Does It Matter If We Don’t Achieve the SDGs? – Nancy Birdsall and Michael Elliott

Summary

Podcast Summary: Does It Matter If We Don’t Achieve the SDGs?

The CGD Podcast
Host: Center for Global Development (Rajesh Merchandani)
Guests: Nancy Birdsall (President, Center for Global Development) and Michael Elliott (President, ONE Campaign)
Date: September 21, 2015

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Overview

This episode of the CGD Podcast explores the significance and implications of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as they were about to be adopted by the world’s nations. Host Rajesh Merchandani is joined by two prominent figures in international development, Nancy Birdsall and Michael Elliott, to discuss whether the SDGs set out the right global blueprint, their achievability, the shift from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and what the new development agenda means for aid, accountability, and collective action in a changing world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Are the SDGs the Right Agreement?

• Nancy Birdsall ([00:43])
  • The SDG agreement is “the right agreement” because it brings in two key innovations:
    • Sustainability: Unlike the MDGs, “sustainable” in SDGs includes both environmental and social aspects, implicitly invoking issues like inequality.
    • Universality: The SDGs apply to all countries—rich, poor, or middle-income—acknowledging many shared problems across traditional divides. “It’s goals for all of us.”
• Michael Elliott ([01:57])
  • Universality is “absolutely 100%” the right approach.
  • SDGs build on tremendous progress made with the MDGs on health and poverty and create a “through train,” enabling continuous improvement on those while expanding the scope to new challenges, including “climate change, governance, corruption, industrialization, and inequality.”

2. MDGs vs. SDGs: Are We Setting Ourselves Up to Fail?

• Michael Elliott ([03:35])
  • Acknowledges the scale: 17 goals and over 160 targets is a “challenge...an enormous challenge.” Dismissing this expansion as unproductive is “a little too glib.” The SDGs offer nuance and foster alignment with national development plans.
• Nancy Birdsall ([04:12])
  • The MDGs redefined development from just economic growth to “human development and about people.”
  • Their value was in specificity, measurement, and accountability.
  • SDGs add to the normative shift by emphasizing “sustainable” and invoking “social justice in a larger sense,” and address systemic, collective action problems (e.g., climate change, tax evasion, antimicrobial resistance, cybercrime).

3. Achievability of the SDGs

• Michael Elliott ([06:46])

  • Not achievable “tomorrow,” but likely through ongoing commitment by national governments and increased engagement of civil society, especially in the Global South.
  • Civil society’s role will be to use SDGs as accountability and measurement tools.

• Nancy Birdsall ([07:35])

  • “It’s not that important” whether SDGs are fully achieved. What matters is “measuring progress and the rate of progress and clarifying who is accountable.”
  • Systemic issues require collective action—some accountability is clear (within countries), but much is increasingly global and diffuse.

• Michael Elliott’s Notable Quote ([08:58]):

  “I see these goals as the world making a promise to itself...arguably the biggest promise the world has made to itself since that extraordinary set of documents in the post-1945 period...It’s sort of a wonderful thing...we're one world, one planet, one society, one people who look out for each other and look out for how we get along in the world and how our one home is going to be handed on to the next generation.”

4. SDGs as the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights—for the Age of Metrics"

• Rajesh Merchandani ([10:03]):
  Describes the SDGs as “a universal declaration of human rights for the age of metrics and data.”
• Nancy Birdsall ([10:13])
  • Agrees: The UN is a “global public good in setting norms and in calling for collective action,” even if perfect collective action is elusive.
  • The SDGs "capture something about a world in which in principle we could have a more universal sense of where we should be going."

5. Aid's Role in the New Paradigm

• Nancy Birdsall ([12:24])
  • Aid’s role is “diminishing relative to understanding policy and politics and finding ways to leverage better policy for people everywhere.”
  • Emphasizes collective action and policy over simple aid flows.
• Michael Elliott ([13:25])
  • Aid is still “really, really important”—especially for the “last billion of people in extreme poverty,” most of whom will be in fragile or conflict-affected settings where “states are thin.”
  • Clarifies that a dollar of aid is not equivalent to a dollar of domestic or private finance due to differing impacts.
• Nancy Birdsall ([15:01])
  • Humanitarian assistance, especially from the U.S., “has to grow” in the face of climate-linked displacement and conflict.
  • Aid will increasingly take the form of humanitarian relief, and the development community needs to focus on innovative, efficient delivery models.

