, climate change and health. This is not just about tackling problems in particular poor countries; it is about how the world can work together to set us on new, very important sustainable paths.
Jamie Drummond: Referring to the last questions, the global goals for sustainable development are a great way of getting ahead of the potential unfolding crises we might be facing in 15 years’ or 20 years’ time, and it is important to see it in that context. It is a very good thing that it is much more widely consulted than the millennium goals were, because it has resulted in bigger and greater buy-in within developing and emerging economies. That has come at a price, which may be degrees of focus, but the plus side is that the people whose ultimate responsibility it is within these countries to eradicate extreme poverty, end preventable and treatable child deaths, etc, are the taxpayers, voters and citizens of these countries. We can help to a degree but they have to finish the job. The big exercise and consultation around the world that has just happened, including surveys like the MY World survey that consulted with citizens of these countries, has resulted in a great set of goals that have the chance to be used within these countries as a citizens’ scorecard with which government can be held better accountable for delivery. That is a great prize. It is not yet fully delivered—there is still some work to do on indicators, the improvement and quality of data, and so on—but it is a great prize and it is a price worth paying in that we now have a more complex but therefore perhaps more realistic set of goals. Seven, eight or 10 goals is a nice short number; 17 means we were not faking it. It is messier and it is real and it is complicated, and it reflects that reality.
Q8 Fabian Hamilton: Are you happy, though, that that consultation has been a genuine one that has really reached far beyond the consultation for the Millennium Development Goals?
Jamie Drummond: Absolutely, yes.
Fabian Hamilton: Genuinely?
Jamie Drummond: Genuinely.
Jonathan Glennie: On that last point, the MDGs had a lot going for them. They were genuinely a great era of development and they had that priority focus on the basic services and all that. Nevertheless, in terms of inclusivity, they always felt, throughout the whole period, like they had been written somewhere else and foisted on countries—sometimes very usefully, but especially the middle-income countries broadly would not have responded significantly to the MDG pressure, although some did—whereas these SDGs have been a universal and inclusive process. That is one of the reasons why it is such a broad, all-encompassing vision. By the way, I agree with everything that has been said; I will not repeat it. There is just one area that is more focused, in a way, or where certainly there is the opportunity to focus more, and it has been an area of UK leadership, which is this language of “leave no one behind”. One of the great learnings of the MDG period is that while there was progress for many, the people that were most left behind were the already furthest behind. Within the SDG grand vision there is also this call that all sections of society need to progress, and we are insisting that no target should be considered met unless met for all sections of society: the poorest, girls, ethnic groups, disabled children, and all those people that might otherwise be left behind if there is not a clear focus on them. We think that, yes, it is a broad focus as a group of goals, but that is a very specific focus as well within that.
Q9 Fabian Hamilton: What impact do you think the SDGs should have on UK international development policy specifically?
Melissa Leach: There are several. First, it should stimulate a move towards a universal “beyond aid” way of thinking about and doing development. This is about a joined-up approach across Government, following up on many of the points that were made in last year’s Beyond Aid inquiry to this very Committee. If we are really going to take seriously the SDGs, it means DFID connecting up with other departments in Whitehall—with BIS; with DECC, which will be leading on a lot of the climate change aspects; and with departments of foreign policy and foreign affairs—to deliver on a set of goals that are genuinely about universal co-operation and international co-operation. The other implication—we may well come to this—is about not separating out particular goals to focus on but taking an integrated approach. This is one of the cross-cutting principles of the SDGs. Although there are 17 goals that deal with particular sectors, there is also an argument that these need to be more than the sum of the parts. Whereas the initial questions for this inquiry were framed in terms of saying, “Which goals should DFID focus on? Should we do water or climate change or girls?” the argument is that by not doing them in an integrated way you miss opportunities and miss key synergies and maybe run into real problems. If one focuses on renewable energy for climate change reasons, one is missing opportunities to connect that up with reduced pollution and with improved health for women and children through cooking stoves. Equally focusing on something like the agenda for girls; it is fantastic to have a standalone goal on gender and women’s empowerment, but questions of gender need to seed through all of the goals. We cannot pursue sensibly a goal on agriculture and sustainable food if we do not really prioritise the empowerment of women in their roles as food producers and access to land. There is a really strong argument for an integrated approach within DFID at the same time as DFID also leads the way across Whitehall in that kind of approach.
Q10 Albert Owen: Just following on from that, Melissa, you talk about the joined-up approach from different departments. Do you think there is a joined-up approach? Are you being critical, or are you suggesting this is an opportunity for a new relationship between the departments and maybe to set up an SDG Cabinet sub-committee so that they can focus on all the goals? Is that what you are saying? Is that your view?
Can I ask this question to you all? Do you think that domestic policies in certain areas like climate change are undermining our role in the world? We are telling everybody to go renewable and I know we were critical of Canada and the tar sands, for example. Do you think our energy policy and our climate change policy are undermining the good work that we have been doing?
Melissa Leach: The answer is yes. This is the opportunity for a far more coherent approach across Whitehall and within the UK about the way we run our own domestic policies and the impact of those policies on the wider world. Many of these points were made in the Beyond Aid inquiry. The SDGs underline all of those points in spades and we should be looking to new mechanisms for integration and coherence across Government. Many other countries are doing this. Australia has moved forward with national sustainable development commissions. Japan is moving in this direction. We are seeing Germany driving national planning processes around green and circular economies. The opportunity now is there for the UK to step up. DFID could have a lead role in this area, because DFID carries a connection with the international world. This is about coherence in domestic policy with coherence in what we are doing in other parts of the world.
