Emigration and the Sea

1cdf1b18-ac15-400a-b9ee-13a42fa228e6Emigration and the Sea An Alternative History of Portugal and the Portuguese

Malyn Newitt

‘Nobody has previously attempted to distil 500 years of Portuguese diasporic history as Malyn Newitt has done here, not even in Portuguese. Eminently readable, and rich in detail and telling quotes, Newitt offers a fascinating and essential narrative.’ — Onésimo Almeida, Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University

Today Portuguese is the seventh most widely spoken language in the world and Brazil is a new economic powerhouse. Both phenomena result from the Portuguese ‘Discoveries’ of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Catholic missions that planted Portuguese communities in every continent. Some were part of the Portuguese empire but many survived independently under other rulers with their own Creole languages and indigenised Portuguese culture. In the 19th and 20th centuries these were joined by millions of economic migrants who established Portuguese settlements in Europe, North America, Venezuela and South Africa – and in less likely places, including Bermuda, Guyana and Hawaii.

Interwoven within this global history of the diaspora are stories of the Portuguese who left mainland Portugal and the islands, the lives of the Sephardic Jews, the African slaves imported into the Atlantic Islands and Brazil and the Goans who later spread along the imperial highways of Portugal and Britain. Much of Portugal’s contribution to science and the arts, as well as its influence in the modern world, can be attributed to the members of these widely scattered Portuguese communities, and these are given their due in Newitt’s engrossing volume.

An impressive piece of work. Written in a lucid, economical style, Newitt offers a thorough survey of the history of Portuguese emigration to Europe, the Americas, the Atlantic islands, Africa and Asia. His book has many virtues: clarity in tackling a complex and contentious topic, an impressive amount of research into printed sources, a mastery of statistics, and well-argued theses about big questions such as the much debated contrast between creative forces in Portugal’s scattered, overseas empire vs. stagnation and decadence in continental Portugal.’ — Douglas Wheeler, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of New Hampshire

Emigration and the Sea cements Malyn Newitt’s reputation as one of the leading scholars of Portugal’s history of globalisation, in Africa and beyond. It is a beautifully written and timely contribution to the understanding of Portugal’s diasporic history, grounded in decades of research and thought.’ — Toby Green, Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture, King’s College London

Lusofonia e novos mitos portugueses- XII CONLAB- XI

cplp-seminario

Verificamos no postal anterior que o campo de significação da “Lusofonia” se prestava a uma confluência de ojetivos “estratégicos” de vários autores portugueses em torno das questões da língua e do espaço. Alguns de defendem o que se poderá chamar “legado” ou “herança” dos portugueses, que produziram uma determinada “aculturação”. A língua seria um desses elementos, podendo verificar-se outros, de tipo “espirituais” mais difíceis de definir. Sem império, defende-se que esse legado se inscreve na tradição universalista europeia. Aqui radicam as visões neo-colonais. Língua e cultura irradiaram da península e, considera-se que mesmo assumindo diversas formações locais, se mantém características essencialmente semelhantes ao radical.

Argumentam os defensores desta visão, que participaram no seminário acima referenciado, que se realizou em dezembro de 1998, tendo as suas atas sido publicadas pelas edições Atena no ano seguinte (1999), que a experiência das comunidades portuguesas no Brasil, fundamentam e prospetivam essa relação previligiadas. Não cabe aqui desenvolver a complexa análise que envolve os vários participantes nesses seminário, que contam, entre outros de alguns dos principais atores e arquitetos do projeto da CPLP.  Salienta-se no entanto, nos vários debates e discussões travadas, que a questão da relação de Portugal com os antigos espaços imperiais se processa fundamentalmente através da organização CPLP, não emergindo a “Lusofonia”, nessa altura como campo semântico.

Estes debates demonstram a complexidade do problemas da Lusofonia. Sendo certo que nela se podem encontrar sonoridades das narrativas míticas sobre o encontro dos portugueses com os outros ( e note-se que nessa narrativa o outro ontológico, não tem existência antes do encontro, e não tem igualmente existência fora desse encontro), ele é certamente insuficiente para trabalhar os processo colonial e pós-colonial português.

Demonstra-se assim a sua desadequação, incoerência, inconsistência.

Assim sendo importa entender o modo de trabalhar este fenómeno. Se por um lado a estratégia da lusofonia de pode considerar como uma processo que emerge numa procura de ressiginificação dos destinos, quiçá, regressando às ligações do passado, mas sobretudo pragmaticamente voltadas para o presente e futuro, por outro lado não podemos deixar de reconhecer, que na praticas das narrativas discursivas o que era o projeto da CPLP, encontrou nesse termos um acolhimento significativo, ao ponto de nele praticamente indisscronizar.

Lusofonia e novos mitos portugueses – XII CONLAB X

lusofoniaVimos nos postal anterior a análise de Alfredo Margarido sobre o contexto de emergência do conceito de Lusofonia. A análise de Margarido, não se esgota nessa questão, e a ele havemos de regressar noutra altura. Acentuamos apenas o contexto em que o conceito emerge, já num contexto pós-colonial, afirmando a questão da língua como estratégia de projecção no mundo. Uma estratégia que se inspira na francofonia, mas que, como também salientamos não é clara nos seus objetivos, já que nela confluem diferentes perspectivas ao fenómeno português, mais propriamente da afirmação dos portugueses no mundo global.

Verificado que está o problema da descontextualização do uso do conceito lusofonia para analisar o processo colonial português, avançamos agora para a argumentação sobre a estratégia da lusofonia, onde como verificamos nos postais VI e VII desta série, se presta a confusão, importando clarificar as posições. A questão é saber se a lusofonia é um processo de continuidade dos mitos coloniais, ou pelo contrário resulta duma reformulação ideológica, permitindo a emergência da ideia de “comunidade” no sentido em que todos participam na sua formulação.