6. Using Cash as Aid

• Rajesh Merchandani ([16:21])
  • Mentions CGD’s Zoe in Barda convening a panel recommending more cash-based aid, especially in humanitarian contexts.
• Michael Elliott & Nancy Birdsall ([16:32-16:33])
  • Both strongly endorse this, with Nancy noting: "the evidence suggests it's a very good idea."

7. Differences Between MDG and SDG Negotiations

• Michael Elliott ([17:08], [17:21])
  • The world is vastly different than in 2000: technology, geopolitics, and trust in institutions have shifted.
  • In 2000, the U.S. was the “hyper power” and could more easily drive global consensus.
  • Now, there is widespread distrust in institutions, which has “made putting together the SDGs a little bit more difficult than it would have been.”
• Nancy Birdsall ([19:15])
  • The US’s model is more challenged now, with its relative power diminished and alternate institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Bank emerging.
  • The economic context is tougher (“low growth austerity”), posing additional difficulties.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Nancy Birdsall on universality and inequality ([00:43]):

  “We don't have just the poor and just the rich anymore. It's a much more enriched mix. It's goals for all of us.”

• Michael Elliott on the promise of the SDGs ([08:58]):

  “This is the world making a promise to itself... a promise to ourselves that we're one world, one planet, one society, one people who look out for each other... That's a pretty wonderful thing to do.”

• Nancy Birdsall on accountability ([07:35]):

  “What's important is measuring progress and the rate of progress and clarifying who is accountable for what.”

• Michael Elliott on aid for fragile states ([13:25]):

  “Particularly when you get to the last billion of people in extreme poverty... in fragile states... aid is going to remain a really, really important part of the mix.”

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Important Timestamps

• 00:43 – Nancy Birdsall: What makes the SDG agreement fundamentally different from the MDGs
• 01:57 – Michael Elliott: Universality and ongoing progress beyond the MDGs
• 04:12 – Nancy Birdsall: Accountability, measurement, and systemic challenges in development
• 06:46 – Michael Elliott: On the possibility of achieving the SDGs and civil society’s role
• 07:35 – Nancy Birdsall: Why full achievement is less important than measurable progress
• 08:58 – Michael Elliott: SDGs as “the world making a promise to itself”
• 10:13 – Nancy Birdsall: The UN’s role in setting global norms and universal aspirations
• 12:24 – Nancy Birdsall: How SDGs shift focus beyond aid towards collective action and better policy
• 13:25 – Michael Elliott: The irreplaceable importance of aid for fragile states
• 15:01 – Nancy Birdsall: Humanitarian assistance’s rising importance in aid
• 17:21 – Michael Elliott: The changing global context from 2000 to the current era
• 19:15 – Nancy Birdsall: The shifting power and role of the US in global development

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Conclusion

The conversation concludes with both guests affirming the SDGs’ importance as a global commitment—even if imperfect or ambitious beyond likely full achievement. Their main value lies in reframing development in universal, measurable, and collectively accountable terms, with the greatest challenges now found in fostering global collective action and adapting to a world where traditional divides and solutions are less relevant than ever before.

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For more research and analysis: cgdev.org

Transcript

[A]

Hello. Welcome to the CGD podcast with me, Rajesh Merchandani. Thanks for joining us today. What does the future of development look like? Is it the SDG document the nations will sign up to in a few days time? In 15 years from now, will we look back at this moment and think of it as a turning point in human history? Big thoughts require big thinkers, and we've gone for the double whammy today. Nancy Birdzel, President of cgd, and Michael Elliott, President of the One Campaign. Welcome to you both. Thanks for being here.

[B]

Thank you, Roger. Thank you.

[A]

Nancy, is the STG agreement the right agreement?

