The World Economic Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals, described as a social contract to transform the world by 2030, were the focus of a panel event at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, which aimed to introduce the advocacy work being done around the SDGs as well as discuss what needs to be done to ensure the SDG agenda motivates action.

Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon’s opening remarks introduced the goals as an ambitious blueprint to put the world on a more sustainable path, and as both a vision and a promise by world leaders. In order to deliver on the SDGs, and as quickly as possible, he affirmed that we need partnership and advocacy, introducing the SDG Advocacy Group (see below for a list of all members). Co-chair of the group, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, President of Ghana, was next to speak, further explaining the SDGs as a social contract to fix what is broken and to ensure all people have access to clean drinking water, sanitation, food, shelter, healthcare and education. In order for the world to see progress and peace we need to address the fact that many people do not have access to these goods and services as basic human rights, and we need to fix this fast. As global crises such as child hunger and malnutrition, the creation of refugees through conflict and the rise of terrorism show we do not have the luxury of time. President Mahama made clear that the SDGs cannot be a placebo that peddles false hope, we need to keep meeting, keep generating ideas and maintain momentum. “Our ability to effect change islimited only by our imagination.”

The second co-chair, Mrs. Erna Solberg, the Prime Minister of Norway, then spoke about the role of the SDGs as a call to action and a roadmap to the future we want. We cannot continue as normal without expecting social, economic and environmental bankruptcy. She also laid out the lessons we need to learn from the Millennium Development Goals:

• Progress is faster with effective partnerships (and sustainable investment models can scale up financing);
• The 17 goals are a coherent plan, not a menu and we need to get away from a silo mentality and start seeing the synergies between the goals.
• Establishing the goals is not enough, we need governments to show political will and resolve in dealing with difficult issues such as eradicating tax havens, halting illicit financial flows and combating corruption. We also need to monitor data to measure how effective new policies are at achieving the SDGs.
• Finally, it has proved difficult to make progress in areas of crisis and conflict so the international community must work together to improve situations in these locations immediately.

Foresight Africa 2016: Africa’s priorities for the year ahead

In a recent post we discussed some of the priorities for global development research. The Foresight Africa report, by the Brookings Institution‘s Africa Growth Initiative, has been assessing and laying out Africa’s top priorities for the year ahead since 2011. The Foresight Africa project is a series of reports, commentaries and events that aim to help policymakers and Africa watchers stay ahead of the trends and developments impacting the continent. The new Foresight Africa report, is a collection of issue briefs, viewpoints, and infographics on the major issues for Africa in 2016.

In 2016, African countries will have to react to many changes and challenges coming from outside the continent such as shifting dynamics in the global economy; potential adverse effects of China’s and other emerging economies’ economic slowdown; and decreasing commodity prices, all of which will require mitigation and policy reform. Within its borders, Africa also faces many challenges, for example in trying to maintain its trade competitiveness, tackle youth unemployment, deal with rapid urbanisation, security threats and reduce barriers to human development. The Foresight Africa report believes that “if managed prudently with timely action from African policymakers in 2016, the continent could equally recover from external and internal shocks, accelerate regional growth, and further expand the benefits of growth to the more than one billion people living throughout Africa”.

The study identifies six priorities for 2016 that will help continue Africa’s current economic growth:

1. Managing economic shocks (including the economic slowdown in China, declines in commodity prices, the US Federal Reserve interest rate hikes)
2. Sustaining domestic growth: revitalize the region’s industrial development and focus on job creation
3. Supporting human development
4. Capitalizing on urbanization. As the second fastest urbanizing region in the world, Africa needs strong infrastructure and planning policies
5. Maintaining governance gains: the regional governance puzzle and the complex institutional changes
6. Expanding African trade: creating a comparative advantage and strengthening regional partnerships

Critically the report not only lays out priorities for African governments and policy makers, it provides different viewpoints on the best way to develop policy to cope with oncoming shocks and stresses and further development. For example, Njuguna S. Ndung’u, Associate Professor of Economics, at the University of Nairobi, discusses how African economies should build resilience to manage external shocks in 2016. Instead of cutting long-term development budgets in times of crisis, buffers at four levels need to be created ahead of coming shocks: foreign exchange reserves, strategic food reserves, oil reserves for oil-importing countries, and, in countries dependent on commodity prices, a fund for smoothing out commodity prices during times of extreme variability.