Essa é a questão que Filipe Pinto apresenta no seu livro “Estratégias de ou para a Lusofonia“, publicado em 2009 pela editora prefácio, onde se defende que mais do que uma questão cultural ou uma questão linguístico-literária a “Lusofonia” apresenta-se como um  modo de afirmação dum espaço geo-político num mundo global. Defende ainda que a CPLP deveria passar a chamar-se “Comunidade Lusófona”, que tendo por base a língua, deveria assumir a sua forma de horizontal de busca de interesses comuns, assumindo a diáspora de língua. É advoga, na sua conclusão, que essa comunidade de interesses deveria ultrapassar, para efeitos de admissão de novos membros, questão do uso da língua, para se centrar também dos interesses económicos e geo-políticos. Os seja propõe uma estratégia de integração num mundo bipolar.

Ora como temos vindo a a observar essa é já hoje uma realidade, onde para além da Guiné-equatorial, cuja adesão à CPLP ocorre em 2014, conta ainda com países observadores, a Turquia, As ilhas Maurícias, a Geórgia, o Japão, a Namíbia e o Senegal.

Regressando a questão do uso da ideia da Lusofonia no contexto da afirmação dos mitos portugueses, podemos verificar que nesta estratégia, há uma clara voz de enunciação (eurocentrica) que defende a afirmação da dialética da unidade na diversidade. Uma relação tensa que tem vindo a evoluir em função dos interesses geo-estratégicos de cada um dos participantes. Assim se por exemplo países como o Brasil, ou Angola não mostram grandes interesses no uso da plataforma CPLP como instrumentos de relação, prosseguindo as suas estratégias de afirmação nacional, também não é menos verdade que a sua pertença à organização lhes vai permitindo aproveitar as várias vantagens de negócios que vão surgindo.

Assim sendo, verificamos que a “Lusofonia” é hoje mais do que uma a estratégia da língua uma estratégia económica que deixou de estar centrada nos portugueses e em Portugal. Aliás, neste livro é feito um breve resumo do uso to termo “Lusofonia” em vários dicionários e prontuários, cujo uso parece ser integrado apenas durante a década de noventa, como um neo logismo associado o uso da língua portuguesa, que posteriormente vai significando a “estratégia de afirmação da língua”. Ainda segundo o autor, atribui a paternidade do termo a Fernando dos Santos Neves (pagina 55), extamente para formalizar a ideia de afirmação da língua e do espaço.

Regressando à nossa questão do uso do conceito de lusofonia como elemento aglutinador do processo colonial português, podemos considerar que é desadequado, incoerente e inconsistente. Ele deverá portanto apenas ser usado como instrumento de análise das relações de Portugal com o mundo no processo pós-colonial.

E aqui como veremos de seguida o processo pode ser confuso, por se misturar a vontade de afirmação neo-colonial , com base no controlo da língua, com a tal estratégia comum de uma comunidade de interesses. Alfredo Margarido já havia pressentido essa dificuldade no livro que citamos anteriormente afirma ” a criação da lusofonia, quer se trate da língua, quer do espaço,, não pode separar-se duma certa carga messiância, que procura assegurar os portugueses inquietos um futuro” (Margarido, 2001, 12).

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Lusofonia e novos mitos portugueses – XII CONLAB IX

mararido

 Vimos no postal anterior os momentos sucessivos de desenvolvimento duma narrativa sobre o processo colonial português. Verificamos que o conceito Lusofonia não é usado como elemento explicativo desse processo, emergindo apenas num momento posterior, pós-colonial.

Segundo Alfredo Margarido Portugal rompe com a sua ligação tradicional ao mundo atlântico, envolvendo-se em sangrentas guerras coloniais em África, permitindo o sangramento da sua população ativa para a Europa, e pela emrgencia dum pensamento nacional racista.  A língua portuguesa (que ainda não é a “lusofonia” embora por vezes por simplicidade esse vocábulo posse ser usado)  emerge então como o instrumento da narrativa ideológica dos portugueses para se recentrarem no espaço atlântico e olvidarem as relações conflituais com os povos africanos, que por razões de coesão interna assumiram a língua portuguesa como instrumento de comunicação.

Os novos países, passaram a ser denominados como países africanos de língua oficial portuguesa (os PALOP’s) , ou de “expressão portuguesa”. A expressão língua ou expressão não é aqui inocente. Assim para uns, mais “neo-colonial” a língua foi, desaparecido o processo de controlo territorial colonial, uma forma de manter alguma dominação sobre o outro (pelo controlo da língua), enquanto para outros a “expressão portuguesa” procuraria redesenhar as relações entre os diferentes povos através do reconhecimento da sua diversidade expressiva.

Assim, tal como o termo francofonia tinha emergido em França como expressão de representação duma narrativa sobre um espaço de influencia cultural, dado pelo uso da língua e por um processo de relacionamento bilateral previligiado, o conceito lusofonia vai procurar assumir essa representação num tempo em que, recorde-se, o próprio país acentuava a sua virada para a integração Europeia.

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Lusofonia e novos mitos portugueses – XII CONLAB -VIII

mararido

No postal anterior avançamos na análise da limitação do conceito lusofonia para a compreensão do processo colonial português. Apresentamos a argumentação de Alfredo Margarido sobre três momentos do pensamento colonial. O Espírito de Cruzada, a Missão Civilizadora e o Lusotropicalismo. Nestes três momentos que correspondem a processos de afirmação colonial dos portugueses, não se inclui o conceito de lusofonia.

O “Espírito de Cruzada” corresponde ao primeiro período de dominação colonial. Um período longo que se inicia no século XVI e se mantém até ao século XIX. Não cabe aqui detalhar o processo de dominação colonial português, que apresenta alguma complexidade e não se desenvolve de forma idêntica em todos os lugares. Por espírito de cruzada entendemos o processo de legitimação de domínio sobre o outros, feito através da guerra santa e a imposição da fé cristã. Nem todos os territórios nem todos o momentos serão totalmente explicados, pois o processo de dominação colonial é um fenómeno que emerge na sua dimensão mundial no século XVIII com o desenvolvimento das economias de plantação no novo mundo e com o trafico negreiro a ele associado.Grosso modo a legitimação da guerra e da conquista do território é feita em nome da envangelização.

A “Missão Civilizadora”, como elemento explicativos emerge no final do século XIX como legitimador do processo de dominação colonial. Agora assumido como uma missão, do homem branco, superior, de levar a civilização aos povos selvagens. Feito com base na antinomia selvagem/civilizado tão propagado pelo iluminismo, o processo colonial legitima-se por uma suposta superioridade do homem branco onde a pretexto de civilizar, legitima a violência.