Jamie Drummond: The phrase that Jonathan mentioned that was in the High-level Panel, “leave no one behind”, is a great guiding thought for a lot of this. If you look at where the extremely poor are most likely to live towards the end of the 2030 timeframe, it is primarily in Africa and it is primarily within LDCs within Africa. It is worth being guided by a particular thought there, which is the median per capita level of expenditure in those countries is $123—less than £100—per person per year. That is public expenditure covering everything—covering all the SDGs. We are talking about extremely poor people living in countries with no money. The allocation of British ODA to those countries over the long term is extremely important. Currently, like I said, we only give 38% to those countries. Within Goal 1 there is a particular target around providing social safety nets—social floors—to ensure that we leave no one behind. It is quite an integrated thought because it covers all the services that could be provided to the very poorest people in the very poorest countries. If you are looking for a guiding thought and plan of action, it is worthwhile pursuing that one. How we ensure that every citizen on the planet gets access to that very basic level of services through more open budgets and better finance, ideally so that these citizens who are on the receiving end can monitor those flows and make sure they can follow the money and get those services, is hopefully—
Q11 Albert Owen: Is there joined-up thinking in Whitehall? That was my question.
Jamie Drummond: Not currently, but there should be. For example, when it comes to all forms of development finance in the round, there is ODA but there is also FDI, domestic resource mobilisation and remittances. All of these things were discussed in the Addis Ababa Financing for Development summit. Look, for example, at what we have been campaigning for: a public register for the beneficial ownership of anonymous shell companies. This would significantly help campaigners and infomediaries in developing countries identify assets and capital that has been stolen or has flown from their economies that should be better used within these countries to fund development. The loss of those funds is a significant loss of development finance, in which the City of London and overseas dependent territories have some role to play. Whether it is the department of justice or finance, we need to pay attention there. Similarly, transparency in the oil and gas sector. In both these areas, the UK has played a relative leadership role but could do a lot more, especially in Europe.
Q12 Albert Owen: Just one final point. Do you think there is enough co-operation between Whitehall departments and the devolved administrations? Do you think moving forward that that can change and improve in the UK per se?
Melissa Leach: I am not really in a position to offer strong evidence on that point.
Jonathan Glennie: I am afraid I do not know about that.
Albert Owen: With the refugee thing that is interesting. Everybody is having that debate.
Melissa Leach: You are talking about devolved administration regionally and locally.
Albert Owen: And Scotland and Wales.
Melissa Leach: This will become really critical, and there needs to be that discussion. Furthermore, if the UK is to take on the universality of the Sustainable Development Goals and begin to think about questions of leaving no one behind in our own back yard, as it were, or in the back yards of Scotland or Wales, then the connection between national policy and local government and devolved administration will be really important.
Jonathan Glennie: Just a couple of thoughts on the question, just to back up what colleagues have said. The way that the MDGs were theorised and conceptualised was to locate the problem that we were dealing with in other countries: “The problem is poverty, broadly speaking, and it is over there. What can we do to help?” That implies an aid mentality. It is great that we have achieved 0.7%. It is an immense and historic achievement for the country. Nevertheless, the SDGs locate the problem somewhat differently. The problem is unsustainable development. Unsustainable development is taking place right here and all over the world. Therefore, the response is not just aid. That is an important part of it for a lot of countries, but the response is, as you have implied, a much broader, cross-Government approach. The finance side, as Jamie and others have talked about, is much broader than aid.
Secondly, just a thought with regard to what DFID can do, because DFID is concerned with the overseas agenda. The current administration is focused a lot on economic growth in the private sector; it has emphasised that. That relates a little bit to what Melissa was saying. These SDGs talk about industrialisation and about getting countries off the ground—not just responding to problems but supporting countries to grow and provide jobs and all that stuff. This is an agenda that DFID is on, but it needs to be really careful that it is focused on inclusive and sustainable growth rather than simply economic growth, which is somewhat the tradition. It is a great opportunity but also a great risk. Our feeling is that we need to get much more into detail about what DFID is proposing with regard to private-sector growth and economic growth to make sure that it contributes to job creation and dealing with some of the social problems, not just to growth in general.
The final point—Jamie implied it—is that one thing that DFID could start to do to implement the “leave no one behind” agenda is to play a role in disaggregation of data so that we know about the impact of British aid interventions and all kinds of development interventions not just on average but with regard to the specific groups that we are most concerned about.
Q13 Mrs Helen Grant: Good morning. We touched on this earlier, but my questions relate to consultation and negotiation. With 17 goals and 169 targets, have the goals become an unworkable shopping list where nothing will be prioritised? I also would like to know whether you think the negotiation has been a success.
Jamie Drummond: One point to make there is not every country will equally implement every goal, target and indicator because some of them do not apply to every country. A small island state has a different need from Nigeria or the United Kingdom, so there will plainly be tailored national implementation strategies, and there should be. That is a broad important point.
