UK Parliament Call for Evidence: International Development Inquiry

 

Authors: Joanna Stanberry and Dr. Peter Case

 

Title: Good Governance for SDG Implementation & Partnerships through a Visual Methodology

 

  1. The 2030 Agenda advanced through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the recent Pact for the Future offers vague guidance regarding Targets and Indicators for SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals. Our interdisciplinary research and practitioner experience in sustainable development highlights the need for more clarity across the foreign aid ecosystem regarding transparency and accountability for SDG implementation, especially with respect to delivery vehicles designed to benefit vulnerable people and places. We propose additional criteria for foreign aid that includes the idea of Visual methodologies with evaluation criteria focussing on: 1) accessibility to poor and vulnerable people and places (mapping for example); 2) representations beyond spreadsheets and documents to show how resources including people are related (beyond but including conflicts of interests), particularly in collaborations and partnerships engaged at the local, regional, national, and international levels; and, 3) how measurement of intended and achieved results on the part of aid organisations can be improved to be understandable by beneficiaries and the public.

 

  1. Put simply, introducing a Visual methodology would require bids for aid and subsequent reporting to include photos, graphics, and other visual representations of how the three criteria above are conceived and advanced by fund recipients. The purpose is to provide further transparency by introducing graphic data as visual evidence of SDG 17. A Visual methodology could also be applied to SDG (1-16) implementation processes more broadly to better understand their synergies and tradeoffs.

 

  1. With only five years to go until 2030, this is the time for instituting an accountable and transparent process for SDG 17. The voluntary national review for UK SDG implementation created by the UN Global Compact as a side report was unable to measure or capture SDG 17 because there is no clear policy for how the foreign aid process is applying this directive.

 

  1. The UK can lead the way globally in advancing an innovative measurement process that is easily accessible to recipients, intended beneficiaries and the public. It would also facilitate identification of best practices through peer learning. This kind of process undergirds every other area of improvement including gender equality, climate change action, inclusive economic growth, hunger and poverty, and conservation.

 

  1. Current reporting for foreign aid neglects attention to measurements for SDG 17 and SDG implementation. Those areas in which recipient organisations do report can be subject to ‘greenwashing’, SDG cherry picking, and confusing and obscure ways of describing progress and success. Instituting Visual methodologies would institute a process for understanding and evaluating partnering, collaboration, proximity to vulnerable people and places, and measurements of resources and progress that often exclude the communities who are receiving services and programme efforts. A fresh and innovative policy that looks at SDG 17 and implementation in more depth, with more transparency, and more universally recognisable formats, would afford better accountability and monitoring of SDG progress. It would also contribute to a more coherent SDG agenda and provide avenues for technology to deliver on its past promises for foreign aid.

 

 

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Helpful information to include in your submission (not part of the word count)

It would be helpful to the Committee if you could include the following information in your submission. Please note that your answers to these questions will not influence the selection process:

 

Have you ever engaged with Parliament before (e.g. made a submission to a select committee)?

 

Yes – please provide more detail (max 20 words)

X No

 

Do you have personal or field experience related to international development issues?

 

X Yes – please provide more detail (max 20 words) Interdisciplinary researchers previously working with Indigenous communities in Bolivia, Brazil, Laos, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Namibia, partnering with global health NGOs.

No

 

If you are invited to pitch your idea to the Committee, would you be able to travel to London and back within the same day?

 

X Yes

No