Finalmente o “Lusotropicalismo”, que se fundamenta na teoria do sociólogo brasileiro Gilberto Freyre, emerge nos anos cinquenta e sessenta do século XX, como proposta de legitimação do colonialismos português, fortemente contestado pelos povos africanos e pela comunidade internacional a partir do final da guerra em 1945 e com as vagas de independências na Ásia em em África. Trata-se duma teoria que defende a suposta capacidade dos portugueses se miscigenaram com os outros povos, o que demonstra uma relação horizontal, de igualdade, contrária aos processos de dominação colonial e que teriam como resultado a criação de novas nações. O Brasil era um exemplo, tal como foram algumas comunidades crioulas, em Cabo Verde, em Moçambique e em Goa. O lusotropicalismo é ainda complementado com a teoria dos direitos históricos, que demonstra, segundo os seus defensores uma ligação duradoura no tempo.

Ora sendo estas a três “teorias” de legitimação do processo colonial, onde surge a Lusofonia. A Lusofonia emerge apenas após o período colonial. Para alguns como exemplo de uma proposta neo-colonial, para outros como um projeto  de inserção de Portugal no mundo, ou para ainda outros como uma forma de representação do mundo. Veremos cada um destes aspetos, mas desde já fica demonstrado o argumento de que o termo lusofonia, por anacronismo, não é útil para trabalhar as narrativas coloniais.

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Lusofonia e novos mitos portugueses – XII CONLAB VII

mararido Alfredo Margarido o os novos mitos 

Apresentamos no postal anterior os instrumentos de análise sobre o uso do conceito “Lusofonia” como elemento explicador da narrativa do processo colonial português. Argumentamos que é inadequado o seu uso como elemento explicativo desse processo em função da sua adequação, coerência a consistência. Notamos todavia que o conceito lusofonia se aproxima bastante do campo das teorias de legitimação  do colonialismo português.

Detalhamos agora essa questão. O primeiro argumento é o de que o termo Lusofonia é de origem recente, pós-colonial. Como tal, e este é o segundo argumento distingue-se enquanto narrativa sobre o mundo, das representações sobre um mundo eurocêntrico que as narrativas neo-coloniais transportam. E finalmente, como terceiro argumento mostra-se desadequado para explicar esse processo de dominação colonial, ainda que em alguns enunciados possa, também por erro, ser u«interiorizado como uma continuidade. Ou seja em síntese o conceito, como campo de representação, apresenta limites de extensão e de explicação que não permitem entender o fenómeno adequadamente, nem na sua dimensão histórica, nem na sua dimensão ideológica.

Alfredo Margarido no seu livros “A Lusofonia e os Lusófonos” publicado em 2001 pelas Edições Universitárias Lusófonas aborda a questão da evolução do pensamento colonial português. Um outro textos de Isabel Castro Henriques, com o título “Colonialismo e História” publicado em 2015, também é útili para compreender essa evolução.

Em síntese o autor efetua uma genealogia do pensamento colonial português, caracterizando-o em três momentos significativos: O espírito de cruzada, a missão civilizadora e o lusotropicalismo.

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Lusofonia e novos mitos portugueses – XII CONLAB -VI

mararido

Instrumentos de análise comunicacional da ideia de Lusofonia

No postal anterior enunciamos um conjunto de instrumentos de análise conceptual como proposta de trabalho sobre o ideograma e o morfema  “lusofonia” como um campo de associação que representa uma consciência sobre a organização de um conjunto de ideias em diferente níveis. Argumentamos que esse conceito é desadequado, incoerente e inconsistente para enunciar o processo colonial dos portugueses.

Desadequado porque não dá conta da sua relação com o contexto que procura descrever: uma ideia base que legitima a hegemonia dos portugueses sobre os outros, africanos.

Incoerente porque enuncia um discurso (apelando a uma intenção de partilha comunicativa dum universo ideográfico) que não se sustenta no processo de produção de ideologia colonial.

Inconsistente porque a articulação entre os diversos elementos da ideia de lusofonia não se relacionam na sua totalidade  com o processo de hegemonia colonial.

O campo semântico é no entanto muito próximo, pelo que é fácil que a confusão se instale. Vemos tentar esclarecer essas proximidades e diferenças.

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Lusofonia e novos mitos portugueses – CONLAB V

Alfredo Margarido, 2000. A Lusofonia e os Lusófonos: Novos Mitos Portugueses. Lisboa: Edições Universitárias Lusófonas. 89 pp.

 

A propósito do XII Conlab, já aqui tinha ficado a intenção de abordar a questão do mito da lusofonia. Uma questão que foi levantada numa das sessões por Paula de Meneses, a propósito das narrativas sobre a violência no grupo de trabalho 79.

Já no processo de debate e a propósito a violência no projeto colonial português, surgia, com alguma frequência, a referencia sobre a questão da lusofonia como uma narrativa colonial.

A narrativa colonial portuguesa foi indubitavelmente uma narrativa violenta, na medida em que se traduzia num discurso de legitimação do domínio sobre o outro e de desresponsabilização das ações de dominação dos colonizadores sobre os africanos.

A dúvida é se essa narrativa colonial pode ser considerada como “uma narrativa lusófona”. A questão que pretendemos argumentar é que o enunciado lusófono é desadequado, incoerente e pouco consistente como adjetivo da narrativa colonial portuguesa. Uma situação coloquial que lhe advém da sua pragamática, sintáse e semântica.

Um conceito exprime uma ideia. Nesta caso a ideia “lusofonia”. O vacábulo lusofonia ou lusófono, exprime, na sua raíz etimológica, a representação daqueles que falam português. Associa-se à ideia de fala ou discurso ao locus Luso, que por justaposição se agrega ao português. Deixando agora de lado a questão da associação do português aos lusitanos, uma questão que ganha relevância no século XVI, a propósito da narrrativa mitológia de Luís Vaz de Camões em ” Os Lusíadas”e que serve como ideia aglutinadora aos republicanos no final do século XIX, luso como enunciação remete para a forma da linguagem que é o português e imposição da língua foi indubitavelmente um instrumento de dominação colonial. Contudo a expressão “lusofonia” tem que ser trabalhada de forma adequada, pois como enunciação transporta uma carga de significações que importa entender.

