You remember those business plans that we are read (and pitched) at the height of the first Internet boom? Presentations that promised billion-dollar IPO’s, 90% market share and disruption in three years without any basis in fact, experience or reality. I guess the United Nations was feeling nostalgic, because in early June, it released its own version of the 1999 Internet startup business plan. Only it was called the Zero Draft of the Sustainable Development Goals. Unfortunately, the silliness reflected in this document cannot be dismissed as easily as those business plans. They hold the global strategy for poverty alleviation, global health and economic development. So reading something so vacuous, even by UN standards, is both frustrating and upsetting.
For the uninitiated, the Sustainable Development Goals are the follow up to the Millennium Development Goals. The MDG’s, as they are known, were broad-based goals set in the year 2000 by the United Nations and endorsed by nearly every nation on the planet. These goals, which span poverty alleviation to maternal health, economic growth and education, represented a triumph for the world community. For the first time, countries as diverse as the United States and Malawi agreed to a common agenda to fight poverty and alleviate human suffering. In addition to sector-specific targets, the rich countries also committed to spending 0.7% of their GDP on international assistance.
The MDG’s are set to expire in 2015, and sadly, they will do so with a record of 1-14. The only MDG target to be achieved was the first one – to alleviate extreme poverty by half. That’s pretty impressive until you realize that this was due to the extraordinary economic growth of China and (to a lesser extent) India – and not because of global development assistance. There is no doubt that progress – important progress, has been made on many of the other indicators and targets including HIV, polio, and economic access for women. Progress is not success, however.
But the message of the last fifteen years is not that international development is a failure. In fact quite the opposite. We have incredible execution and impact by non-profits, NGO’s, social entrepreneurs, social enterprises and corporate social responsibility efforts to improve the human condition. We have seen microfinance create opportunities worldwide for hundreds of millions to mitigate risk in their lives and have access to credit. We have seen large companies like Walmart and Coke use their money and leverage to push for sustainable solutions related to water and the environment. And we have seen exceptional NGO’s like Akshaya Patra in India scale to feed 1.3 million children every day through excellence in supply chain management, engineering and fundraising.
My frustration with the SDG’s arises from this very fact. There is no shortage of experts, leaders and organizations around the world that are doing incredible work. And instead of designing a document that supports those efforts, the Sustainable Development Goals instead make a mockery of them. The Zero Draft is full of things that any manager, entrepreneur or sector expert knows cannot happen in fifteen years. The document literary calls for the end of poverty, the end of fossil fuel production, the end of hunger, that all children have access to early childhood and universal health care for all. Maybe we can join forces to achieve one – but not all (and I left several out).
Don’t get me wrong. I am strongly in favor of achieving all of those goals. But given the complexity of the global economy, and the results we have from the last fifteen years of the MDG’s, we also know that achieving any of these goals will be next to impossible. And the UN commission knows it as well. So they are either totally disconnected from the organizational capacity on the ground, or disingenuous in their planning. I would much rather see the SDG’s reflect two themes. First, they should reflect goals that are actually achievable – such as access to early childcare, primary education, clean water for all and basic health care targets around water, sanitation and access to primary care. These are really hard, but achievable goals. The second set of goals should build upon the success of the NGO/social enterprise communities. These goals can build around the global phenomenon of micro-finance and focus on economic opportunity. And we can leverage the fact that most microfinance benefits women and push for more targets around gender equality and opportunity.
As I have written before, social entrepreneurs and NGO’s face the same challenges that startup companies do. In this case, they have to execute in the world’s most difficult conditions. They often struggle to scale their programs for many of the same reasons that startups fail – a lack of management, fundraising problems and local conditions. As a result, there is a paucity of NGO’s that have scaled globally. But at the same time, these same groups will be asked to bear the burden of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals through government policies. It just doesn't add up to a successful strategy for 2030. Instead, it will most likely be just another document produced by the United Nations that has great value at conferences, but is worthless to those working in the field.
In my hometown of Boston, it took nearly 13 years to build an underground expressway called the “Big Dig”. Countries often need a decade to plan and host the Olympic Games. But have no fear, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are going to solve all the world’s problems in just fifteen.