We have already touched on the political price that was paid for getting greater inclusion, which was a slight lack of focus, but that price, we have argued, is worth paying. For example, in the negotiations there was a lively debate about gender and the degree to which it should be included; there was a lively debate about governance, the rule of law, and transparency and accountability and the degree to which it could have been included. For the sake of focus, we might have got 10 goals but lost those two extremely important areas of gender and governance, which we would not have been in favour of. Therefore, we think it is a price worth paying. Let us just remember the value of these goals is that they are not legally binding but they will at their best help countries and campaigners within countries hold governments to account. The MDGs at their best were quite helpful in helping campaigners in Uganda or Tanzania demand better service delivery from their government than might otherwise have happened and in helping us form a partnership with those citizens to make those demands of their governments and ours. The SDGs take that logic further, and it is a very good thing that they do. Another way, maybe, of looking at it is that it is trying both to complete the job of the MDGs and to take on the transfer of the development paradigm from, as Jonathan said, taxpayers in the north to citizens all over the world. That is a huge, hairy task. Our argument is the world has become even more complex than it was in 2000 and we need to recognise that complexity. It is not an easy thing to satisfactorily communicate to citizens. I think we will therefore find that not every single target and indicator is equally communicated by politicians or by campaign groups all the time and there will be realistic subsets that are worked on at various moments.
Melissa Leach: I would agree with those points. There is also a sense in which the SDGs set an agreed new framework in which everybody around the world—here we are talking about governments but also those in civil society and citizens across the world—can reimagine what development is about, which is a world of interconnections where we need to tackle the triple bottom line that we have been talking about in IDS around the need to reduce inequality as well as tackle poverty, to accelerate transformations to sustainability, and to build inclusive and secure societies. That is the bottom line that the whole set of goals adds up to. What we have with this framework is an aspiration and a global commitment to transforming our world along paths that move in this direction. I agree with Jamie that when we come to implementation—this is where we are at now—countries will need to do it differently. We need targets that are staggered and that create the right level of stretch for particular countries but are not infeasible and that can really be used in those countries for buy-in. As a set, having them there not just as 17 goals but with those cross-cutting five Ps and principles of integration and ideas around “leave no one behind” is really important for the world.
Jonathan Glennie: If you will allow me, I am going to use some hyperbole. A lot of us have come from a place where we thought these were going to be the next set of MDGs. The MDGs were a very seriously prioritised set of goals. They were considered the most important things for the world to deal with. They certainly did not cover everything the world needed to do. If we approach it from that perspective, then there are way too many and they are not prioritised. The health goal is way broader than the health goal in the MDGs. From that perspective, we are worried, but if you start to see things slightly differently, I struggle to think of a more important, profound, visionary declaration that the world has made about what it wants to see on our planet. I would go back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to think of such an important declaration of where we are going. It is not an action list. It has not yet been prioritised, and that process will have to happen in the international community, international agencies and also at national level, but it certainly is an incredibly inspiring vision for where we want to go and it does give power to the hand of those progressives in countries that want to focus on transparency, on governance, on girls—on all those things that there is a whole range of civil society especially working on. In that sense, it is for me a massive step forward for humanity. That is the hyperbole that I hope you will allow me. Nevertheless, is there a risk that some of the most important sectors of society are not focused on in a way that they have been before? Yes, that risk exists. Look at the fact that for the last 15 years we have been focusing on primary education and now the SDGs cover secondary and tertiary; and on primary healthcare and now we are covering a lot more parts of healthcare. Yes, that is a risk and we need to be careful about that.
Q14 Mrs Helen Grant: How would you manage that risk?
Jonathan Glennie: That is politics. It is up to organisations like my own saying, “Yes, absolutely to the interconnectedness of all this, yes to growth and yes to the causes of poverty, but also, let us focus on the poorest—on the children that have nothing before the children that want to go to university”. There is a prioritisation exercise that has to happen and we have to hold our governments accountable to what people want. It is a risk we have to respond to, but overall it would have been a mistake not to have gone with this great and inclusive vision of a better world.
Q15 Dr Lisa Cameron: A number of international negotiations that are scheduled in 2015 will impact upon the Sustainable Development Goals, including the recent Financing for Development conference, the latest round of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, and the 21st Conference of the Parties on Climate Change. How can the UK ensure that the outcomes from these conferences are linked back to the Sustainable Development Goals in a coherent way?
Melissa Leach: I could say something about climate change specifically. The Sustainable Development Goals offer an enormous opportunity to align development with climate change as well as other aspects of sustainability. There are strong moves within the international community and within transnational bodies such as Future Earth, which is the new global platform for research and policy around sustainable development, which are making a strong case for the opportunities and the need to integrate positions in climate change negotiations with the Sustainable Development Goals positions. Ultimately, a lot of this will come down to intergovernmental negotiations at the COP and beyond, but the Sustainable Development Goals framework should be setting the aspirations within which we seek to do work around climate change.
I do not know if others want to respond particularly on finance. We have already said something about the links between the Addis Ababa conclusions and what is now happening around development finance. The Sustainable Development Goals move beyond simply aid also to look at business investments, partnerships, foreign direct investment and remittances, where again we might well see the triple bottom line around people, planet and inclusivity operating as a set of principles to guide financial negotiations in development in the implementation of what emerged from Addis.
Jamie Drummond: I will maybe touch on finance briefly. An outcome from Copenhagen was this $100 billion with a fast-tracked $10 billion for adaptation and mitigation. It has never really materialised. There was a false game played of a pretence that this was additional money. It was not. It is extremely important that there is transparency and accountability of the political culture of promise-making, especially when it comes to finance. At ONE we have these things called the TRACK principles, which we have come to advocate for through our bitter experience of many multi-annual commitments made by politicians with unclear baselines and where it is unclear for how many years it is intended, whether it is current or constant prices, etc. We need to be much clearer and more accountable about financial promises made at these moments and, wherever possible, climate finance should be additional to core development finance. You have to remember that development got harder because of climate, so just paying for climate out of development funds can be a zero-sum game. That does not mean that they are different tracks of money; they must be spent in a policy-coherent way, and so policy coherence for sustainable development matters a lot.