Argumentamos que o uso da expressão lusofonia é desadequada para trabalhar sobre as narrativas do processo colonial português nas suas diferentes expressões territoriais, que a sua sintaxe permite verificar que é inconsistente e finalmente analisando a sua semântica verificamos que é incoerente. De seguida verificaremos cada uma destas três entradas metodológicas aplicadas ao campo conceptual da “lusofonia”.

Pensamos que usar as ferramentas de análise da comunicação é um instrumento  útil para entender os processos comunicativos que enunciam a representação do mundo e ajudar à sua regulação como forma de organizar a consciência crítica sobre o encadeamento dos enunciados.

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The Proposal for Sustainable Development Goals- V

Is Sustainable Development Feasible

Is sustainable development feasible? Can we elaborate sustainable development goals and carry them out in time? In this confusing and confused and distracted world, where the world is running very powerfully off course in many ways, climate change, the 6th great extinction, cities in danger, food supplies under threat, massive dislocations, widening inequalities of income, high youth unemployment, politics not working very well. Is it even conceivable that we can get on course? It’s not an empty question. It’s a very deep and real concern, and, some of the most important thinkers in the world have some expressed some very, very serious doubts. 3 authors have recently, all whom I tremendously admire, have in a way made me shutter in a way with their their pessimism. Jane Jacobs, who has passed away, was one of the worlds greatest urbanists. And champions of vibrant sustainable urban areas. In her last years of life, wrote a book called Dark Age Ahead. It was ooh, a troubling book to read from such a wonderful thinker who argued that we’re not making it right now and not only on the wrong track but that the tendencies continue to worsen. Communities are fraying public spirit disappearing. Higher education dysfunctional in what it’s really teaching bad science phony science that elevated and crowding out real science. Governments not responsive to real needs, but responsive to vested interests. A culture that is somehow distracting us from the central challenges that we face, all of the things we’ve seen and led Jane Jacobs what a marvelous and wonderful and influential thinker to this kind of very great pessimism. Who could rival the pessimism of the title of, of Martin Reese’s book. A great astronomer, Sir Martin published a book Our Final Hour, Will Humanity Survive the 21st Century? Well, the title tells it all, that this is a message, conditioned and saying yes of course there is a way out but how dangerous are circumstances. And the great ecologist the pioneer of the interconnectedness of global ecosystems, James Lovelock the inventor of the Gaea theory of the interconnections of the abiotic and biotic features of the Earth’s systems. Wrote in, in his recent book, The Revenge of Gaea, where he declared that we’ve already lost it, we’ve passed the planetary safety margins so far, that major parts of the world are doomed to disaster. Afterwards, he pulled back a bit and said maybe that is too pessimistic, too horrifying a thought. But I think we do make a mistake if we are glib, easygoing, saying that all of this is pretty straightforward. A small tweak here, a small change there and we’ll be on our way. Sustainable development is, simply speaking, the greatest challenge, the most complicated public policy challenge that humanity has ever faced. Climate change alone has that characteristic but add in these other challenges of a rapidly urbanizing world, of a great extinction process under way because of human domination of ecosystems, over extraction from oceans and land resources, the massive illegal trade that we talked about. These are science-based issues where there’s not enough public literacy worldwide in the scientific underpinnings. These are issues of tremendous uncertainty. Even the most refined models of climate are models of great uncertainty because there are many gaps in our understanding of how Earth systems work, and perhaps many intrinsic uncertainties in a perhaps chaotic non-linear underlying system. This is a multi-generational problem which oh, we’re just perhaps completely unequipped in tradition to think about. We have to think ahead many generations. We’re talking about parts of our economy like energy, transport, infrastructure. Food supply which go to the core of our economic life and they need major technological overhaul. There are powerful vested interests like big oil which I have referred to on many occasions which have hindered clarity and progress on implementation. There are long lead times in rebuilding our infrastructure because the life expectancy of the infrastructure of a power plant is a half a century, of our buildings, often a century or more. And we have very limited space left partly because we have, in a way, frittered away the last 20 years since the Rio Earth Summit. And one could argue we’ve been on notice for decades longer than that. We mustn’t give up hope. Partly because we have identified very specific ways through our backcasting and road mapping. Of which we’ve only touched the surface, but illustrated those two processes of how we can get from here to where we need to be. We have identified technologies that can decarbonize the energy system, and lead to tremendous energy efficiency. We have identified technologies that can economize tremendously on land, raise agricultural productivity, reduce the fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorous, and the kind of poisoning of the estuaries that they cause. We’ve shown how cities can plan ahead, and design infrastructure which makes for a much higher level of well being. In other words, these are opportunities within our grasp. Not pie in the sky, not fanciful science fiction of the 23rd century, but things that we know how to do where the costs are absolutely within reach. And in many cases such as wind power, for example, where the costs are already close to the alternatives of fossil fuels where we already have, as I’ve mentioned before with the term grid parody or near grid parody, with these renewable energy sources. So we can already see ways through the back casting and the road mapping, the identification of the pathways of how we could succeed in the sustainable development goals just as the world has made tremendous progress in the millennium development goals. I also believe that despite the cynicism, the darkness, the confusion, the miserable politics, in my own country and internationally on many of these issues, that we can make a breakthrough. Even though it looks as if the political systems are unresponsive, things can change. And the most important message that I would give is that ideas count. Ideas matter, and they can have an effect on public policy far beyond anything that can be imagined by the hard bit and cynics who say, that idea isn’t backed by the money. It’s not backed by the power, the influence, the insiders, the elites, so you don’t stand a chance. Because throughout history ideas have been trans-formative. And I think about some of the greatest movements in history of transformation of the last two centuries that have accompanied our journey of modern economic growth itself. First the end of slavery, which was a massive social movement. Perhaps the first of the social activist movements of it’s kind in modern history. In England in the home of the industrial revolution, led by William and by William Penn. The younger, the prime minister, who was also the classmate of Wilbur Force. And by other brave leaders, who took a campaign to end slavery that seemed completely, deeply embedded in the colonies of the British Empire. It took them more than a couple of decades, and there was a lot of cynicism, a lot of skepticism, a lot of dirty dealings, but in 1807 the British Empire abolished trade in slaves, and in 1833, abolished slavery in the British holdings, and ideas triumphed. It wasn’t economic interest. It was ideas and morality that in the end was the underlying force of change that led the way. We think about the struggle against colonial rule led by Gandhi and by many of his contemporaries in Africa and in Asia. And Gandhi was up against the British Empire. It seemed like an impossible struggle. And Gandhi also of course, invented and led the non-violent approach to social action and social change in a unique way. And one would’ve bet in 1910, or 1920, or 1930 that Gandhi would have been long forgotten by now and the British empire would have continued to rule over the subjects of India or of Africa. And of course, it is Gandhi’s leadership of ending the colonialism that we regard as the correct, moral answer for our age. And one that inspired the civil rights movement, the human rights movement and much beyond. And ideas played a role so powerfully that the interests were in the end completely overwhelmed. The human rights movement followed on. Eleanor Roosevelt in championing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we know that that wonderful