Category Archives: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The UN ‘Summit of the Future’ (SoTF) and the Enduring Weakness of Multilateralism

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In last week’s Post, with part of the same title as this week’s Post at Alan’s Newsletter, I began an examination into the weakening of multilateralism in the current global order. It is a particularly appropriate time to look at the state of multilateralism, and particularly a focus on the classic ‘Formal’ institution, the United Nations.  This is a key week in the life of the UN.

The UN General Assembly is gathering, as pointed to by Nudhara Yusuf from Stimson described to:

So, UNGA79 really stands for the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, which begins on September 10th, 2024 … UNGA79 this time of year though, we’re referring to the wonderfully energized chaos that is about to descend onto 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Ave New York during UNGA High-Level week [emphasis added] when the general debate is opened. This will be on the 24th of September and run through the end of the week. Of course, the key thing on all our minds are the days right before that, with the Summit of the Future Action Days from 20-21 September and the Summit of the Future itself from 22-23 September.

The gathering of heads of government and state at the special UN session is to complete and agree on the following:

Its agreed outcomes of the Pact for the Future and annexed Declaration on Future Generations and Global Digital Compacts should be priority areas for Heads of States in their statements.

Colum Lynch at Devex, examined recent UN developments including the SDG Summit in 2023 and now, at the doorstep, the Summit for the Future in 2024:

The roots of the future summit date back to 2020, when world leaders marked the 75th anniversary of the U.N.’s founding, issuing a declaration asking [Secretary General Antonio] Guterres to outline his vision for a modern multilateralism to better “respond to current and future challenges.” The following year, Guterres issued Our Common Agenda, which maps out a course for the U.N. over the next 25 years.

 

Many of Guterres’ original proposals — for instance, the creation of a Futures Lab to measure the impact of policies over the long haul and the reform of the trusteeship council established to manage decolonization to advocate on behalf of future generations — were scaled back or scrapped altogether. And there remains persistent skepticism that a decades-long push for the expansion of the U.N. Security Council — to include emerging powers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America that have emerged since World War II — will succeed this time around.

Clearly reform of the UN Security Council (UNSC) is at the absolute heart of urgent reform of the multilateral system. This was made clear with the very recent announcement by the US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenleaf  that added additional US proposed reforms:

  1. Create 2 permanent seats for Africa in the Council;
  2. A new elected seat for Small Island Developing States (SIDS); and
  3. Engaging in tech space negotiations in Council reform

The Pact for the Future, the key outcome document of the SoTF has now gone through 4 deeply negotiated revisions, with the 4th revision released just a few days ago (September 13th). In the first 3 revisions there was no agreed reform text and yet finally in this 4th revision we see at least the articulation of proposed ‘features of reform’ fo this key UN institution:

Action 41. We will reform the UN Security Council, recognizing the urgent need to make it more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable.

 

69. In response to the growing urgency to increase the effectiveness of the United Nations’ abilities to maintain international peace and security as set out in the UN Charter, we agree on the following guiding principles identified in the Intergovernmental Negotiations on the question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and other matters related to the Council (IGN) in accordance with decision 62/557 of the General Assembly as parameters for reform:

(a) Redress the historical injustice against Africa as a priority and, while treating Africa as a special case, improve the representation of the underrepresented and unrepresented regions and groups, such as AsiaPacific and Latin America and the Caribbean.

(b) Enlarge the Security Council in order to be more representative of the current UN membership and reflective of the realities of the contemporary world and, taking into account our commitments of Sustainable Development Goal 16.8, increase representation of developing countries and small- and medium-sized states.

(c) Continue discussions on the issue of representation of cross-regional groups, taking into account that Small Island Developing States, Arab States, and others, such as the OIC, have been mentioned in the discussions of the IGN.

(d) Intensify efforts to find an agreement on the question of the categories of membership taking into account the discussions held in the IGN process.

(e) The total number of members of an enlarged Council should ensure a balance between its representativeness and effectiveness.

(f) The working methods should ensure the inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable functioning of an enlarged Council.  (g) The question of the veto is a key element of Security Council reform. We will intensify efforts to reach an agreement on the future of the veto, including discussions on limiting its scope and use.

(h) As part of a comprehensive reform, the inclusion of a review clause should be considered to ensure that the Security Council continues over time to deliver on its mandate and remains fit for purpose.

As is evident this Action item, 41, does not describe actual agreed changes. For that one needs to turn to Action 42:

Action 42. We will strengthen our efforts in the framework of the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform as a matter of priority and without delay.

