February 15, 2018
Dear Friends and Family,
The United Nations is one global institution that seeks to improve the globe as a whole. This segment contains a bit of U.N. history, its millennium Development Goals, and importantly its sustainable development goals.
My Takeaways from the Excerpts:
Development activities within the United Nations were exclusively economic in nature from 1945 to 1962. In the early 1960s they expanded development to include a few other aspects such as population planning, water supply, nutrition and pollution on a worldwide basis. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union ending the Cold War in 1989, the focus of the UN began to shift to worldwide development of such aspects as poverty, gender, equality, education, eradication of deadly diseases, child mortality, and maternal health. After some degree of success, the world organization increased their vision to include the sustainability of such efforts.
This evolution led to the creation of eight millennium goals in September 2008 complete with specific measurements and a timeline for completion. The status against each goal was tracked and reported publicly on a yearly basis. The ending timeline for the eight millennium goals was 2015. The results against the goals are summarized in the excerpts.
This led to the development of 17 sustainable goals, with timelines and targets, building on the experience of the eight millennium goals. The targeted completion for the sustainable goals is 2030. The listing of these goals is also in the excerpts. The attached PDF, located at the bottom of the segment, provides further clarification and definition of each goal.
My reaction to the sustainability goals: it is a very noble undertaking, but it is so expansive that I fear focus will be lost and there will be less progress than if they reduced their grandiose endeavors to insure continual focus. Such is the nature of goals developed by large committees, particularly those that are politically charged. I sincerely hope they prove my skepticism to be wrong.
Next: The last segment of this series will focus on Global Governance and the merits therein.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
The United Nations is one global institution that seeks to improve the globe as a whole. This segment contains a bit of U.N. history, its millennium Development Goals, and importantly its sustainable development goals.
My Takeaways from the Excerpts:
Development activities within the United Nations were exclusively economic in nature from 1945 to 1962. In the early 1960s they expanded development to include a few other aspects such as population planning, water supply, nutrition and pollution on a worldwide basis. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union ending the Cold War in 1989, the focus of the UN began to shift to worldwide development of such aspects as poverty, gender, equality, education, eradication of deadly diseases, child mortality, and maternal health. After some degree of success, the world organization increased their vision to include the sustainability of such efforts.
This evolution led to the creation of eight millennium goals in September 2008 complete with specific measurements and a timeline for completion. The status against each goal was tracked and reported publicly on a yearly basis. The ending timeline for the eight millennium goals was 2015. The results against the goals are summarized in the excerpts.
This led to the development of 17 sustainable goals, with timelines and targets, building on the experience of the eight millennium goals. The targeted completion for the sustainable goals is 2030. The listing of these goals is also in the excerpts. The attached PDF, located at the bottom of the segment, provides further clarification and definition of each goal.
My reaction to the sustainability goals: it is a very noble undertaking, but it is so expansive that I fear focus will be lost and there will be less progress than if they reduced their grandiose endeavors to insure continual focus. Such is the nature of goals developed by large committees, particularly those that are politically charged. I sincerely hope they prove my skepticism to be wrong.
Next: The last segment of this series will focus on Global Governance and the merits therein.
Happy Learning,
Harley
GLOBALIZATION – SEGMENT 6
UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT -- EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: The world organization has gone through roughly four phases in dealing with the issue of development, which reflects the evolution of economic thought since World War II.
Phase One: National State Capitalism (1945-1962): Development at the second UN was generally thought of primarily in national economic terms. The goal was to create national infrastructures that would provide the basis for economic growth led by the private, for-profit sector.
Phase Two: International Affirmative Action (1962-1981): Beginning in the mid-1960s, UN development activity focused on persistent income inequalities between the rich North and the poor South, between developed and developing countries, between industrialized and Third World countries. Development became more than just economic growth. Agriculture, population planning, water supply, pollution control, nutrition, and other problems took center stage on the agenda.