document the moral charter of the United Nations does not exist in its full reality in the world we know that it is violated massively everyday. And that millions indeed billions of people live without the basic rights civil, political or the economic, social, and cultural rights that are theirs as human beings and reflected in the Universal Declaration. But we know that the Universal Declaration has changed the world and it has expanded the reach of human rights. It has expanded the recognition and cognizance of human rights, and those human rights ideas have empowered major initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals which have turned into real results on the ground, and so ideas, again, playing an enormous role. And those ideas of course inspired the civil rights movement and were at the 50th anniversary at the  half century mark of the civil rights era in the United States and Martin Luther King’s remarkable leadership. Again, nonviolent, inspired by Ghandi, empowered by notions of human rights. As President John Kennedy said about the civil rights movement that it raises issues as old as the scriptures and as clear as the United States constitution. It was a moral issue and ideas and morality paved the way for great breakthroughs, not finished by any means, but important breakthroughs lead by ideas. And the women’s right movement and gender equality which is playing such a magnificent and crucial role in enabling the world to get on a path of sustainable development is another idea of our time. It’s been hundreds of years in the making, but it’s had great advance in recent decades. Often, in the least likely places in the world, because of the most brave people. And that brings us to the ideas of our time. The idea that we could end extreme poverty, now an official idea of an official system institution like the World Bank. And soon I think that will be at the core of new set of sustainable development goals. And the idea of sustainable development more generally as a world commitment to a safer and more prosperous and more just planet. Now to get there in all of these ideas there has had to be an underpinning of ethics, and when we talk about moving to global sustainable development goals. We’re talking also about the need for a shared global ethics. And it is heartening that many of the world’s religious leaders coming together already two decades ago in the Parliament of World’s Religions. And then in many meetings since then, have declared that the world’s religions share a common ethical underpinning, which makes it possible, even in a highly diverse world to think about the concept of a shared ethics that could underpin a shared commitment like sustainable development goals. Among those shared ethics is the one that I have emphasized: primum non nocere. First do no harm. This is sometimes expressed as: Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you. The golden rule, or as it’s expressed sometimes in its positive way, do unto others which you would have them do onto you. That golden rule is the underpinning of all great religions. It is a measure of equality, of fairness, of process, of mutual responsibility. That can be an underpinning for a global, ethical effort that makes it possible for the world to take the ideas of sustainable development and to turn them into practice. Skeptics have said throughout the ages that ideas can’t win. But all of the examples that I’ve indicated have stressed the opposite. One of the darkest figures of modern history a mass killer in fact Joseph Stalin famously said in the 1930s when he was besieged by a French Diplomat to give more space for religious freedom for the Catholics in the Soviet Union. Stalin famously answered, the Pope? How many divisions has he got? And that was real politics of one of the most brutal practitioners of real politics in real history. But we know that Stalin and his system are gone. It was Pope John Paul II that played such a role in fact in the end of communism in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union and that made possible a rebirth of human rights in those regions. Stalin was given his answer. And another great action, half a century ago I think gives us a lot of practical example and inspiration today. And that was a quest of president John Kennedy in 1963. To make peace with the Soviet Union months after the world nearly came to nuclear annihilation in the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Kennedy succeeded in negotiating a peace treaty with the Soviet Union in the form of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty where both sides agreed to a major action to step back from the nuclear arms race. And more importantly to ease the tensions that have brought the two parties to the brink of nuclear war. And what is absolutely astounding for me and inspiring is that Kennedy used ideas, not power, but ideas to bring about this mutual accommodation and this advance of peace. And it’s worth listening to his words because thy can teach us today about how sustainable development can be achieved. President Kennedy gave a speech on June 10, 1963 which is called his Peace Speech. It’s a speech about values, human rights, and ideas. And the most important idea is the idea that humanity can solve its problems peacefully and can live together because what we have in common is so much more important than what divides us. Let me read you some of the message of Kennedy’s peace speech. And I quote, he says that no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Mans reason, and spirit, have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill, of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal. Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature, but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process, a way of solving problems. This is important. Sustainable development is a process, a way of solving problems. A way of solving problems peacefully and globally addressing our deep common needs using our science and technology, our know how, and our shared global ethics to get there. Kennedy was grappling with a divide between the United States and the Soviet Union, a divide of deep values, political systems, and nuclear arms pointed at each other. But his message was that because we have common interests, we can resolve our problems peacefully. And he had an absolutely magnificent way of describing those common interests that resonate today. He said, and I quote again. So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those difference can be resolved. And if we cannot end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal. Well, what a way to describe our fate on a crowded, shared planet. We are all breathing the same air. It’s now got 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. It is a threat to our well being, to our future survival. We all cherish our children’s futures, and we know what needs to be done. After Kennedy made that speech,he went on his final visit to Europe because he was assassinated soon afterward. Signed the Peace Treaty, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and few months later, he was gone. But when he visited Europe, one of his great stops was visiting his own family’s home country of Ireland. And he spoke magnificently in the Irish parliament. And he had words there that also are extremely important for us. He said to his Irish countrymen as it were, this is an extraordinary country. George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life. Other people, he said, see things and say, why? But I dream things that never were, and I say, why not? It is that quality of the Irish, Kennedy goes on, that remarkable combination of hope, confidence, and imagination that is needed more than every today. The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics, says Kennedy, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were, and ask why not. Kennedy got his peace treaty signed, he set the world on a path for stepping back from the nuclear brink, the partial nuclear test ban treaty was signed 5 years afterward which was part of his idea of the practical step-by-step process. We are going to need that kind of practical step-by-step process. But we’re going to need, as Kennedy said, to look beyond the skeptics and the cynics. They have every reason to point out our difficulties. But we’re going to need to look forward to what needs to be done and to find that pathway to achieve it. In Kennedy’s last speech to world leaders, in the United Nations, in the fall of 1963, just after the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed. He ended his speech with absolutely remarkable words, which must be our words today. And again, I quote, Kennedy telling the world leaders assembled at the general assembly. Archimedes, says Kennedy, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends, give me a place where I can stand and I shall move the world. My fellow inhabitants of this planet. Let us take our stand here in this assembly of nations and let us see if we, in our time can move the world to a just and lasting peace. Now it’s our turn to see if we can move the world to sustainable development.

