As presented at the Bradford Development Lecture Global Governance and Sustainable Development Goals: All Change... No Change? On 1st January 2016 the world moved from implementing the poverty reducing Millennium Development Goals to pursuing the poverty eradicating, prosperity promoting and sustainability enhancing Sustainable Development Goals. The UN has frames the new goals as ‘transformational’ but is this correct… or, are the SDGs merely another smaller scale, episodic advance? In this lecture Professor Hulme assess the evidence and analyses the processes underpinning the MDGs to SDGs shift.

1. From MDGs to SDGs: All Change
or No Change for the Global
Governance of ‘Development’?
David Hulme
Global Development Institute
University of Manchester
22nd Bradford Development Lecture
February 2016
www.gdi.manchester.ac.uk

2. •1 January 2016 MDGs retired, SDGs started
•What does this tell us about global governance -
about the way the world is run?
•Transformation - From Big ‘D’
to little ‘d’?
Introduction
•Evolution - Belated
response to Rising Powers?
•Bulls**t - World’s biggest
lie… ‘development’ remains
marginal to the
international agenda?

3. Robert Cox – Historical Structure
Material
Capabilities
Institutions
Ideas

4. MDGs – A brief history 1
• UN, a history of global goal setting. Successes
(smallpox) and not so good (education for all)
• Structural Adjustment (1980s) – ‘silly talk’
• End of Cold War 1990 – return of UN summits,
rise of civil society, declarations galore
• OECD-DAC 1995 and 1996 – need to “save”
foreign aid. Accidently create Intn’l Dev’t Goals
• UN – needs a good Millennium General Assem’y

5. MDGs to SDGs: a brief history 2
• Millennium Declaration – a UN diplomatic
compromise
• Negotiated to MDGs – an IMF, OECD, UN and
World Bank interpretation of the Declaration
• Gradual adoption of MDGs by agencies (DFID
fast, IMF slow) and national governments
• UN Secretariat moratorium on ‘what comes
after MDGs’ until 2012

6. MDGs to SDGs: a brief history 3

7. MDGs to SDGs: a brief history 4
• OWG the powerhouse – UNGA G77 membership
takes ‘Rio+20’ as its base…global deliberations
• MDG performance – Half full/empty…causality

8. The SDGs...or Global Goals?

9. So what has changed? Content 1

10. •Many additions
• energy
• growth and jobs
• reducing inequality
• peace and justice (governance)
• many more environmental goals
So what has changed? Content 2

11. So what has changed? Content 2
• Holistic –from MDGs to national development
• Leave nobody behind – from $1.25-a-day
poverty reduction to multi-dimensional poverty
eradication
• Universal – for all
• National ownership

12. So what has changed? Processes
• The processes – big changes
• From informal to formal ‘global governance’
• From goals set by rich countries and aid
agencies to goals set by all UN member states
• MDGs were driven by needs and preferences of
OECD members – especially aid agencies
• By 2015 ‘development’ is a global agenda…not
just an aid agenda

13. So what has not changed?
• Non-binding agreement - as 2000 not a treaty –
countries keen to avoid any possibility of
imposition of SDGs
• Results-based management format – primary
focus on delivery, not on social norms or
negotiating structural change
• Global partnership – the key mechanism is an
unspecified, multi-stakeholder ‘partnership(s)’

14. Understanding Change:
Material Capabilities

15. • Global shift of productive capacity from West
to East and South underpins MDG to SDG shift
• Rise of the BRICs – especially rise of China and
ambition of Brazil as an international leader
• Emerging middle powers – countries such as
Colombia, Indonesia and Turkey more engaged
• Africa – empowered by economic growth and
access to finance from China and BRICS
Understanding Change:
Material Capabilities

16. Understanding Changes – Ideas
• Continuity – poverty, human development, RBM,
partnership…stronger sustainability
• But also, lots of “new” ideas
• Growth and jobs (inclusive and sustainable)
• Peace and reduced violence
• Governance…justice…institutions
• Inequality reduction within and across countries

17. Understanding Changes:
Institutions
World Bank/IMF = reduced influence

18. Understanding Changes:
Institutions
• UN = arena for super-goal setting
• Actors empowered by new material capabilities – AU,
Brazilian and Colombian governments
• New financial institutions – AIIB, NDB, CRA
• NGOs – from mobilising civil society to professional
advocates?

19. Transformation or Evolution?
•Depends on the framework you select and criteria
it prioritises
•In content terms can argue transformation –
inequality reduction, peace/conflict,
governance/institutions…sustainability
•In process terms then evolution, but an
accelerated evolution – BRICs, “Rio” and OWG
•Or, “it is all about Paris”

20. Transformation or Evolution
…or Both?
•Since 1 January 2016 “development” is no
longer defined by donor nations
•The SDGs era expands opportunities for
progressive change – seize them
•But material capabilities explain change
more than ideas…global capitalism and
consumerism over inclusivity/sustainability
•The players are changing…game has not?

22. The MDGs