Jonathan Glennie: On the financing of the SDGs, there was a deliberate decision to put the Financing for Development conference before the SDG conference coming up in September. The way that I have been told it, it was because countries wanted to make sure there was money on the table before they came out with what is the most ambitious set of goals the world has ever signed up to. Unfortunately, the Addis conference did not provide the goods. There were some steps forward. Jamie has mentioned the social compact; there is something called the Addis Tax Initiative, which is a very important thing; there are some global funds, including one on violence against children that we are very keen on; and there are funds on data. There is a whole bunch of initiatives that are very welcome, but in terms of setting the scene for the world to be ready to pay for a set of goals that are vastly more expensive because they are way more ambitious than the MDGs, the world is miles away from that, in my view. That is with regard to where we are at the moment. We needed a much more profound look at the way that finance and money and trade operate around the world to enable countries to grow and to pay for their own development. With regard to DFID, there is a bit of a danger. On the one hand, as I have said, the UK is to be congratulated on this historic commitment to 0.7%. The danger becomes that the UK relaxes a little bit. You can see that sometimes in negotiations. The UK is respected for this aid commitment; nevertheless, there are a range of other areas that the UK needs to move on—we have heard some of them—and our commitment on aid cannot be used as an excuse not to make very progressive commitments on a whole range of other financial areas that you all know about.
Q16 Dr Lisa Cameron: Are you concerned, then, that lack of co‑operation in terms of trade agreements and finance will impede our ability to achieve these goals?
Jonathan Glennie: Yes. The UK has not only reached 0.7% but it has reached 0.7% in very difficult economic circumstances. A couple of other countries in the world have improved on their aid giving, but most have reduced it. It is not just aid that worries me; it is also the increased concern about our own economies. 10 years ago, when things were going well, there was somewhat of a generosity, not only in aid but also in, “How do we support other countries?” I would be very worried that richer countries especially, but also some of the larger middle-income countries, are now less open to the progressive trade deals that are required to support development in other countries.
Melissa Leach: Just to put this another way, Goal 17 is all about implementation and has a strong target area around finance. Some of these issues are now a matter for the next stage to look to what kinds of trade agreements or forms of financial regulation or initiatives to generate the kind of patient capital required for sustainable development over the longer term now need to be taken. This is a matter not for individual countries but for the international community to be thinking about instruments for implementation. There is a big role for the UK in taking a lead here. More broadly, Goal 17 offers many lead areas for DFID and the UK. It is all about finance; it is about technology; it is about capacity building. It is some of these cross-cutting areas where the UK could help to push the world.
Chair: We have covered five questions in half an hour and we have a dozen more to do in the second period. I blame the Chair.
Q17 Pauline Latham: The process of consultation for the SDGs has been much bigger and broader than for the Millennium Development Goals. Do you think the process has been inclusive enough? How do you think it has affected the outcomes?
Melissa Leach: I could say something briefly. As colleagues have said, it has been far more inclusive than it was for the MDGs, and it has probably been as inclusive as could be reasonable in the circumstances. What we have had is not just the UN process through the open working groups but also a mass of processes within countries that have contributed to those, plus other kinds of evidence: the MY World online survey that was done and the work that my colleagues at IDS did, with partners around the world, in the Participate initiative, which gathered a large network of participatory research organisations and had a big influence on the High-level Panel. David Cameron personally took that role and it has helped to create the “leave no one behind” agenda. The impact on the SDGs is both to enable the number that we have, as has been said, but also really to contribute to some of these cross-cutting ideas, including the very important one about “leave no one behind”, and to make the case for the need for an integrated approach. What the Participate evidence and consultation showed was that for the bottom 10% to 20% of people and for those living with disabilities, it was not a question of, “Do we want health services or energy services or food?”; it was that very often the services existed and the problems were in people’s access to them, as shaped by institutions and discriminatory social norms. This has really helped put that cross-cutting agenda about inclusivity behind the Sustainable Development Goals process.
Q18 Pauline Latham: Do you feel the public participation was a good thing, or did it hinder it?
Jamie Drummond: A good thing. It offers a prize that has not yet been fully seized, which is that these goals become a true citizens’ scorecard. Goals, targets and indicators are useful as management tools for governments, but that gets you only so far; it is when citizens use them as a scorecard to hold governments accountable for service delivery that they really count. That is a possibility. It is not yet a prize fully seized; it is a possibility we have to go and seize now. That requires great campaigning, if I may say so, from a campaigning organisation with partners around the world. There is a coalition called action/2015, which is a huge, unprecedented alliance. There is an enormous effort called Project Everyone to ensure that everyone on the planet hears about these global goals, because, as we know, politicians often make great promises but they do not keep them unless people remind them about the promises. It is just a habit that is understandable, because you are always asked to make a new promise by someone else. You have to have the constituency on hand to hold people accountable for the delivery of political promises. That is the purpose of this big global coalition that has formed that will be going into the future an empowered citizenry demanding governments keep their promises.
Q19 Pauline Latham: Will the public be able to continue with the dialogue with this big global organisation? It could just become an institution that—
Jamie Drummond: It is up to us and what we do now. The answer to that is up to campaigning and it is up to continued pressure. Now 2015 has come and great goals have been launched with fireworks and fanfare, it is all about follow-up. It is all about implementation. Everything we have learned tells us that. That is why it is important that in 2015 we build an informed community of citizens around the world holding governments accountable that understand this is a long-term project and are in it for the long term.
