SDGs are our dreams
gone official
It is because we dream of a perfect future is why
the present becomes worth the fight.
Exactly one year ago in September 2015, all nations
of the world adopted the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) at the UN
general Assembly. At this gathering of world leaders, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi endorsed the #globalgoals, committing himself and all of us to their
achievement by 2030.
And this is what is dazzling about these 17 new
goals and their 169 targets. Three generations, including ours, have lived
through the struggles and victories of the last hundred years, but it is only now
for the first time that we have collectively started dreaming about the world
through the eyes of a future generation, our children.
What kind of world will your little daughter find
herself in when she is a young adult? Will she be surrounded by prosperity,
beauty, peace, dignity and equality for them, or will she find herself
struggling in a broken planet among scorched people? These are the foundational
questions that spur the ambition and scale of the SDGs.
Why do we need the SDGs, you may ask. Because map
squiggles aside, we will all sink or swim together. Because right now
production and consumption levels in the world are overshooting our planet’s
capacity by about 50 percent each year. But we need all
the production and consumption possible, because that is how economies grow
(and remember, we all want our economies to grow, not just a little bit, but
way above 7%). We say that only when economies grow will we be able to spend on
education, sexual and reproductive health, sanitation and eventually fewer
people will remain poor. But hang on – there is research to show that if we
waited for economic growth to pull people out of poverty, it would take at
least 100 years if not more.
This interconnectedness can be terrifying to wrap
one’s head around. And we need to face up to these complexities we have brought
upon us through the development pathway we have adopted so far. With all the
interconnections between the social, economic and environmental changes we
aspire for, the SDGs is what we need as a web of causality that will impact our
childrens lives in the coming decades. If you think you are immune to these
complexities and their effects, you are living in a bubble even fiction wouldn’t
dare create.
What does
interconnectedness mean and why is it important? Here is an example. The public
health world was left aghast to hear of two malaria deaths in Delhi last week which ended a so called
death free spell since 2012. Earlier this year there was a shocking media report on the Malaria epidemic that India had tucked away
behind manipulation of data. Seemed like an example from hell where the ideal
combination of funding investment, good intentions, laborious plans and
labyrinthine monitoring systems seemed to have failed. Where does
accountability rest? Which link in the chain was weak and in disrepair? Which
economic, social and environmental factors were at play? Who suffered more,
women, men or children? Does poverty, access to services, nutrition, sanitation
play a role? Or was it just a case of low capacities of implementing
departments? The web of causality is complex and solutions that ignore this web
may fail.
We need the SDGs to
visualise the intricate warp and weft between people, planet, prosperity, peace
and partnerships, all of which are interlinked to sustainable development.
I have written earlier that despite the SDG
Resolution making explicit in Para 45 that the Parliament needs to play the
oversight function in the implementation pathways to achieve the Goals, the Indian parliament seems
to be playing truant. But wait, why has the
Resolution put the Parliament at the center of it all? Because elected leaders
represent the people’s will and the SDGs are just that – a distillation of what
millions of people worldwide consider urgent needs for a life of dignity and a
peaceful future for their children.
And lets not forget, Governments don’t bring about
change because they want to, but because they are forced to. And the SDGs are a
giving us, the people of sovereign nations, an instrument to create that
change.
Two targets make an efficient illustration of the
enormous potential invested in the SDGs.
This target which gives voice to half the world’s
population, gives me goose bumps - ‘by 2030, progressively achieve and sustain
income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than
the national average’. Even a few years ago, it was unthinkable that all
nations of this world would sign up to such a target and set themselves the
goal of ‘reducing inequality within and among countries’. Note the turn of
phrase and its power.
Hidden within the SDG Resolution is another gem - under
Goal 5 which commits to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and
girls, there is a remarkable target - ‘Recognize and value unpaid care and
domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and
social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within
the household and the family as nationally appropriate’. India has signed up to
achieve this target, but are we ready to put our collective might behind this
imagination?
Those are as loud a call to action as there can
ever be. Don’t forget that these were your dreams – of a better preserved
planet for your children and a more peaceful and equal society. Make sure they
aren’t forgotten.
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