Phase Three: Return to Neoliberalism (1981-1989): The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War showed that communism as practiced by the Soviet Union and its allies was bankrupt. The United States and other Western governments had mostly resisted but on occasion been obliged to accommodate Third World economic demands during the Cold War; but after its end there was no viable alternative to Western views on global capitalism—and no political reason for the West to compromise. Thus, a new packaging of an old vision took place. It stressed that the private sector and freer markets, not government, would pave the way to more satisfactory development. The new orthodoxy in international economics represented a return to minimal regulation and maximum private entrepreneurship.
Phase Four: Sustainable Development and Globalization (1989 – Present): While important member-states at the first UN largely pursued neoliberal economic development through the IMF and World Bank, the second and third UN were calling attention to a growing problem. The need to simultaneously foster economic development and ensure the availability of resources for future generations, or "sustainable development," was framed. In addition to creating and building awareness around focusing on poverty and sustainable development, the second UN also began to focus more attention on the role of women and gender in development in the 1990s.
Source: The United Nation and Changing World Politics by Thomas Weiss, David Forsythe, Roger Coate, and Kelly-Kate Pease (2017)
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDGs): The inequalities of the globalized world prompted the UN General Assembly to publicize an ambitious development agenda for the new century. The eight Millennium Development Goals of September 18, 2000, set 2015 as a target date. The eight MDGs are:
The adoption of the MDGs was a potential turning point in UN development efforts. Finally, there was a blueprint of "only" eight goals, accompanied by a timeline.
The Results: The UN's Millennium Development Goals Report 2015 (MDGR 2015) is the final "report card" of the MDG effort and lays the foundation for the SDGs which will frame the UN development agenda until 2030.
Poverty and Hunger: Poverty rates have declined in all regions since 1990. The absolute number of extremely poor in the developing world fell from over 2 billion in 1990 to under 1.4 billion in 2008, and the proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2008.
Education: The enrollment rate in developing countries globally was 91% in 2015, up from 83% in 2000. Illiteracy remained a major problem with more than one hundred million people between the ages of 15 and 24 unable to read or write.
Gender Equality: The MDGR 2012 announced that parity had been achieved in primary education in the developing world as a whole. Of the 131 developing countries reporting data by sex, 71 has achieved gender parity. Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia lagged behind and the MDGR 2015 indicated that these regions were struggling to gain ground.
Transnational Public Health: The global under-five mortality has declined by more than half.
The Global Measles initiative to vaccinate children, launched in 2001 represents a success story: measles mortality declined by 68% between 2000 and 2006. By 2015, it was calculated that measles vaccinations had prevented 15.6 million deaths between 2000 and 2013.
Progress toward achieving the MDG target for maternal health was mixed and very disappointing in parts of Asia and nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia account for 85% of maternal deaths worldwide.
The MDG target related to AIDS was to have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. This task was daunting, especially in Africa, and the goal was not met.
The global target for malaria was met, but regionally, sub-Saharan Africa still struggles with prevention and treatment.
Despite a slow rate of decline for tuberculosis (TB), the UN predicts all regions should meet the goal of halting the spread and reducing the incidence of TB.
One of the success stories in international health has been the battle against polio. Only a few small pockets of the disease persist. Of all remaining cases, 99% are located in three countries -- India, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
Environmental Sustainability: The MDGR 2015 noted that emissions have increased by 50% since 1990 and the rise of greenhouse gases is unabated globally.
By 2010 the MDG target of halving the proportion of the world's population without sustainable access to safe drinking water had been met – five years ahead of schedule.
Global Partnerships for Development: The core staff of the UNDP sought to build an array of partnerships with business primarily through the Global Compact because development, especially for poorer developing countries, cannot occur through governmental or intergovernmental means alone. Creating local, national, and international enabling environments is essential, and a broad-based partnership involving all relevant stakeholders is required. By 2015, over seven thousand corporate partners had joined the agreement.
Access to affordable drugs for all diseases on a sustainable basis is not available to over one third of the developing world's population.
Two thirds of the world's population do not have access to the Internet, compared to 18% in developed countries. And due to the continuing gender disparity, women and girls have far less access than do their male counterparts.
