Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:11:00.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Sustainable Development Goals to Basic Development Goals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2020

Kenneth A. Reinert
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals have attracted both defenders and critics. Composed of seventeen goals and 169 targets, the overly broad scope of the SDGs raises the question of whether there are priorities that need to be set within them. This essay considers the SDGs from the perspective of a “basic goods approach” to development policy, which takes a needs-based and basic-subsistence-rights view on policy priorities. It focuses on a subset of SDGs that directly address the provision of nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, and human security services. In doing so, it proposes a set of seven “basic development goals” and ten associated targets. It argues that this more focused approach can better protect basic rights, more effectively contribute to progress on human wellbeing, and make accountability more likely.

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goalsbasic needsbasic rightssubsistence rights
Type
Essays
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Summer 2020 , pp. 125 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 Sachs, Jeffrey D., “From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals,” Lancet 379, no. 9832 (June 9, 2012), p. 2206CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

2 William Easterly, “The SDGs Should Stand for Senseless, Dreamy, Garbled,” Foreign Policy, September 28, 2015, foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/28/the-sdgs-are-utopian-and-worthless-mdgs-development-rise-of-the-rest/. See also “Development: The 169 Commandments; the Proposed Sustainable Development Goals Would Be Worse than Useless,” Economist, March 28, 2015. This article describes the SDGs as “a mess.”

3 See United Nations, “Millennium Development Goals Indicators,” mdgs.un.org; and United Nations, “Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform,” sustainabledevelopment.un.org. One original vision for the SDGs put forward by the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons called for only twelve goals and fifty-four targets. See United Nations, A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies and Sustainable Development (New York: United Nations, 2013), sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/8932013-05%20-%20HLP%20Report%20-%20A%20New%20Global%20Partnership.pdf.

4 On differentiating between determinants and outcomes, see World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2011), openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/4391.

5 Blanc, David Le, “Towards Integration at Last? The Sustainable Development Goals as a Network of Targets,” Sustainable Development 23, no. 3 (April 2015), pp. 176–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Sachs, Jeffrey D., Schmidt-Traub, Guido, Mazzucato, Mariana, Messner, Dirk, Nakicenovic, Nebojsa, and Rockström, Johan, “Six Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,” Nature Sustainability 2 (2019), pp. 805–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Target 12.8 in “Sustainable Development Goal 12,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg12; and target 16.6 in “Sustainable Development Goal 16,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg16.

8 “Sustainable Development Goals,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs (italics added); and targets 1.3 and 1.4 in “Sustainable Development Goal 1,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg1.

9 Targets 2.1 and 2.4 in “Sustainable Development Goal 2,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg2.

10 Targets 3.4 and 3.8 in “Sustainable Development Goal 3,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg3.

11 Targets 6.1 and 6.2 in “Sustainable Development Goal 6,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg6.

12 Target 4.7 in “Sustainable Development Goal 4,” Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform, United Nations, sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg4.

13 Sachs, “From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals,” p. 2208.

14 Doyal, Len and Gough, Ian, A Theory of Human Need (New York: Guilford, 1991), p. 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Dean, Hartley, Understanding Human Need: Social Issues, Policy and Practice (Bristol, U.K.: Policy, 2010), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Braybrooke, David, Meeting Needs (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See Reinert, Kenneth A., No Small Hope: Towards the Universal Provision of Basic Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

18 Griffin, James, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 42Google Scholar.

19 Deaton, Angus and Muellbauer, John, Economics and Consumer Behavior (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The income elasticity of demand measures the responsiveness of household demand with respect to changes in income.

20 Baxter, J. L. and Moosa, I. A., “The Consumption Function: A Basic Needs Hypothesis,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 31, no. 1 (October 1996), pp. 85–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Corning, Peter A., “Biological Adaptation in Human Societies: A ‘Basic Needs’ Approach,” Journal of Bioeconomics 2, no. 1 (January 2000), pp. 41–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 79.

23 Ibid., p. 80. Similar ethical language was independently used by Reinert, Kenneth A., “No Small Hope: The Basic Goods Imperative,” Review of Social Economy 69, no. 1 (March 2011), pp. 55–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See, for example, United Nations Children's Fund, Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed, Progress Report 2013 (New York: UNICEF, 2013), www.unicef.org/publications/files/2013_APR_Progress_Report_Summary_EN_10_Sept_2013.pdf; and United Nations Children's Fund, Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed, Progress Report 2015 (New York: UNICEF, 2015), www.unicef.org/publications/index_83078.html.

25 Long, Graham, “The Idea of Universality in the Sustainable Development Goals,” Ethics & International Affairs 29, no. 2 (Summer 2015), p. 204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Shawki, Noha, “Global Basic Rights, Positive Duties, Extraterritorial Obligations, and Mediating Institutions: Do the Sustainable Development Goals Deepen the Institutionalization of a Global Responsibility to End Poverty?,” Social Alternatives 37, no. 1 (2018), p. 9Google Scholar.

27 Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948, www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

28 Article 11, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, January 3, 1976, www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx.

29 Shue, Henry, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 52.

31 See, for example, Özler, Ş. İglü, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Seventy: Progress and Challenges,” Ethics & International Affairs 32, no. 4 (Winter 2018), pp. 395–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Hertel, Shareen and Minkler, Lanse, “Economic Rights: The Terrain,” in Hertel, Shareen and Minkler, Lanse, eds., Economic Rights: Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Beitz, Charles R., The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 O'Neill, Onora, “The Dark Side of Human Rights,” International Affairs 81, no. 2 (March 2005), pp. 427–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Beitz, Idea of Human Rights, p. 174. Regarding the reasonable cost aspect of “strong beneficence,” see chapter 12 of Reinert, No Small Hope: Towards the Universal Provision of Basic Goods.

36 Beitz, Charles R. and Goodin, Robert E., “Introduction: Basic Rights and Beyond,” in Beitz, Charles R. and Goodin, Robert E., eds., Global Basic Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 1–24Google Scholar. See also Shue, Henry, “Mediating Duties,” Ethics 98, no. 4 (July 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which the author calls for “the design and creation of positive-duty-performing institutions that do not yet exist and for the modification or transformation of existing institutions that now ignore rights and the positive duties that all rights involve” (p. 703).

37 Christian Reus-Smit, “On Rights and Institutions,” in Beitz and Goodin, Global Basic Rights, pp. 25–48.

38 Neta C. Crawford, “No Borders, No Bystanders: Developing Individual and Institutional Capacities for Global Moral Responsibility,” in Beitz and Goodin, Global Basic Rights, pp. 131–55.

39 Simon Caney, “Human Rights, Responsibilities, and Climate Change,” in Beitz and Goodin, Global Basic Rights, pp. 227–47.

40 Shue, Henry, “Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions,” Law and Policy 15, no. 1 (January 1993), pp. 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See, for example, Rao, Narisimha D. and Baer, Paul, “‘Decent Living’ Emissions: A Conceptual Framework,” Sustainability 4, no. 4 (2012), pp. 656–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These authors’ list of “decent living activities” closely mirrors the BDGs outlined here.

42 Biggs, Eloise M., Bruce, Eleanor, Boruff, Bryan, Duncan, John M. A., Horsley, Julia, Pauli, Natasha, McNeill, Kellie, et al. , “Sustainable Development and the Water–Energy–Food Nexus: A Perspective on Livelihoods,” Environmental Science & Policy 54 (December 2015), pp. 389–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.