The report also discusses the Sustainable Development Goals, noting the common criticism that in trying to do everything the SDGs have become too large, too messy and too ambitious. But it is noted that due to Africa’s involvement in the development of the SDGs they are much better suited to the continents aspirations than the Millennium Development Goals were. An important focus of the both the SDGs and the Foresight Africa report is the need for jobs, which pay a living wage. In Africa only one in five workers find employment in the wage economy. The SDGs in Goal 9.2 sets as an objective: “By 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic product, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in least developed countries.” Here the link between industry and jobs in made and the need for industrial development in Africa.

Searching for questions: global development issues to prioritise in 2016

Image by Ventrilock from freedigitalphotos.net

As 2016 begins many international development issues are threatening to intensify – the crisis in Syria and the thousands of people now refugees, the growing global power of ISIS, and the World Bank’s recently released flagship report, Global Economic Prospects, which predicts a “perfect storm” of financial turmoil coupled with slowing of growth in emerging markets this year. A recent article named the 10 news stories most likely to dominate the news this year as being:

1. The Syrian refugee crisis
2. Climate change
3. Data security
4. The US presidential election
5. Regulating drones And self-driving cars
6. Gun violence
7. ISIS
8. Global internet access
9. Regulating the sharing economy (companies such as Airbnb and Uber)
10. Online social justice

And while news organisations are looking ahead to the events that will shape the world in 2016, others are focused on how we can prevent and solve some of these global development challenges. 14 Academics and 21 NGOs recently put together a list of the 100 most important development issues and research questions that need to be answered. The list, published in Development Policy Review, has focused on identifying the most relevant and important research questions around the Sustainable Development Goals, set in September 2015, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals. The questions or research themes are divided into nine main themes:

Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security

By Katy Wilson

This Friday (30^th October) marks the 6^th annual Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security (ADFNS). This year the day will be commemorated in Kampala, Uganda, where, at the 15^th Ordinary Session of the African Union Summit in 2010 it was first declared. Since then the day has been commemorated in Malawi, Ethiopia, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2014 at the 23^rd session of the AU summit, African Heads of State committed to ending hunger by 2025 and reducing stunting to 10% in the same period. This commitment is one of seven forming the Malabo Declaration. ADFNS provides an opportunity to reaffirm this goal and report on progress that has been made in reaching this commitment, among other objectives. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation 2015 State of Food Insecurity in the World report asserts that, as projected for 2014-2016, the prevalence of undernourishment in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to be 23.2%%, down from 23.8% between 2012-2014.

The main aim of ADFNS is to bring together a range of stakeholders to intensify pressure to tackle food and nutrition security challenges in Africa, motivate financial commitments and bring greater awareness to the progress being made on the continent and the barriers still being faced. Additionally the day serves as a platform to facilitate sharing of experiences and knowledge, support for learning and measurement of progress.

The key objectives of ADFNS are:

• To increase awareness of the importance of investing in the value-chains for nutritious foods and agricultural commodities in Africa and the benefits of doing so for social and economic development;
• To facilitate a discussion between a variety of high-level national stakeholders as well as other governmental, not-for-profit and private sector actors such as farmers’ organisations, private businesses and academic and research institutions. With the hopes that the diverse points of view and cooperation will help shape an action plan to end hunger and malnutrition;
• To share new technologies and best practices for empowering women;
• To build women farmers’ awareness of market opportunities for local and indigenous foods and their role in diversifying diets and boosting food and nutrition security;
• To promote the production and consumption of high quality, nutritious foods such as those fortified with micronutrients, or diverse nutrient dense vegetables and fruits as well animal source foods.