UN development agencies, while great at generating ideas, did not perform particularly well given their level of expertise and numbers of skilled personnel. The atomized structure of the second UN and lack of systemic coherence make it a marginal partner in the sustainable human development process.
Source: The UN & Changing World Politics by Thomas Weiss et al. (2017)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: The 17 time-bounded and measurable goals, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the core of the 2030 Agenda. Comprising 169 targets and 230 indicators, they may be considered a "to-do-list" for people and the planet, and a blueprint for a sustainable future. The goals integrate the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The 17 goals are:
The work of the United Nations in the development arena was born decentralized and remains the same today. Many argue that it has become even more compartmentalized and expansive because of the seemingly ever-growing number of agencies, funds and programs. Development began largely as an implicit and secondary goal but has since become one of the UN's primary activities. Over the decades, scores of development-related agencies funds, programs, commissions, and committees have continued to spring up, thereby creating an ever more complex institution web.
Source: The UN & Changing World Politics by Thomas Weiss et al. (2017)
In the end, the UN cannot and should not be expected to offer solutions to all the world's ills. It does much good humanitarian work and often provides ways of easing tension and soling crises. It often enables people stuck in poverty to improve their lot. The UN is hardly perfect. But it remains an indispensable organization even as its behavior and effectiveness – much like that of individual countries – is in constant need of improvement.
Source: The United Nations by Jussi M. Hanhimaki. (2015)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT -- EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: The world organization has gone through roughly four phases in dealing with the issue of development, which reflects the evolution of economic thought since World War II.
Phase One: National State Capitalism (1945-1962): Development at the second UN was generally thought of primarily in national economic terms. The goal was to create national infrastructures that would provide the basis for economic growth led by the private, for-profit sector.
Phase Two: International Affirmative Action (1962-1981): Beginning in the mid-1960s, UN development activity focused on persistent income inequalities between the rich North and the poor South, between developed and developing countries, between industrialized and Third World countries. Development became more than just economic growth. Agriculture, population planning, water supply, pollution control, nutrition, and other problems took center stage on the agenda.
Phase Three: Return to Neoliberalism (1981-1989): The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War showed that communism as practiced by the Soviet Union and its allies was bankrupt. The United States and other Western governments had mostly resisted but on occasion been obliged to accommodate Third World economic demands during the Cold War; but after its end there was no viable alternative to Western views on global capitalism—and no political reason for the West to compromise. Thus, a new packaging of an old vision took place. It stressed that the private sector and freer markets, not government, would pave the way to more satisfactory development. The new orthodoxy in international economics represented a return to minimal regulation and maximum private entrepreneurship.
Phase Four: Sustainable Development and Globalization (1989 – Present): While important member-states at the first UN largely pursued neoliberal economic development through the IMF and World Bank, the second and third UN were calling attention to a growing problem. The need to simultaneously foster economic development and ensure the availability of resources for future generations, or "sustainable development," was framed. In addition to creating and building awareness around focusing on poverty and sustainable development, the second UN also began to focus more attention on the role of women and gender in development in the 1990s.
Source: The United Nation and Changing World Politics by Thomas Weiss, David Forsythe, Roger Coate, and Kelly-Kate Pease (2017)
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDGs): The inequalities of the globalized world prompted the UN General Assembly to publicize an ambitious development agenda for the new century. The eight Millennium Development Goals of September 18, 2000, set 2015 as a target date. The eight MDGs are:
- Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
- Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
- Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
- Goal 5: Improve maternal health
- Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
- Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
The adoption of the MDGs was a potential turning point in UN development efforts. Finally, there was a blueprint of "only" eight goals, accompanied by a timeline.
The Results: The UN's Millennium Development Goals Report 2015 (MDGR 2015) is the final "report card" of the MDG effort and lays the foundation for the SDGs which will frame the UN development agenda until 2030.
Poverty and Hunger: Poverty rates have declined in all regions since 1990. The absolute number of extremely poor in the developing world fell from over 2 billion in 1990 to under 1.4 billion in 2008, and the proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2008.