Q20 Mr Virendra Sharma: My question is on the implementation of the SDGs. What is the UK’s approach to implementation of the SDGs? What do you think DFID’s key priorities should be and what do you think they are likely to be? I am sure you have touched on it, but still, a brief answer will help. Does DFID have comparative advantage in certain areas, like women and girls and governance? If so, should it be looking to play to its strengths and allow other donors to play to theirs? How should DFID be working with other donors? It is three questions in one.
Melissa Leach: I could say something briefly and then turn to others. It is very important that DFID takes an integrated approach to implementation. The UK has, interestingly, been more reluctant than some countries to embrace this integrated agenda of the SDGs, and the way that this inquiry was framed, in terms of saying, “Which should be the goal priorities?” played into that. What we need DFID to do is to be supporting a process that is owned by countries and by the international community—and some of this is multilateral—to tackle these goals in ways that maximise the synergies between them, that adhere to some of these cross-cutting principles around leaving no one behind, and that support genuinely owned inclusive processes in-country. I would suggest that some of the comparative advantages there for DFID lie not in picking out particular goals but in some of the cross-cutting implementation challenges. Some of these are in Goal 17. DFID has some comparative advantages in thinking about finance—in building sustainable forms of patient capital and business-citizen partnerships. There is some comparative advantage in thinking about technologies and building global innovation systems that link the best of research and development and mutual learning around technologies between countries. There is a comparative advantage in capacity-building work, perhaps connecting with DFID’s new higher education strategy to support a new generation of sustainable-development professionals who can connect the global with the local and work across sectors and across disciplines. The fourth critical area is the “leave no one behind”, which we have talked about. Gender and women and girls is probably the only standalone goal where DFID should and could be taking a lead—not in a way that says it is standalone but by looking at the way that gender issues permeate other goals, whether they are concerned with water or food, climate or governance. Tackling questions like unpaid care and the empowerment of girls is an area that could really build on the strides we have made under Justine Greening’s leadership.
Jamie Drummond: First of all, I mentioned the social safety net. That is an interesting area of particular focus DFID could apply itself to. Secondly, I totally agree on gender. We have a campaign called Poverty is Sexist, very clearly stating that it is women and girls who are hit hardest by poverty but investing in them is often the solution to it, requiring a greater focus there. Also, we think that DFID could play a specific role on the data revolution—on practices that improve the quality of data about those who are currently left behind. One of the ways in which they are left behind is the fact that we do not know much about them. A third of births in the world are not registered. Two-thirds of the causes of death in the world are not registered. The last data point for the data on extreme poverty for the world is 2011, and most data points for extreme poverty in most developing countries are on average about a decade out of date. With that being the current state of data, we have a data crisis that not enough people in development policy circles like to talk about. We need to admit it, say what it is, and encourage innovative solutions to it. There are lots of innovative solutions. Social media, big data and increased investments in national statistical systems can help fill these data gaps, but it is not something that is talked about enough, partly because it is very boring and does not get people excited. We need to pay real attention to it.
Q21 Chair: Jamie, is the data issue something you think DFID itself could take a lead on?
Jamie Drummond: Yes. It plays to some comparative advantage in centres of excellence like Cambridge and London, where there are statistical geniuses. There are a lot of people who can play a part in it.
Melissa Leach: I agree, but the missing link is also the qualitative participatory data, which connects data with DFID’s lead on “leave no one behind”. We are not going to know about whether policies and practices are really meeting the needs of the poorest and most marginalised unless we have their stories and unless we integrate participatory data-gathering into a debate that is currently dominated by statisticians and economists.
Q22 Chair: Could you just explain exactly what you mean by an integrated approach? I know it is a phrase you have used a number of times, Melissa.
Melissa Leach: It would mean an approach that says the way we tackle renewable energy also needs to take into account the effects of our energy systems on health, for instance, and that makes the most of synergies. Sometimes there are some really good entry points that deliver on multiple goals simultaneously. For instance, investment in some very basic everyday technologies like improved cooking stoves and water and sanitation systems has been found to generate positive dividends in relation to health goals and in relation to women’s empowerment goals, as well as in relation to environmental sustainability indicators. It is about thinking about goals together and identifying entry points that can achieve on multiple ones while avoiding the negative downsides of doing one in isolation from another. If we promote increased consumption to reduce poverty, we might end up doing damage to our water systems, to our biodiversity and to our climate.
Q23 Mrs Helen Grant: So, synergy and connection between goals and intelligently working them out.
Melissa Leach: It is synergy and connection. It is opportunities for synergy and avoiding dangerous trade-offs.
Chair: I need to quickly go to Virendra, because I know he has to be in the Chamber in a couple of minutes’ time.
Q24 Mr Virendra Sharma: Jonathan will have the opportunity to come in on this one, which is regarding the future challenges that DFID has. To implement those goals, does DFID need to develop a long-term vision? Secondly, how will DFID need to change in terms of structure, policy or operational approach to achieve these goals?
Jonathan Glennie: I agree about the integration stuff. It is a big challenge. It is a transformative agenda, so it has to transform our approach to development. It is sustainable development, which has these three pillars: social, environmental and economic. We have been working on it for some years but never quite got there; we are still very much focused on let us call it the traditional aid agenda. Other countries will be beyond us on that. I would emphasise that on the one hand, while we do have to respond to the integrated approach and the sustainable-development approach, not every international actor has to do everything. DFID is one international actor among many international actors. Your earlier question was, “How do they work together with other organisations?” That is crucial, because DFID will not be able to respond to all of the goals in the same way; therefore, working with others is sensible. Also, it is not just DFID but other parts of the UK Government that may be leading on some of the responses. You obviously need to go.