 

70. We support the Member States driven nature of the reform of the Security Council, and will intensify efforts for the reform through the IGN in accordance with General Assembly Decision 62/557 and other relevant resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly, such as resolution 53/30. Building on the recent progress achieved in the IGN, including through more transparency and inclusivity and by enhancing its institutional memory, we decide to:

(a) Encourage the submission of further models and the revision of already presented models by States and Groups of States for the structured dialogues with a view to developing a consolidated model in the future based on convergences on the five clusters, and the models presented by Member States.

It is evident that this Action Item 42 is in UN-speak. I have had to rely on close colleagues much more schooled in the UN than I am. Indeed you can listen to valuable webinar on the subject: of “The UN Summit of the Future: What to Expect”, with several colleagues including Anne-Marie Slaughter CEO of New America and led by close Carnegie Endowment of International Peace (CEIP) colleague, Stewart Patrick. There I learned there will be an Intergovernmental Negotiation that would lead to a consolidated model of reform to ultimately be voted on. My colleagues believed that this was a significant step forward on reform. Looking at it I remain somewhat skeptical but will rely on my knowledgeable friends that something – that reform proposals – will advance at the UN and that reforms are in fact coming.

Finally, I couldn’t end without referencing my Substack colleague’s examination of the impact of the Summit of the Future. So Peter Singer at Global Health Insights recently posted a piece titled: “Will the Summit of the Future lead to a more results-based United Nations?” Peter examines all 60 action items and concludes:

On full display at the Summit is what’s wrong with the UN: a failure to execute on what’s already agreed.  In September, the only acronym the UN needs is GSD — Get Sh*t Done. (If you’re a diplomat, feel free to substitute “Stuff.”)

Peter is particularly frustrated over the failure of the Organization and its member states to advance the 2015 agreed Sustainable Development goals (SDGs), what the UN calls Agenda 2030:

The UN suffers from planning disease. Any successful real-world entity does 10% planning and 90% execution (and the planning is built on the results of execution).  In the UN, it’s the reverse.

Peter argues that the UN must first develop “better ways to translate data into results.” Then it must: “support countries to scale innovations that are already reaching millions to reach tens or even hundreds of millions of people.” And finally he urges:

It could look at countries that are performing well and those that are not and how the latter could be more like the former.  It could examine what the agency is doing to support countries to get on track, and how it could do it better, and how well it is working with other agencies to support countries.

I think the latter point is particularly critical because in the end in this case it is not so much the UN, and the UN agencies that are responsible  for achieving the SDGs but the Member countries that will make the SDGs happen – or not. And, unfortunately, it is the Member States that are only too evidently unwilling, or politically and administratively unable to make SDG progress. A too obvious example – the United States. This is a Member State where the SDGs never pass the lips of its leaders and their officials.

The questions surrounding the outcomes and implementation of the  SoTF lie as much, or more,  ‘at the feet’ of the national governments. It is not a heartwarming view. So, yes, we need to address the inadequacies of the international organizations. Reform and updating is required and little has occurred over the decades. But the heart of the system is states and their capacity and, or willingness to work together to achieve progress. As Sophie Eisentraut declared in her FP article, “Can the West Revive Multilateralism?”:

As world leaders descend on New York for the United Nations Summit of the Future this week, rules-based multilateralism is in a dismal state. Amid the international community’s failure to conclude a global pandemic treaty and the U.N. Security Council’s paralysis in the face of both Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict, it’s hard to recall the last success of multilateral cooperation.

Among governments, accusations of double standards and broken promises, from delivering COVID-19 vaccines to providing meaningful debt relief, are mounting. Against this backdrop, the summit looks like a desperate attempt to rebuild confidence—particularly among countries in the global south as they navigate a multilateral system that even the U.N. secretary-general describes as caught in “colossal global dysfunction.”

The ‘enduring weakness’ is ultimately laid at the feet of national governments. And from today’s perspective – and on the eve of the Summit of the Future – it is not a very pretty sight.

This Post originally appeared at my Substack Alan’s Newsletter. Comments are welcome as are free subscriptions

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Looking for Success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the Halfway Point

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As I mentioned in past Posts here at Alan’s Newsletter, one particular research focus for the Global Summitry Project (GSP) is the effort to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs).  You can see some of the activity at the GSP website and specifically at: “Strengthening Global Governance Activity and Reaching the SDG Goals”. A word of nomenclature here. The UN often refers to these goals as Agenda 2030. As part of this research focus, we have been building a Special Issue of the e-journal Global Summitry on achieving the SDGs. I have not gone as fast as I’d like and ferreting out folks interested in the SDGs has proven to be somewhat more difficult than I originally assumed. 