Education: The enrollment rate in developing countries globally was 91% in 2015, up from 83% in 2000. Illiteracy remained a major problem with more than one hundred million people between the ages of 15 and 24 unable to read or write.
Gender Equality: The MDGR 2012 announced that parity had been achieved in primary education in the developing world as a whole. Of the 131 developing countries reporting data by sex, 71 has achieved gender parity. Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia lagged behind and the MDGR 2015 indicated that these regions were struggling to gain ground.
Transnational Public Health: The global under-five mortality has declined by more than half.
The Global Measles initiative to vaccinate children, launched in 2001 represents a success story: measles mortality declined by 68% between 2000 and 2006. By 2015, it was calculated that measles vaccinations had prevented 15.6 million deaths between 2000 and 2013.
Progress toward achieving the MDG target for maternal health was mixed and very disappointing in parts of Asia and nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia account for 85% of maternal deaths worldwide.
The MDG target related to AIDS was to have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. This task was daunting, especially in Africa, and the goal was not met.
The global target for malaria was met, but regionally, sub-Saharan Africa still struggles with prevention and treatment.
Despite a slow rate of decline for tuberculosis (TB), the UN predicts all regions should meet the goal of halting the spread and reducing the incidence of TB.
One of the success stories in international health has been the battle against polio. Only a few small pockets of the disease persist. Of all remaining cases, 99% are located in three countries -- India, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
Environmental Sustainability: The MDGR 2015 noted that emissions have increased by 50% since 1990 and the rise of greenhouse gases is unabated globally.
By 2010 the MDG target of halving the proportion of the world's population without sustainable access to safe drinking water had been met – five years ahead of schedule.
Global Partnerships for Development: The core staff of the UNDP sought to build an array of partnerships with business primarily through the Global Compact because development, especially for poorer developing countries, cannot occur through governmental or intergovernmental means alone. Creating local, national, and international enabling environments is essential, and a broad-based partnership involving all relevant stakeholders is required. By 2015, over seven thousand corporate partners had joined the agreement.
Access to affordable drugs for all diseases on a sustainable basis is not available to over one third of the developing world's population.
Two thirds of the world's population do not have access to the Internet, compared to 18% in developed countries. And due to the continuing gender disparity, women and girls have far less access than do their male counterparts.
UN development agencies, while great at generating ideas, did not perform particularly well given their level of expertise and numbers of skilled personnel. The atomized structure of the second UN and lack of systemic coherence make it a marginal partner in the sustainable human development process.
Source: The UN & Changing World Politics by Thomas Weiss et al. (2017)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: The 17 time-bounded and measurable goals, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the core of the 2030 Agenda. Comprising 169 targets and 230 indicators, they may be considered a "to-do-list" for people and the planet, and a blueprint for a sustainable future. The goals integrate the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The 17 goals are:
- Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere
- Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
- Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
- Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
- Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
- Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
- Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
- Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
- Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
- Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
- Goal 11: Make cities and human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
- Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
- Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
- Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
- Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably managed forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradations and halt biodiversity loss.
- Goal 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
- Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
The work of the United Nations in the development arena was born decentralized and remains the same today. Many argue that it has become even more compartmentalized and expansive because of the seemingly ever-growing number of agencies, funds and programs. Development began largely as an implicit and secondary goal but has since become one of the UN's primary activities. Over the decades, scores of development-related agencies funds, programs, commissions, and committees have continued to spring up, thereby creating an ever more complex institution web.
Source: The UN & Changing World Politics by Thomas Weiss et al. (2017)
In the end, the UN cannot and should not be expected to offer solutions to all the world's ills. It does much good humanitarian work and often provides ways of easing tension and soling crises. It often enables people stuck in poverty to improve their lot. The UN is hardly perfect. But it remains an indispensable organization even as its behavior and effectiveness – much like that of individual countries – is in constant need of improvement.
Source: The United Nations by Jussi M. Hanhimaki. (2015)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| glo_6l_sustainable_development_--_segment_6.pdf |