[B]

I think so, yes. There are at least two things I'd say about it that make it qualify as the right agreement. One is that the word sustainability, sustainable is there that's different from the Millennium Development Goals. For me, it implies not only sustainability in the environmental sense, but in the social sense. So it invokes indirectly some of the inequality discussion that's in the document, the SDG goals. Second, the point is being made that it's universal and that's built in. That was built in from the beginning. And that means the once rich countries and the once poor countries, which are now a set of countries that have more problems in common than different problems because we don't have just the poor and just the rich anymore. It's a much more enriched mix. It's goals for all of us.

[A]

And Michael, that idea of universality, is that a good thing to have in the document, that it applies to all countries? Or should it be like the MDGs were about rich countries helping poor countries?

[C]

No, I absolutely 100% agree with Nancy. I think we've moved on from that. I think the MDGs were a wonderful success, an extraordinary aid to fighting poverty, preventable disease and other diminutions of the human spirit. But we've moved on. And in addition to Nancy's two very strong points, I'd make two others. I think. First of all, it sort of recognizes that with the MDGs and of course, other things that have happened in the last 15 years, we've made tremendous progress on some key indicators, on health indicators and poverty indicators. And the SDGs give us a way of doing what I call a through train. So in other words, making sure that we continue the progress on those key human development indicators, while at the same time, a second point beginning to shape a framework which enables us to think of new challenges that are coming along. Climate change is the most obvious one. Other challenges of governance and corruption and industrialization and inequality, all of which are issues we know that are going to be more and more salient in the next 15 years. And the SDG document gives us the tools to start thinking about those new problems as well as continuing progress on the older ones.

[A]

You talked about the MDGs, Nancy, you talked about the MDGs as well. Michael, you talked about the success of the MDGs, but the world did not achieve all the MDGs, so there wasn't success in those. And there's only eight of those. There's 17 of these in the same time frame. So are we setting ourselves up to fail?

[C]

Well, we're setting ourselves up for a challenge. There's no question about that. We're setting ourselves up for an enormous challenge. We've got 17 goals, we've got more than 160 targets, so we've got a lot to do. But the idea that you can dismiss all this because it's gone from 8 to 17, I find a little too glib, really. I mean, we've all heard that argument over the last six to nine months, and I think it doesn't sort of get into the nuances of how national development plans will actually engage with the SDGs when they've been adopted.

[A]

Nancy, Michael's calling me glib. What do you think?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking as Michael was talking. One of the things that was good about the MDGs, that I don't think is said often enough, is that they changed at the global level. Our definition, in a normative sense of what development is. It's not just or mostly growth of economies, and that was important in 1990, excuse me, in 2000, to emphasize they captured sort of a view of development that's about human development and about people. They also, however, had this quality that you could set a rather specific goal and measure it. So although it's too bad that they weren't all met everywhere, the fact is that there was a way to hold countries accountable and indirectly, in the context of the MDGs, the rich countries, accountable for the extent to which they helped or not. Okay, so it was kind of around aid, but it had this good thing of measuring and making accountable, okay, sustainable development goals. They have the same good thing around this change in our normative, our feel in some nuanced sense, what is important and good in the world. They've added to the human development dimension something additional, which is it has to be sustainable. It has to invoke about social justice in a larger sense. And One thing I didn't say earlier, that gets us to the system problems, which to me is important because you can't deal with the system problems without some collective action on the part of at least groups of countries, whether they're middle income, poor, rich or whatever. And especially the rich have a role in addressing the systemic problems, like the failure to move on climate change, or how tough it is to deal with tax evasion, or what are we going to do about antimicrobial resistance to drugs or about cybercrime. So much of development now is about those systemic issues, often at a global level.

[A]

Do you think that the SDGs are achievable?

[C]

Well, do I think that they're achievable tomorrow? No. Do I think that they will be a process? There will be a process by which national governments around the world commit themselves to sustained Progress on the SDGs. Yes. And I think another thing will happen which will make achieving the SDGs more and more likely over time, and that is that we are seeing an explosion of civil society groups, particularly in the Global south, who are enormously engaged in the process of putting together the SDGs, and who I believe will be even more engaged in the process of using the SDGs as a measuring device, just as the MDTs were, to make sure that their governments and other governments meet the targets that they have committed to do.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, you asked the question, are they achievable? And I suppose my sense is it's not that important. I think, you know, it would be great to achieve them, but what's important is measuring progress and the rate of progress and clarifying who is accountable for what. I mean, in some cases a country is accountable, in some cases, many cases, increasingly we don't know who to make accountable because they require collective action across sovereign nations. And that in itself is a huge challenge. So on women and girls, you know, you can measure it within countries over time. There are ways that can be done. And I think civil society groups, think tanks like CGD will try to develop metrics and all of that, and that's progress in itself. It's more important that they're there despite the fact that they're flawed.