The Proposal for Sustainable Development Goals- IV

Principles of Good Governance

As you know by now, I like to consider, sustainable development as having four major dimensions. There are the traditional three; economic development, social inclusion and environmental sustainability. But those three, require, all, in all cases, the underpinning of a fourth aspect and that is good governance. And so I’d like to put good governance alongside the first three as the total package that’s needed in order to achieve sustainable development. When we move to the sustainable development goals, good governance is going to play a central role in the achievement or the failure to achieve the sustainable development goals. So it behooves us to think clearly about what we really mean, by good governance. The first thing that I, I would emphasis is that governance is about the rules of behavior, especially in organizations, not only about our politics or our government, but about major organizations that are key actors in the success or failure of sustainable development. And that includes our companies. So, when I speak of good governance, I’m thinking about good governance of the public sector government, and good governance of the private sector, especially the large, multi-national corporations, so good corporate governance. It’s clear there are many, many kinds of governments around the world and many different rules of behavior, different constitutional uh,or sets of principles. And it would be futile and absolutely in any event unworkable to believe that there is one set of political rules for example that will dictate how the SPGs are to be implemented. The world’s governments in any event won’t have it that way. Nor uh,is it correct to think that there’s only one way or if there is that we would find it uniquely. Rather, we need a set of principles rather than a cookie cutter that says you must have elections on this date and it your Parliament or President or Prime Minister or, or or judiciary must be organized in the following way. That won’t fly. But what can work, I believe, is to emphasis certain principles of behavior for the public sector and the private sector. First is accountability. Governments and business need to be accountable for their actions. Businesses are in part accountable to markets, but they’re also accountable to the court of law and they need to be accountable to the court of public opinion as well. Governments are accountable to their citizens, in elections when they are democratically or democratically organized. Governments need to be accountable even in non democratic systems or systems that others would consider to be non democratic to the achieving of the objectives that they take on. So, by accountability, I mean not a specific set of election rules, though some are better than others. But rather the idea that government’s will adopt goals and they are responsible for following through and reporting, on being clear about the measures that are needed to achieve them. On public assessments of progress or failure of progress towards those goals and that should be true across all variety of political systems. That requires a second feature in my view also that transcends a specific pattern of voting or organization of the executive or the legislative branch of government. Or, similarly, corporate organization, and that is transparency. We, as citizens, we, as market participants, we, as human beings intent on achieving sustainable development Can only hold government and business accountable for their actions, if we can know what those actions are, know what the behaviors are. And that means that we have to resist secrecy. We have to resist the institutionalization of secrecy in the form of tax and secrecy havens around the world that allow politicians, political parties, governments, crooks to hide their money to hide their proceeds, to hide their behavior behind walls of secrecy. Even when they’re behavior has huge impacts On the success or failure of the globally desired objectives of saving the planet or ending poverty. So transparency is a core feature and governments of all different political systems have a responsibility in my view towards transparent behavior. Third is participation. The ability of citizens and of stakeholders, these of the business, to participate in decision making and here there are of course many different views about this and many different ways of participating. Elections are a kind of participation, but they must not be the only kind. The ability to participate through, public discourse. Through, public deliberations. Through hearings on regulation, are all extremely important. And similarly, businesses need to confront. Through institutional means and clear processes and rules, they’re stakeholders not only, the shareholders in a company, but also the workforce, also the suppliers, the consumers and good businesses have a multi-stakeholder approach. And in some countries like Germany where there’s a principle of co determination workers even when they’re not shareholders have a formal, legalized, right and responsibility for participation in corporate decision making. A fourth aspect of good governance that is part of accountability, I would say, but more specific is what’s called the polluter pays principle. And this is that all of us need to clean up after ourselves. When we are imposing costs on others not reflected in market prices. When companies pollute water ways, when they pollute the air. When any of us as individuals or as businesses put carbon dioxide into the air we need to bear that cost to internalize the externality as economists call it. But meaning in a more usable language that we need to reflect the full social costs of actions in our decision making. Consider a business, thats operating in a poor country and the poor country has very week environmental standards for example. Is it the quote,’ right of the business’ to pollute a local village even if it’s not against the law? Is it actually in so, some extremist views, I would say, the responsibility of the company to pollute that village because it’s not against the law and it’s the responsibility of the management to maximize the profit of the shareholders? Many of us would think that’s an outlandish view, but it’s actually a view that some free market purists mistakenly take, mistakenly in my view. Or would we say that it’s actually the responsibility of the business not to pollute the village even if it’s not illegal. Because there is a responsibility of, of polluters paying or bearing the social costs of what they do. It’s closely related to an, ancient and very important doctrine in Latin known as Primum non nocere. Primum non nocere in latin means, first do no harm. And a principle of good governance in my view is first do no harm. Even if the law, for whatever reason, allows you to impose costs on others It is a responsibility I would argue,not to do so because our higher responsibility is an ethical responsibility, First, do no harm. Don’t try to find every loophole or every escape valve that allows for pollution for imposing costs  for destroying other species, destroying habitat. Because it is allowed because a company can make money from it. Finally I would say good governance includes in a general sense a commitment to sustainable development. A government that says after the STPs are elaborated. We don’t care. That’s not our agenda. That’s just the United Nation’s agenda, is an example of bad governance, if such an event happens. Governments have a responsibility to the planetary needs. National governments have a responsibility to the planet. It’s not good enough in an interconnected world, it’s not feasible, it’s not viable in an int, interconnected world, for politicians to say, I’m locally elected, it’s not my responsibility to undertake measures that maybe benefit others, but not my own. I, my own constituents. And so good governance I would also argue is a responsibility towards a sense of universal commitment and universal participation to sustainable development. If one government or another says we’re the only way to organize things you have to follow our constitution, we’re lost, because that will not happen. But if these basic principles of accountability of commitment to sustainable development of transparency, of the polluter pay principle of participation, of Primum non nocere, first do no harm, can be universally adopted in some approximate form, we can make important headway of governments working far more effectively together, and businesses playing a responsible role in their position in the world system.