Mr Virendra Sharma: I will get that tomorrow with the minutes. Sorry for this; apologies.
Jonathan Glennie: On the one hand, yes, DFID needs to respond to this great challenge; on the other, it does have some comparative advantages. We would definitely emphasise: do not get waylaid from focusing on the very poorest and on basic services for the most needy.
Finally, what we are asking of all countries, including the UK, is that, once they have signed up to these goals, they come up with three things. The first is an implementation plan for how they plan to deliver on them. The second is to find the finance. Where is the money going to come from? That is a question that has been quite seriously fudged until now, quite understandably, but we have to get there. The third is how we build accountability—not just formal accountability in the UN process but social accountability, which probably is even more important in terms of holding promises to account.
Q25 Fiona Bruce: That leads me neatly on. You have talked a lot about holding governments to account, but you have also talked about integrated working. A lot of the work in this new era is going to be partnership working. I would like to understand a little bit more how you see that partnership working actually working in practice. Also, how are those partners—NGOs, civil society, multilaterals and the private sector—going to be held to account in this very integrated world? Who do you see you are accountable to? Jamie talked about campaign groups holding government to account, but huge swathes of taxpayers’ money is spent by these partners. How can we ensure accountability on their part to fulfil these goals?
Jonathan Glennie: You are quite right; the whole thing is framed in terms of holding governments to account for what they promise. There is another thing that is a great opportunity here. With regard to the international community and the way that national governments, especially not-very-powerful national governments—the poorer governments—have been able to hold external actors to account in the past, it has been very hard. There is a whole bunch of countries that receive aid but do not really know what that aid is doing. Amazingly, in 2015, the knowledge that national governments have about other governments acting in their space is not sufficient. Add to that the private sector. Add to that—you are quite right—international civil society. National governments always, unfortunately, push back against accountability. No one wants to be held accountable; no one wants to sign up to promises that are binding. What national governments should do is use this as an opportunity to shift the debate a little and to say, “We will be held accountable for these things, but we are also going to hold all of you who arrive on our shores accountable for what you are doing. You could turn up here—especially with regard to the private sector—and play an incredibly developmental role, supporting job creation and inclusive and sustainable growth, or you could not, and we are going to use this SDG opportunity to raise all sorts of other accountability dimensions that perhaps have not been raised so far.”
Q26 Fiona Bruce: This needs to happen on the part of donor countries as well as donee countries, does it not, in terms of partners? It needs to be 360 degrees, does it not? Would you agree there is a lot more to do in this respect?
Jamie Drummond: Yes.
Jonathan Glennie: Absolutely.
Melissa Leach: I would absolutely agree. Just to add to this, there are some interesting ideas going around about the ways that the SDGs could provide a common package for perhaps a new mode of corporate environmental and social responsibility. Japan is thinking about this very hard. Could this be a way that donee countries can hold firms investing on their shores to account, as well as the international community? This is a big role for a lot of thinking. New media and social media, and the kinds of campaigns that Jamie has been talking about, also offer opportunities for a global citizen form of accountability and information sharing; we are also talking about transparency about investment decisions and about their outcomes, which link very closely to accountability questions.
Jamie Drummond: I mentioned this term, “follow-the-money partnerships”. The notion is that, whether it is aid budgets, payments in the extractive sector, domestic taxes or remittances, citizens—and particularly the media and infomediaries—are able to follow the money through open budgets. Right now, only 10% of citizens of African countries live in countries where the government budget is open, according to the Open Budget Index. So long as that is the case, it is very hard for citizens to follow the money from international aid flows to national level to local service delivery. It is a huge impediment to further progress, and so we have to focus much more on transparency and accountability. That is partly capacity building; that is partly just being more demanding partners, but it is particularly systems and methods that empower citizens in these countries, particularly through new technology and connectivity, to be more demanding of governments. There are lots of reasons for optimism there, but the fact that only 10% of citizens of African countries live in open-budget countries is a huge impediment to further progress and so does need further attention.
Q27 Jeremy Lefroy: Good morning. Is there going to be a change in the balance of DFID funding in the form of to whom it is given between multilaterals, bilateral funding, NGOs and private sector contractors as a result of the SDGs, or do you think things will remain roughly the same?
Jamie Drummond: There are some very important replenishments next year, and all of those replenishments are asking for a lot of money. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is going to be asking for between $13.5 billion and $15 billion; it got $12 billion last time. That is a three-year replenishment cycle. IDA is looking for north of $50 billion, and the ADB is also looking for a significant replenishment. All of these should get the money that they are asking for, and it is a stretched target for the world. Increasingly, though, some of the finance can come from within emerging countries. That is a new source of potential finance. I do not think you will see a radical shift. One area that Melissa particularly touched on is blended finance. How, in particular in the area of investment in infrastructure, can we incentivise the private sector? There is a huge amount of capital that is not currently being productively used in the world at the moment, for example in offshore financial centres. If we can find ways to incentivise that to get invested in the long-term infrastructure the world needs, particularly in the developing world, that is an interesting new area that DFID also could play a role in.
Q28 Jeremy Lefroy: You touch upon all these replenishments that are coming up. The UK has already probably got the highest amount, percentage-wise, invested in multilaterals of any major donor and therefore there is probably very little scope for the UK to increase that. It will possibly go in the opposite direction. Is that going to bring a problem given what we have talked about in terms of co-operation and implementation of SDGs?