But there are folks out there for sure. And, indeed, I came across ‘one good soul’, Peter Singer and his Substack, Global Health Insights. Now, I am no global health expert but Peter has dedicated much attention in his Substack to the subject and has focused on the achievement of the SDGs as being part of his focus on the global effort to eliminate disease, end poverty and bring a global improvement in health care.

As it turns out there is a long trail of serious effort on his part to examine the improvement in global health but not surprisingly he, like many others, have expressed recently a not unreasonable hint of dismay in the overall effort to achieve the SDGs. Here, then, is a relatively recent post in ‘Global Health Insights’, “Replace the SDGs with the GSDs” expressing the concern:

Halfway through Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) period, only 15% of the SDGs are on track. Universal Health Coverage, for example, is going at one-half the pace needed to reach the 2030 targets.

It is a sensitive time after all. First, the SDG Summit at this year’s opening of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) has come and gone and notwithstanding the hortatory UN efforts, especially by the Secretary General, there does not seem to me at least to be any greater energy at the member level to dig in on the SDGs nor accelerate the pace of achieving the 17 goals. And as we look forward we see that a second UN summit is drawing closer – this the Summit of the Future. This Summit will occur at the next UNGA opening that is this coming September. Much effort is promised but I am unconvinced that finalizing the ‘Pact for the Future’ a major deliverable of the UNGA in September is likely to alter substantially the multilateral effort notwithstanding the UN view that the Pact and Summit will bring the following:

The result will be a world – and an international system – that is better prepared to manage the challenges we face now and in the future, for the sake of all humanity and for future generations. … The Summit of the Future will create the conditions in which implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development can more readily be achieved. It will do so by building on the outcome of the 2023 SDG Summit. In addition, it will result in improvements to international cooperation that enable us to solve problems together. We will be able to harness new opportunities for the benefit of all, not just the few, and manage the risks more effectively. Every proposal offered by the Secretary-General for consideration at the Summit of the Future will have demonstrable impacts on achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Well, I hope so, but the encouragement from the UN in the end is not the answer. As Peter says: “The SDGs are gained or lost not in Geneva or New York but in countries.” That insight needs to be kept in mind by all of us. There has been much recent attention directed to serious efforts but at the local level – at the city level and the regional level as well at the non-state level – all detailing efforts to advance the SDGs. Ultimately, however, the primary effort and likely acceleration of the SDGs will in the end have to come from the national level if we are to see a closing of the gap between what has been achieved and what needs to be achieved to reach the goals. I suspect the attention to the substate and non-state level is sadly a result in part of the limited action – where it counts – at the national level. The US is but one unhappy example but there are many others.

So what does Peter Singer target. As he urges:

To speed up the SDGs, the world needs three things: implementation, implementation, implementation.  In short, we need to replace the SDGs with the GSDs: Get Shit Done! (OK, I said ‘replace’, but I meant ‘refocus’ or ‘supplement’ the SDGs with the GSDs. And for diplomatic purposes, we can use the term ‘get stuff done.’)

More recently Peter has set out a way forward in this recent table:

You can also see that Peter turns the quantitative aspect of the SDGs into a positive and that strikes me as a crucial part of his approach.  As he explains:

Measuring and managing impact using results-based strategy is an essential part of the GSD (Get Sh*t Done) approach to speeding up SDGs. To read more about this approach, please see here. … The trick in strategy is to focus as much on the “how” as the “what.” WHO’s strategy is built around five ‘Ps’: Promote, Provide, Protect, Power and Perform. The first three represent the ‘what’ (and correspond to the triple billion targets), the fourth and fifth represent the ‘how’, as shown below.

I shall return to Peter Singer’s approach in subsequent Posts but I wanted to at least get the big picture out. Achieving the SDGs is a demanding problem.

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This Post originally appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/looking-for-success-of-the-sustainable?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

Image Credit: European Union

As the Year Begins to Close

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So, as we enter the holiday season with Christmas just around the corner and as we close in on the end of the year, it is reasonable to reflect on the progress of some of the research areas we have targeted.