[C]

I see these goals as the world making a promise to itself. You know, arguably the biggest promise the world has made to itself since that extraordinary set of documents in the post 1945 period that kind of went through the creation of the Bretton Wood Agreements, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and so on and so forth. This is the world making a promise to itself. And it's sort of a wonderful thing that we're seeing happen. And because we're including so many of the broader aspects of human progress in these goals, you know, make a promise to ourselves that we're one world, one planet, one society, one people who look out for each other and look out for how we get along in the world and how our one home is going to be handed on to the next generation. That's a pretty big. That's a pretty wonderful thing to do. That's a pretty wonderful thing to do.

[A]

So in a way, this is. The SDG document is kind of like a universal declaration of human rights for the age of metrics and data.

[B]

That's very well put. And it reminds me, you know, we work in Washington, all of us, and down the street we have the international financial institutions and around the corner from them we have the big US aid agencies and the US treasury and the White House. So we're very sort of metric measure, achievement oriented. I think it's worth keeping in mind that the United nations is itself a sort of global public good in setting norms and in calling for collective action. It has a lot of trouble achieving collective action because, you know, we're a messy group of sovereign nations, each one with its own difficult politics. The US Particularly right now, honestly. But there's still been all these decades, such an important role. So credit to the United nations and its various agencies. It doesn't mean they can do everything. And the Sustainable Development Goals, they're not perfect, but I think what's important about them is what Michael was saying. You know, they capture something about a world in which in principle we could have more universal sense of where we should be going.

[A]

I think you just fell off the end of a lot of members of Congress Christmas card list talking about the UN there. How do you.

[B]

Trying to clarify its contribution? You know, and I think it's a mistake to expect everything from the un, just as it's a mistake to expect everything from the financial institutions that are global, like the IMF and the World bank.

[A]

If the SDGs represent a new paradigm, a new way of thinking about development, then what does that mean for aid, which for many people is, you know, equates to development? As we know development is about more than aid.

[B]

Maybe we'll disagree a little bit. No. Well, let me, let me answer. You go first. And then, yeah, I think, you know, if you think of the challenges for the world as very heavily now around collective action on common problems, Common problem, higher risks and costs for developing countries and poor People, but common problem. I think it's a healthy reminder that aid is a small part of the answer. Important where it's there, but it's a diminishing role relative to understanding policy and politics and finding ways to leverage better policy for people everywhere. Better policy in the US better policy in Malawi, better policy in Morocco, South Africa, Indonesia, wherever it is.

[C]

So we will disagree a little bit, though not that much. The point that I'd emphasize is that although we know that when you look at those charts, aid is diminishing as a factor in the total dependence, development funding compared with domestic resources added to remittances, added to global private investment. We also need to remember that the dollar of aid is not the same as a dollar of private investment or of domestic resources or of remittances. And that particularly when you get to the last billion of people in extreme poverty who are going to live disproportionately in fragile states, often in poison post conflict situations, in places where for some time there are going to be very, very, what I call thin states, really thin, in other words, kind of not a thick degree of state capacity in a lot of those areas. Aid is going to remain a really, really important part of the mix. And I do think it's important that as we kind of have these debates, development is more than aid. Of course it is. Domestic resources are where all the money is going to be. Of course it is. We get that private investment. Really important. Of course it is. But I do think it is worth reminding ourselves that over the next 15, 20 years, the less whatever the number is of people who really live in extreme poverty and in, and in destitution for them, I think aid is going to continue to remain really important.