Melissa Leach: One of the ways that the SDGs are pushing is very much towards a shifted balance towards the multilateral and towards investments that are around areas of global co-operation. In that sense it is not a problem. It is perhaps a challenge for the UK in terms of a slight shift away from the direct national programme support to the poorest and most fragile states. One could argue that DFID has a choice: is it going to be the lead donor on SDG implementation in the poorest and most fragile states, or is it going to invest more heavily in the international multilateral agenda? Our evidence would suggest that it is the shifted balance towards the multilateral and the international that needs to happen, partly because the problems of the poorest and most fragile states depend on those international processes. This is an inevitable balance. What also needs to happen is for that financial input to the multilateral institutions to be used to push their agendas towards being more compatible with the SDGs. The Global Fund, for instance, has conventionally been very focused on vertical programmes around particular diseases, whereas the SDG agenda argues for an approach that is much more about building basic health systems and national capacities and global health governance, which is going to head off future pandemics and so on. There is a role in not just replenishing but also exerting some intellectual leadership on the back of the legitimacy of giving money towards shaping some of these international co-operation agendas.
Q29 Jeremy Lefroy: What you are saying is the SDGs are an opportunity but a challenge for the multilaterals to reform the way they do business given that many of them are not, in some respects—I am not saying in all respects, but in some—fit for purpose.
Melissa Leach: Yes.
Jonathan Glennie: Additionally, the multilateral organisations are themselves very important but the multilateral way of working is equally important. Just a caution to DFID in that sense: there is a strong focus on the results agenda, and there is a danger that the results agenda, which is a strong focus on short-term outputs, let us say, and national politics is sometimes in tension with some more developmentally important decisions about the way that money is spent classically between short-term outcomes and investing in longer-term systems development. DFID needs to be really careful that it is supporting national-level objectives. That usually means within a multilateral at least discussion framework at the national level rather than being too bound by its own specific objectives.
Jamie Drummond: This may be a bit of a tangent, but I think it is worth pointing out that one multilateral organisation that we have to work with very effectively is the African Union. If 80% of the extreme poor are going to be in the continent by 2030, how Africa integrates its economies is extremely important. Many countries there are sub-scale; they are not sufficient size to get critical mass in their economy to get people out of poverty. The leaders of these countries know that and they want to regionally integrate. That requires infrastructure and extremely complex political negotiations at a regional, then continental level. Does the EU have lessons for the AU, and how does that multilateral instrument relate to this other one? That is something that the African policymakers are thinking about a lot. Meanwhile, their headquarters are being built by the Chinese. How the AU learns from the EU, how leaders in Africa think about regional integration and how we think about European policy regarding the AU is an extremely important area for us to think about.
Q30 Jeremy Lefroy: We talked about accountability earlier, but multilateral organisations are not necessarily particularly accountable, particularly to parliaments who are financing them in the countries in which they are operating. I declare an interest as Chair of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank & IMF, but these organisations tend to be very difficult to keep going and difficult to fund. There are others, like the ones that are following global corruption and so on. These parliamentary organisations are not a priority, and yet it seems to be that more and more, if parliaments around the world are going to get involved seriously in SDGs and the implementation of SDGs, these organisations are going to have to function much more effectively to get that accountability. Melissa, perhaps you could comment on that.
Melissa Leach: I would agree. There is also a role for some of the new bodies that are being thought about, in particular the High-level Political Forum being set up within the UN system that will meet every four years at the heads-of-state level and at ministerial level in between. It will not be a binding, accountable body, but it will be a forum that attempts to look across and bring together the actions of different governments and of UN agencies around these different goals. The UK needs to engage fulsomely with the High-level Political Forum process as part of what we do. Equally, there are a number of commissions ongoing at the moment about the reform of particular areas of global governance of development issues. There is a lot of discussion about global health governance in the aftermath of the Ebola crisis, for instance. These are opportunities that could also help to deliver a more co‑ordinated approach on the SDGs. I would also just mention China and the role of the so-called BRICS and rising-powers countries are really critical here. The world really needs to move towards an approach that is building partnerships with these countries as opposed to seeing what we have had so far, where the BRICS banks and the BRICS policy processes are proceeding in parallel, often because of a sense that the World Bank and the IMF—the Bretton Woods institutions—have not represented their interests, yet these are economic and political powerhouses. These partnerships of mutual learning and strategy between, say, the UK, Africa and China or with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or with the BRICS banks and those governance discussions are also a really important part of this.
Q31 Jeremy Lefroy: Just finally on the private sector, who you have already indicated, Jamie, through the leveraging of other funds that are currently idle. How do you see both the importance of the involvement of the private sector but also the accountability in terms of implementation of SDGs?
Jamie Drummond: We should all be held mutually accountable, including civil society, through some at-least-annual regular reporting of data. That has to cover the private sector too. On one level that is the answer. I mentioned specifically areas of concern for us around public registers for anonymous shell companies and transparency in the extractive sector. Those are two areas of particular concern for us. Another area that policy has to get right and maybe has not so far is particularly around investment in agriculture. A lot of very poor people are smallholder farmers; on the one hand, they need innovation and investment and, on the other hand, the wrong kind of investment can kick them off the land and mean they lose their property rights. Finding the right formulation of good investment in the private sector into agriculture in Africa would be one of those areas that disproportionately results in reductions in extreme poverty. DFID is extremely wary of this area of policy. It has been pretty negligent, in our opinion, in agriculture, for various reasons. It is something that needs addressing. The World Bank famously apologised a few years ago for not getting agriculture right. It is something we have to get back into.