One focus area is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or what is referred to at the UN as Agenda 2030. This past September we saw the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) gather on September 18th and 19th during the UNGAs High-Level Week. The UN Secretary-General called the SDG Summit gathering the “centerpiece moment of 2023.” It took place at the midpoint of implementing the development agenda adopted by countries in 2015: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The HLPF meets under the auspices of the UN General Assembly, known as the SDG Summit . In 2023, the second SDG Summit took place (the first was in 2019) bringing together Heads of State and Government to review and renew efforts towards achieving the SDGs. The Summit culminated in the adoption of  a political declaration to accelerate action to achieve the 17 goals. Now I have written before on the SDGs but the question is what conclusions can we draw from this second UNGA gathering.

The first and critical conclusion of the HLPF is that Agenda 2030 is in jeopardy. As the the political declaration announced:

8. The achievement of the SDGs is in peril. At the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda, we are alarmed that the progress on most of the SDGs is either moving much too slowly or has regressed below the 2015 baseline. Our world is currently facing numerous crises. Years of sustainable development gains are being reversed. Millions of people have fallen into poverty, hunger and malnutrition are becoming more prevalent, humanitarian needs are rising, and the impacts of climate change more pronounced. This has led to increased inequality exacerbated by weakened international solidarity and a shortfall of trust to jointly overcome these crises.

And the answer by the Heads of State and the UN Secretary General is right there in the next paragraph:

9. We commit to bold, ambitious, accelerated, just and transformative actions, anchored in international solidarity and effective cooperation at all levels. We will promote a systemic shift towards a more inclusive, just, peaceful, resilient and sustainable world for people and planet, for present and future generations.

10. We will devote ourselves collectively to the pursuit of sustainable development including through international cooperation and partnership on the basis of mutual trust and the full benefit of all, in a spirit of global solidarity, for the common future of present and coming generations.

So it is all about ‘acceleration’ and collective action.  And further describing this notion of acceleration, the Declaration urges:

30. We must meet the moment by taking immediate measures to scale up efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, including through development cooperation, SDG investments, reforming the international financial architecture, supporting sustained, inclusive and sustainable growth, enhancing macroeconomic policy cooperation, exploring measures of progress on sustainable development that complement or go beyond gross domestic product, and implementing actions to accelerate sustainable development, in particular in support of developing countries.

And it is apparent from the Declaration that the hope is to accelerate all 17 goals and their various aspects. But the issue is how.  And there it appears that there is little to offer although the Declaration does point to the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs)  that many countries, though not all – note the United States has never prepared a VNR – have prepared which the Declaration suggests has “generated valuable lessons learned and have helped countries monitor progress and integrate the Sustainable Development Goals into national plans and policies.”

The hope is that all countries will focus on all the goals of Agenda 2030 pointing to the needed effort in all in paragraph 38. Pointedly, the Declaration looks to accelerate financing for the developing countries and reviews those policies that are designed to provide such financing. As the Declaration urges:

We commit to accelerate the full implementation of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and to take further actions to scale up financing for sustainable development, and provide means of implementation for developing countries, …

Many of these policies such as expanding Multilateral Development Bank efforts are valuable but how. Too much of the Report seems to be aspirational, valuable reminders but not providing concrete steps to success.

Now far more innovative is the 17 Rooms Project that is brought by the Sustainable Development Project at Brookings with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation. As pointed out in their Synthesis Report:

The story of the Sustainable Development Goals’ second half out to 2030 is yet to be written. In practical terms, much of the story will boil down to groups of people getting together to listen, debate, and act on concrete next steps. This is the underlying spirit of 17 Rooms. In the 2023 annual flagship, 17 highly curated working groups, one per SDG, came together to craft new forms of actionable, collaborative leadership over a 12-to-18-month horizon. Their efforts addressed priorities like confronting the multi-dimensional challenge of climate change, harnessing frontier technologies, elevating local approaches to global issues, and reframing challenges to inspire action.

When you read the Report you see that many of the Groups offer plans that initiate from the sub-state and nonstate level, whether from the local community, the private sector or the provincial or state level. For example Room 17 – “Partnerships for the Goals” the Report urges:

the development of local agency and leadership as the driving force for system change and for helping to advance long-term outcomes across all SDGs. They rallied around the concept of collective leadership as a term to describe investing in the agency and collaborative capacities of locally rooted leaders and their allies.

And the energy and effort may indeed be there at these governance levels. But it leaves a problem: what I would describe as the ‘implementation gap’. While initiatives of this sort make great sense, achieving the SDGs, it seems to me, will require in the end national and then collective national action that also can be augmented by international organization collaboration. As valuable as it is to have the action at the substate and private sector levels, it seems imperative in the end that we ‘rope in’ the collective effort of national and international efforts.  And that is not apparent.

This appeared initially as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/as-the-year-begins-to-close?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

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