This year, the 6^th ADFNS is centring on the theme of women, following the announcement made at the 24th Ordinary Session of the AU Summit that 2015 is the Year of Women Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063. As has long been known, women are key to ending hunger and malnutrition, contributing a significant proportion of farm labour and household care.

Past, present and future: IFPRI’s 2014-2015 Global Food Policy Report

In the fourth instalment of the International Food Policy Research Institute’s annual report on food policy, launched on 18^th March 2015, authors report on the major developments that have happened at a global, regional and national level in 2014 but also, and for the first time, discuss the challenges to tackling food insecurity we face in the near future.

Looking to the past, the report highlights achievements as well as setbacks. For example, achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015, of 64 countries meeting the MDG of halving the number of hungry people since 1990, of global undernourishment having fallen from 19% to 11% in the past 2 decades, the commitments made at the Second International Conference on Nutrition in Rome to end malnutrition, the African Union committing to end hunger by 2025 and membership in the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement continuing to grow.

But 2014 also experienced shocks and disasters such as the largest ever outbreak of Ebola, continuing civil war and conflict in the middle east, extreme weather conditions such as drought in Central America and typhoons and flooding in the Philippines, and continuing distortion of the agricultural markets with the US passing the Farm Bill and the EU implementing the latest Common Agricultural Policy. And ongoing is a lack of food security and adequate nutrition for hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

While disease, conflict and climatic upheaval are expected to intensify over the coming years, this year could be a window of opportunity to mitigate and build resilience to future shocks, and to step up in the fight against hunger and poverty as the Sustainable Development Goals are shaped and come into force and as a new climate agreement is (hopefully) adopted.

IFPRI’s report highlights some key food policy aspects of hunger and malnutrition such as the importance of sanitation, social protection and food safety, which need to be considered in future policy making. The report also discusses the role of middle income countries in combating hunger and the future of small family farmers.

Middle income countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Mexico are growing fast economically but they are also home to almost half of the world’s hungry (363 million people). These countries must be part of any strategy to combat hunger and malnutrition and they also have the resources to make a huge difference as we’ve seen in Brazil. Although the challenges faced in these countries are diverse and nation-specific, the report identifies several shared factors affecting food and nutrition security such as rising inequality, shifting diets, rapid urbanisation and the absence of nutrition-focused policies. The report points to the examples of South Korea and Chile in reducing hunger and malnutrition while promoting inclusive and sustainable growth. As the report states, economic growth is not sufficient alone to tackle hunger and thus suggests that MICs use nutrition-specific and –sensitive interventions and value chain approaches to reshape the food system; reduce inequalities, for example, through providing education to the underprivileged and supporting women in accessing productive resources; improve rural infrastructure, expand effective social safety nets and improve south-south knowledge sharing.

2014 being the UN International Year of Family Farming, the report looks to the role of small family farmers in meeting a country’s agriculture needs as well as how such farmers can become more profitable or when they might need to leave farming for a more economically justifiable pursuit. Agriculture is mainly a family affair with family farms producing some 80% of the world’s food. As such family farmers play a significant role in global food security and nutrition in both providing the food we eat but also because many small-scale farmers are themselves food insecure.

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Deep emissions cuts needed by 2050 to limit warming: U.N. draft, Reuters

Teaching a humongous foundation to listen to small farmers, Grist

New report links aquaculture and poverty reduction, WorldFish

The MDG Hunger Target and the Contested Visions of Food Security, Fukuda-Parr & Orr

The Power of Numbers: Why the MDGs were flawed (and post2015 goals look set to go the same way), From Poverty to Power

At last, some evidence on the national impact of the MDGs. In Zambia, rivalry with other governments and measurable indicators have made a difference, From Poverty to Power

The GMO Fight Ripples Down the Food Chain, The Wall Street Journal

How GMO crops conquered the United States, Vox

Coming soon: Genetically edited fruit?, EurekAlert

Let’s Use Organic and GMOs to Feed the World, Huffington Post

Sustainable Development Goals – an update

On the 19^th July after 7 days of discussions, the UN General Assembly’s Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed an outcome document containing 17 proposed Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets. The OWG, which comprises of 30 representatives from the five UN regional groups nominated by UN Member States, and the commitment to create the SDGs came out of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. The OWG’s primary responsibility has been to create the proposed SDGs and this proposal will be submitted to the UN General Assembly for consideration at its 68th session on the 24^th September 2014.