Jonathan Glennie: It is interesting, because everyone talks about the private sector the whole time, saying, “There is a new space for the private sector in the SDGs”. It is something that I have not seen yet in practice. I have not seen any particular change in the relationship with the private sector with global goals, let us say, from the MDG period, which was also fairly bitty. With regard to accountability, the private sector companies will not be accountable for delivering the SDGs. No one will hold them accountable. Let us not fluff this. They are accountable to their shareholders for delivering a profit, fundamentally. They can also play a huge part in delivering the SDGs if incentivised and helped to do so, but I do not think it is an accountability issue; ultimately, those accountable are public administrations.
Chair: We are going to have to slightly curtail the questions, but there are two that I am really keen that we do cover. They are both allocated to you, Wendy, if you are happy to take the next one on accountability and then the final one on 2030. They are a good couple of questions to address.
Q32 Wendy Morton: Yes. My question is around accountability mechanisms. It has a number of parts to it, so I will ask it as one and then you can answer it from there. An exert group created by the UN will be responsible for developing the indicators to assess progress on the SDGs. What do you think these indicators should be? Should governments have a role in formulating these indicators? What were the limitations of the MDG indicators? Thinking of those, what improvements could be made for the SDGs?
Melissa Leach: I will say something but I know this is an area where several of us have arguments to bring in. There is potentially a role for two layers of indicators. Globally, we need to be looking towards a fairly small number of what one might call essential sustainable development indicators, which would pick up on some of the environmental ones—the technical ones that relate to planetary boundaries around climate change, land degradation and biodiversity—but also some critical social and economic ones around health, infant mortality, inequality and so on. Negotiating these will be a political process, but it is important that we do that and that they are then reported on and annually monitored in the Global Sustainable Development Report and other fora, and we can use these to track global as well as national and regional progress. There is another layer that is critical to implementation, which is the national process of indicator-setting to relate to targets that are adopted and taken forward in particular countries. Here we are probably looking at a lot of indicators. It will be complex and it will be detailed. We badly need disaggregation by gender, by disability, by cities and countryside, and by a range of other factors. Countries will need support in the capacity to both create indicators and then gather the data that can help with them. We also need to have indicators that are making use of qualitative and participatory data that is coming from citizens as well as the more clearly technical and quantitative. Colleagues also have a lot to say on indicators, so I will turn to others.
Chair: They have to say a lot in a very short space of time.
Jamie Drummond: Indicators are very important. We are there on goals and targets; indicators are next up—and finance is also very important. I think we all hope that the indicators process stays fairly technocratic; there is a possibility it might not. Alongside the need for really good selection of not too many indicators is an investment in statistical systems and also an increasing openness to corroborate national statistical systems with other sources of data and be a bit more open about using those other forms of data in trying to check what is really happening. That is why a number of us have come together for this Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. There is an event on Monday 28 September in New York on this, which is the next step on from a partnership that was formed in Addis. Approximately $1 billion a year—estimates vary—will be required for investment in statistical systems to fund the systems required to provide and monitor the indicators. It could be more; hopefully it will be less. Not all of that money exists right now and it has to be found, so we have to form a little partnership that is prepared to raise taxpayers’ money to fund statistical systems, which is not the world’s sexiest subject but without which the edifice of everything else starts to fall apart. We need your help to make the case for investing in statistical systems, please. That is my key point.
Jonathan Glennie: I have three thoughts. What matters most is who has information. There is a lot of talk about improving the information and that is a part of it, but information is power and if we want change we have to make a massive effort to socialise information so that people can be held to account.
Q33 Wendy Morton: What would success on the SDGs look like in 2030? Is that achievable?
Chair: I am going to give you a minute each to try to answer that.
Jamie Drummond: We have achieved the “zero zone”: virtual eradication of extreme poverty, hunger and deaths from preventable and treatable diseases. That would be the clearest summation. We have enabled citizens everywhere to have a basic, decent, good life through the provision of the social safety net that I mentioned and through open budgets where citizens can hold local government accountable.
Melissa Leach: I would add: the world has made real progress in co-operating to reduce inequalities as well as tackling poverty—to reduce the gaps between the haves and have nots—to accelerate progress towards steering within a safe operating space into the future with respect to climate and other planetary boundaries; and in building more inclusive and secure societies that are not generating the kind of crisis that we have seen coming to our borders. And we have a more functional and co-operative system of global partnerships that connect across countries and across citizens, which hold the world to account in delivering on those things.
Jonathan Glennie: I agree with all of that, but I would add one of the dangers of the really good period of growth and poverty reduction in the MDG era is that the world, if such a concept exists—the international community—thinks that this is the road to go down. “We are doing well; let us keep on the same track economically in terms of the pattern of our growth.” That is a mistake. We cannot continue the same way of doing economics and poverty reduction as we have in the past, precisely because we operate within planetary limits that Melissa has alluded to on a number of occasions. The whole point of the Sustainable Development Goals is that we have to change course so that we have inclusive and sustainable growth rather than growth that, yes, has reduced poverty but is also leading to environmental degradation and increased inequality.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed to Jamie, Melissa and Jonathan. We have covered a lot of ground in a relatively short space of time and you have given us a lot to work on in terms of our inquiry but also in helping us to prepare for the Secretary of State, who is giving evidence to us this time next week. Many thanks to all of you and thanks to Committee members as well.
Jamie Drummond: One activist’s request: when you go home to your constituents, tell everyone about these goals and get their feedback.
Chair: Thanks, Jamie. Thanks, everyone.
Oral evidence: Sustainable Development Goals, HC 337 21