The Proposal for Sustainable Development Goals- III

Financing for Sustainable Development

The sustainable development goals, in order to be achieved, are going to require a lot of investment. A lot of new infrastructure is going to have to be built. A lot of new kinds of power plants are going to have to be constructed. A lot of healthcare outlays will be required. A lot of education outlays will be required. Like anything in building for the future, investing is at the core of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. And When investment is required that means mobilizing resources in order to be able to finance those investments. Who’s going to pay for the Sustainable Development Goals? How will they be achieved through effective financing? Well in the end we’re all going to pay in some sense because we have to pay for the goods and services that are part of our lives. We pay for them through our incomes, but we do it in one of two fundamentally different ways. One is we participate in markets as consumers and suppliers. Suppliers out to make profit. Consumers out to purchase goods and services. And in a market sector of our economy, of course it, it is the interaction of supply and demand, which both generates the economic activity and provides the motivation for financing. Businesses build factories because they anticipate that they’ll make profits from them. Those profits, to an important extent, will come by being able to sell goods and services to the public. The other way that we buy the things that we need is as citizens. Paying taxes so that governments can provide public services, whether it’s building roads or providing health care or public education or fire and police services or funding the national science foundations of our countries and the scientific research which underpins technological change. In this sense, one can say that sustainable development will be paid for by all of us one way or another. But tremendous fights, and sometimes very bitter fights ensue as to the proper balancing of financing between the market oriented profit-seeking investments of business driven by their sales of, of goods to consumers, and the financing that comes through the public sector. The free market philosophy says, let the markets do it. Government will waste the money or lose it or squander it in some way. Whereas advocates of public leadership say markets aren’t, taking on the investments in clean energy, and they don’t build the infrastructure, and they’re not providing health care for the poor. So we need a public approach. Of course, the truth is that these different kids of financing, public and private, and sometimes public-private partnerships are complimentary mechanisms to finance sustainable development objectives. Some things work very well through the private sector. Other things do not. At the core of our analytical understanding of these issues, it needs to be an analysis of where the right boundaries are. What are the most effective ways to allocate responsibility for financing between market-based, private sector financing and public financing? Well, we know that there are cases where the market has done brilliantly almost on its own. And I think the greatest example of this is the massive expansion of mobile telephony to all parts of the world. Here’s a great technological breakthrough. We all love our mobile phones. And in a short period of time, of, roughly 25 years, the number of mobile subscribers has increased from some tens of millions around 1990 to more than six billion subscribers today, including many of the world’s poorest people. This was not on the basis of a government program. This was on the basis of private providers looking for profit, making investments in base stations and other aspects of connectivity like fiber optic lines, and the consumers buying their phones and, and buying access to connectivity. So this is an example where markets have done it. Even though, of course, we should keep in mind that the underlying technologies that made this possible started with basic science, solid state physics, quantum mechanics, and then applied engineering, much of it of which was financed by the public sector originally and then taken up by the private sector. Now other kinds of activities in no way had the kind of dynamics of mobile phones. When it came to malaria control, when even markets plus subsidies were the preferred mode of organization for financing malaria control back more than a decade ago, the uptake was very, very small. When companies producing insecticide-treated bed nets were trying to market those bed nets to the public, they found that the poorest people absolutely were not consumers, were not customers for them, even though they needed those nets to stay alive. The fact of the matter is, they were so impoverished that they couldn’t afford them. And when it came to organizing the delivery of malaria control systems, community health workers, links to clinics, diagnostic services, outreach, availability and access to the right kinds of medicines, the private sector approach simply wasn’t delivering. Very, very poor people sick and dying of malaria were not customers. They were simply very poor people, and the systems did not emerge. Then came the global fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria. The President’s Malaria Initiative stepped up public financing. Through budgets, tax revenues being collected, either in the US and then used as international assistance, or in the malarious countries themselves where domestic budgets albeit limited because of the poverty of those countries, contributed to the fight against malaria. Then much more comprehensive measures could be introduced, but not as a profit-based activity, but as a provision of social services. Well, economics teaches us a lot about where the right boundaries are, and let me mention some of the reasons why the private approach which we’d love to be the universal one if it actually solved problems, doesn’t solve problems in particular and very important cases. First, for the poor. Markets, one can say, are designed to ignore the poor. The poor have no money or very little of it. They’re not good customers in many, many cases. And markets in that case when they feel you can’t make a profit from that, pass over the poor and the poor, if it’s a question of access to healthcare for example, can die as a consequence. And that’s why we discuss the concept of merit goods, that there are areas of our economic life: health, education and other areas where government should provide services whether people can pay for them or not because these are meritorious goods that for a number of reasons should be universally accessible. So, that’s one place where public financing is essential. Public financing is essential in areas where, for other reasons, it’s very hard to recoup the returns on an investment in a direct cash sense. Consider investing in basic science. That kind of knowledge is freely available.  