Governance Innovation UnitPrime Minister’s Office

Understanding SDGsScopes & Challenges for Bangladesh

28th October 2015Training event on Revisiting MDG & Understanding SDGsKarabi Hall, Prime Minister’s Office

Presented by Dr. Aminul IslamSenior Adviser, Sustainable Development, UNDP, Bangladesh

Why we are Here Today?

Orientation on the Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals

Lay the groundwork for taking action to advocate the Participants to be leaders in implementing the SDGs at home and abroad

History of the MDGs

The greatest triumph of the MDGs was to mobilize broad support for a global development agenda

MDGs were developed by a small group of experts and was not member state driven. It completely overlooked the issue of inequality and governance.

The MDGs place great weight on social goals. But can social development take place, and more importantly can it be sustained, without economic development and good governance?

The Strengths of SDGs over MDGs Key Strengths of the proposed SDGs include:-

Stand alone goal of Inequality (within and between countries)

Stand alone goal on gender inequality , including ending of all forms of violence, discrimination, child marriages, and female genital mutilations

Environmental issues are strongly represented – fulfilling a long sought marriage between development and environment (climate change, marine and land base ecosystems, and sustainable consumption and production)

Governance - for the first time – incorporating a goal and targets on governance and peaceful societies (legal identity, tackling corruption and bribery etc)

Participatory/Inclusiveness Process in formulation of the SDGs: The participation and buy in of a wide range of stakeholders including member states and non governmental organizations

The broad nature of the SDG is also a reflection of the nature of challenges facing the world today

Analytics: The World We Want and MY World MY World :  7,138,023 Votes (17 Feb 2015)

Sustainable development:

Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. World Commission on Environment and Development (1987):

Our Common Future

Six Elements of the SDGs

Understanding of Sustainability Sustainability needs to be well defined in terms of

measureable, verifiable targets and indicators under each Goal

What are the components of sustainability and how to measure this in terms of Qualitative and how to assess the change needed to achieve

the desired goals such as good governance; Quantitative- some data are available but many other

indicators need to be defined. Sustainability should be understood broadly

Multi-sectoral balance and synergy Capacity building at individual, institutional and systemic

level Financial sustainability Equity and prosperity within the life support system Quality assurance and its sustenance.

Lessons Learned for Planning the Next Journey to SDGs

Recent analysis captured in the British Medical Journal flagged Bangladesh as the one of the top most successful countries for achieving overall MDGs because of following driving factors:

Political vision and emphasis on human rights, alignment of development aid with country’s policy & plans and consideration of sustainability issues;

Systematic adoption of evidence based or catalytic strategies which includes mobilization of partnerships, effective planning and timely evidence based feedback in decision making process and enable accountability have contributed to the optimal use of resources for results;

Effective implementation of Multisectoral approach and good governance. This means that half of the reduction in poverty can be attributed to proper investments in sectors that influence agriculture, health, education, water, energy, sanitation, gender parity and climate change adaptation.

Steps towards continuation of the Leadership from MDG to SDGs

MDG was limited to only 8 goals with emphasis on social goals with quantitative targets while SDGs aimed at achieving 17 goals with 169 targets which calls for qualitative change with social, economic, environment and governance dimensions.

Stock taking of who is doing what, gap analysis, capacity assessment and establishment of baseline data should be the first step.

Emphasis should be given to the sustainability measurement with quality reflected at grassroots, cost-benefit analysis in programme intervention, value for money consideration in any investment, resilience building and effective service delivery with equity and justice.

The Universality Dilemma

What do we mean by ‘universal’ Goals and Targets? SDG framework norms and principles are relevant to all

nations, irrespective of economic, social or environmental contexts, so the goals will apply to all countries

But global goals don’t easily translate to national contexts because of different, starting points, capacities, priorities etc.

So to be useful for all countries (and to create national ownership) global goals will be adapted into targets and indicators that reflect national contexts.

Challenge: Ensuring coherence between broad global goals and widely

differing national contexts

Sustainable development...

considers future and present needs when making decisions about: resource and energy use technological development direction of investments social, political & institutional

change...etc. etc. etc.

SOCIETY

ENVIRONMENT

ECONOMY

ECONOMY

ENVIRONMENT

SOCIETY

TRADITIONALDECISION MAKING

PARTICIPATORY ECOSYSTEM-

BASEDDECISION MAKING

‘ECO-SYSTE

MHEALTH

’

SDG CALLS FOR INTEGRATED APPROACH OF DECISION MAKING

Fragmented decision-making

ISSUE national

municipal

publicprivate

Local regional

otherinterests

communitygroups

Integrated decision-making

regional

municipalmunicipal

privateprivate

communitycommunitygroupsgroups

publicpublicother other interestsinterests

federal/federal/nationalnational

ISSUEISSUE

Source: Adapted after Barrett and Kidd, 1991

Local

Decentralized Local Planning

A. Piloting SDG implementation through formation of Village / Local Sustainable Development Groups

B. Sectoral Planning (e.g. Agriculture, Water, Health, Energy) - How the plans are incorporating and addressing the SDG’s goals through their plans

C. Resource and Budget MappingD. Integrated Planning – Vertical–horizontal integration and

coordination among relevant departmentsE. Participatory Planning –Participation in rural and urban

planning of multi-stakeholdersF. Application of Planning Tools Currently in Use for gathering of

relevant data, analysing it to set priorities, matching the set priorities to available budgets.

Big Data Management

Way Forward Localizing the SDG? What does this mean in practice?

Implementation Plan and institutional arrangement (Local SD Group). Piloting and mainstreaming.

Establish clearly defined indicators /targets and baseline. Participatory and Localizing monitoring SDGs at village/ward to disaggregated data at sub-national and national level and capacity issues

Localizing as the role of LGIs in partnership with broad-based stakeholders for implementation of the goals – capacity issues?

Incredible MDG achievements in terms of quantitative figures now on calls for qualitative improvement to ensure sustainability;

Integration within the SDG framework is essential in that a number of development challenges - gender, equality, rights, governance, and resilience, cut across all of the goals which calls for whole of the Government approach;

The unfinished business of the MDGs - what worked and what didn’t work?

Role defined in terms of Mandates of each Ministries and Agencies Big data/data revolution – Is there a role for the UN and DPs in

Bangladesh? Look at the capacity gaps and data requirements and even test some

of the proposed SDGs to inform the data and capacity gaps.