[B]

Yeah, I mean there's one nuance I'd add to that which Michael will agree with, I'm sure, and that is especially for the US humanitarian assistance, it has to grow. Unfortunately, the climate problem is going to displace more and more people and some people say even the Pentagon, Right. It'll raise security issues and conflict displaces people. And there's a good sense, it's good to be able to say that. I think the US and USAID are the best in the world. Honestly on emergency relief, we're not doing very well right now on long term refugee relief and assistance. But the future of aid is to the extent there is still aid and there will have to be for fragile states, etc. And for people suffering in conflict ridden areas, it's going to be the Higher and higher proportion will be humanitarian assistance. And that's something maybe the development community should be thinking more about. We want to think more about that. What are the better models for delivery, Effective and efficient delivery of those services, of course.

[A]

CGD Zoe in Barda just chaired a big panel convened by DFID looking at recommending using more cash as aid, including in those situations.

[C]

Including in those situations.

[B]

And in an area where the evidence suggests it's a very good idea.

[A]

So finally then, with your venerable careers, the years that you have spent at the forefront of development, I'm trying to say this politely. How does all the horse trading and the arguing over the SDGs compare to the atmosphere around the beginning of the MDGs, the genesis of that process? How does it compare? Do you remember that from the.

[B]

Shame there?

[C]

I think he's trying to say we're old. Well, the world is a very different place from the way it was in 2000. It's a different place from the way.

[A]

It was in 2005.

[C]

Make poverty history. I mean, I often say in 2005, it was only 10 years ago, Twitter didn't exist and Facebook was in three dorms at Harvard or what have you. I mean, almost literally. Right. So if you go back to 2000 and the millennium Declaration, well, truly, truly was a different place. It was different politically. It was post financial crisis. I'm sorry, pre financial crisis. It was pre. The. It was pre 9 11. It was pre. The post 911 wars. So the geopolitical. It was actually at the end of what we can now look back on. And historians are starting to write this, a sort of brief period of stability, peace and post Cold War. Post Cold War, which was sort of an extraordinary period. Of course, terrible things happened. Rwanda, Bosnia, you know, you and I remember them. But historians are now looking back at that period as a period between the wars, as it were. So 2000 was very different. I mean, it was a very, very different moment in time from the one that we have now. And so the debates were different. The nature of political leadership, I would say, was little different than it is now. We have turned into a society, a global society, worryingly, in my view, that distrusts institutions, possibly for justifiable reasons. In other words, institutions don't earn our trust, but where our natural reaction is to distrust institutional potential solutions to global problems. And I think that's a challenge. I think in some ways it's made putting together the SDGs a little bit more difficult than it would have been. But I think at the end of the day, we've done a pretty good job.

[B]

Now let me say something about another dimension of difference, which I think is the changing role of the US because in 2000 you could still think of the US as not even just a superpower, but kind of a hyper power. I mean, it ruled the Western world, it had the magic of the marketplace, it had democracy. It has. I don't mean it's different now. The US is still a superpower, but it can't bully around in the best good sense of the word, the way we still sort of thought it could in 2000. I mean, its model was, is being greatly challenged in part because of the global financial crisis. Its model of a mixed, you know, economy, very private sector oriented with a little bit of management. I think its ability to push and pull is challenged. We have the creation of the aiib, the Asian Infrastructure bank and the BRICS bank inside the multilaterals. The US has a changing role, so it's tougher now. And also we're at the end of, I hope at the end of a recessionary period. In 2000 there was the boom and the boom during the Millennium Development Goal Management era. Now we're starting, we're at the beginning of what could be a continuing low growth austerity, etc. So those are differences that might make more of a difference than anything inherent in the architecture of the MDGs compared to the SDGs. But given all that, I think it's a tougher moment. The SDGs, as I said in the beginning at least, they command attention as a round collective action in many dimensions of the goals. It's no longer just you guys out there, do it and we'll pay for it. Now it's wow. We have problems that we share, a lot of problems that we share. And we have to really think through how we can work together to address these changes in norms and attitudes and values that have been wonderfully reflected in the mishmash of 17 goals and 139 or whatever targets.

[A]

Well, Nancy, Michael, always great to talk to you, listen to you and learn from you. Thank you very much for joining me on this edition of the CGD podcast.

[B]

Thank you, Rajesh, for bringing us together. Thank you, Michael.

[C]

Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Rajesh. It was great fun.

[A]

And don't forget, you can find out much more about everything that CGD does on our website, cgdev.org I'm Rajesh Merchandani and join me again for the next podcast from the center for Global Development.