Taking place at the UN headquarters in New York, OWG 13, chaired by Macharia Kamau of Kenya and Csaba Kőrösi of Hungary, was extended by a day due to overnight negotiations. In particular discussions around the issues of climate change; sexual and reproductive health; peaceful and inclusive societies; rule of law; accountable and inclusive institutions, as well as the implementation of the goals called for an extended negotiation period. But agreement was reached and the final 17 SDGs proposed are:

Proposed Sustainable Development Goals

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all
8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

IFPRI Global Food Policy Report 2013

Launched this week, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Global Food Policy Report 2013 sets out past developments and future directions in tackling hunger and malnutrition. 2014 is an important year for food and nutrition security as the final efforts towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals and the development of the post-2015 agenda are put into action.

Progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals has been mixed. Globally we are on track to halve poverty, increase access to drinking water and reduce the incidence of malaria and tuberculosis but those goals relating to hunger, child mortality, access to primary education, reproductive healthcare and sanitation largely remain beyond our reach. The Sustainable Development Goals will, however, propose targets even more ambitious: eliminating hunger by 2025, for example. They will also be expanded in scope, as discussed at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, to cover climate change, urbanisation, conflict and sustainable consumption and production. A United Nations Development Group report, A million voices: the world we want, which collected views and opinions from over 1 million people across the world, highlighted the need for a more holistic agenda that addresses the complex and interlinked challenges the world faces through an equality, justice and human rights lens. People also called for better measurement of progress to support greater accountability.

Central to discussions on the agricultural development component of the SDGs has been the need to increase production without harm to environmental and social processes. Sustainable intensification and efficient food production will likely feature within the post-2015 agenda although it is recognised that sustainable intensification requires transformative change along the whole value chain and at the policy level, as well as widespread adoption of innovative technologies, and thus poses a significant challenge in both designing a goal and in putting into practice. Indeed, finding goals which will effectively reflect the multidimensionality of food and nutrition and their links to the wider environment will be a challenge.

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Traditional innovation in farming is under threat, Thomason Reuters Foundation

Tanzania becomes a battleground in fight over genetically modified crops, The Washington Post

The battle lines on food labelling, Politico

Agric: Key to achieving MDGs, Daily Trust

Women’s land rights matter for tackling hunger, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Africa Should Not Ignore the Potential of GM Crops, Jane Karuku

Changing course to feed the world in 2050, Triple Crisis

Seeds of discontent documentary unveils how foreign investors fuel land grabs, Agrarian Justice

‘It’s the small-scale producers who feed the world – promote and protect them’, The Guardian

Counting hunger

When the writing of One Billion Hungry: Can we feed the world? began in 2010, it was estimated that there were around one billion chronically hungry people in the world, hence the title. When the book was launched in 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, in their State of Food Insecurity in the World, had revised their methodology for calculating the number of hungry and published an updated figure of 870 million for the period 2010-2012 (details of their methodology and revised estimates can be found in a previous blog post). The new calculations indicate that the prevalence of extreme malnourishment peaked in 1990, fell to 2006 and then remained stable.

Getting these numbers right is incredibly important because they influence policy and form the basis upon which global decisions regarding hunger and development are made. But calculating worldwide statistics is notoriously difficult given the scale and the reporting requirements. Even so the FAO’s methods have received strong criticism, and weaknesses have been acknowledged internally.  A new paper by Moore Lappé et al, How we Count Hunger Matters, details the downfalls of the FAO’s assumptions and calculations, and the more nuanced way we should be looking at hunger.

Because of the revised hunger numbers it appears we have made more progress in achieving the first Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015 than previously thought. This redefinition means that we are now about five-sevenths of the way toward meeting the goal rather than one-seventh of the way there. But is this really true or have the goal posts just been changed?