Scientists need to publish their papers in, in journals that are read by everybody. The returns to science come in the broad improvement in society, in the uptake of that basic science, maybe by an inventor who then owns a patent. But the scientist doesn’t patent the basic forces of nature which the scientist is discovering or uncovering in her or his research. And so, basic science requires public financing because the profit motive by itself will not be sufficient. Fortunately many countries have recognized this, even for centuries, offering prizes or grants first from the kings and queens and princesses, now from our governments and voted by parliaments and congress, to agencies like the National Science Foundation, which support the basic science. And public finance we know to be very important for social insurance when people are left unemployed by shifts of global markets, when they succumb to other kinds of hardships that can’t be insured effectively in private markets. Government is there as a kind of social safety net. These are all reasons why public financing will be crucial for the Sustainable Development Goals. And, where for poor countries that don’t have a tax base, adequate to meet the SDGs in their own countries, international help from taxpayers from the high income countries will also play a vital role. Now there are many areas where the private sector is the natural way to finance advances. The big power plants that will be built will by and large be built by private companies in the future. But in order to give the right incentives, to have those investments, we know that we will need corrective pricing. For example a carbon tax, which shifts the investments of power generation companies to wind and solar power, as opposed to coal fired power plants for example. So even when the financing is within the private sector a proper regulatory framework and corrective measures, for example to put prices or taxes on social costs like pollution or carbon emissions, is very important to make sure that the private economy providing the financing is investing in the right areas, driven by market signals that are giving accurate indicators of overall social cost and social benefits. Now there’s been an ongoing debate, very emotional, I have to say, and very tense at some points, about one aspect of public finance. And that is when tax payers in one country help to provide public services in another country through official development assistance. Some have said this kind of aid as it’s called, ODA in the technical jargon, and aid in the day to day discussions and debates, is ineffective. There are harsh critics of foreign aid per se. There are others, and I’m among them, who say that that kind of tax payer financed approach where it’s tax payers in one country helping people in poor counties is vital and lifesaving and crucial for organizations like The Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria or PEPFAR or other international development efforts aimed at helping very poor people. This debate about ODA or aid has been running pretty strongly during the whole period of the Millennium Development Goals, because MDG 8, the eighth of the Millennium Development Goals calls for increased official development assistance in order to implement the MDGs. Now, how is this debate posed? Let me try to put the sides out there clearly. One part of the debate, I’m in that camp, says aid can be useful, indeed, aid is vital in certain circumstances. Then there are the critics. And the critics come in a variety of areas. One camp says aid is unnecessary, let markets do it. I’ve just discussed why markets might not reach a lot of people, but the market optimists say let the markets do it, what happened with mobile phones can happen with other things as well. A second camp of aid skeptics says aid’s wasted. It passes through too many government bureaucratic hands and that it’s inevitable that it’s going to be wasted. A third argument is that aid is absolutely debilitating, not just wasted, but that it leads to a kind of dependency mentality which is demeaning. It takes away dignity and it takes away motivation. It creates a culture of handouts. And some few say what do we care about poor people. What do we care about what’s happening abroad. Just leave us alone. That’s not the dominant view among the aid skeptics. Most say well, if aid could work we’d be all for it but intrinsically it doesn’t work. Well, these camps have been duking it out, I would say, for quite a while. And I’d like to give, of course a view of why I have been in the camp that says aid’s important in view of these very often legitimate positions taken by the aid skeptics. So let me try as best I can to explain my position vis-à-vis these critical views. First, I want to agree with aid skeptics. Much aid is wasted. No question about it. I can’t stand some of the categories called aid. When cash bills in shoe boxes are given over to local warlords because somehow they’re friends in some conflict in Iraq or Afghanistan or some other place and that that’s categorized as aid. And this is part of our problem in evaluation. What is counted as aid includes many different categories of things, some of which I would agree with the aid skeptics right from the start. No way that that’s going to work. Keep our hands and our taxpayer dollars away from that. My argument is somewhat different. My argument is that aid can work and that it is vital in certain circumstances. It’s especially vital when people are very poor and facing challenges, often life and death, Malaria, AIDS, safe child birth, safe water, sanitation, growing enough food to stay alive, that can not be met by markets. Because these are not consumers that are going to give a profit. Not right now. And they can’t be met by the meager budgets of the poor countries. And so they need help. And then the question is, is it possible to help effectively without the corruption, the stealing, the inefficiencies of the bureaucracies. And my argument is yes if it’s done thoughtfully. We need to design the aid delivery systems in an effective way. Let me refer to my favorite example of this, two organizations. One is The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, which I’ve discussed. The other is The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations. Both of them pool the aid from the richer countries, have an expert process of evaluating proposals for the use of the aid by recipient countries, and then monitor very closely whether that aid is effective. To my mind, that exemplifies the ways that aid can work. Pool the resources of many donors into a common pot so that the process is simplified, streamlined. Put it under careful scrutiny with expert review and with careful quantitative monitoring and evaluation. Check what’s being done. Don’t hand over that shoe box to a warlord, filled with cash. Rather, have a plan of action that a certain amount of money is going to be used to procure bed nets, anti-malaria medicines, diagnostics, emergency obstetrical equipment, and so forth. And then, monitor what happens afterwards by a close reading. The evidence in my view is quite strong; this kind of aid has worked. So, while there were huge skeptics ten years ago, The Global Fund and GAVI, in the case of the immunizations, have both delivered on their word. We’ve seen the results on the ground. There have been cases of corruption but because the system is closely monitored, because there are quantified targets, because there is follow-up even when there is money stolen, and there will be in any human system, it’s possible to stop, check, correct, and move forward. That kind of feed back system that is so essential. I believe we need more of those pooling mechanisms, more global funds in essence, for health, for education, for safe water and sanitation, for small holder farming, for access for all to low carbon energy sources, and to mechanisms to protect biodiversity. We have a global environment facility like that, that has been established under the Convention on Biological Diversity, a major step forward. Funding those global funds properly, managing them with rigor, professionalism, oversight, and therefore, efficacy is the hallmark of a successful official development assistance effort. The ideologues often say, it just doesn’t work. But all they’re doing, in my opinion, is lumping together the kinds of policies really doomed to fail with those that are compelling and likely to succeed, and blurring these differences, rather than clarifying them and saying let’s go in the direction in which success is very likely. Let me also say we need innovation in financing. We will need a lot more public-private partnerships, where private financing is linked also to public financing in a package, and to the right kinds of regulatory steps. We’ll need this to move to clean energy, to build safe infrastructure. We’ve had that kind of public-private partnership for technology development and for delivery of new technologies like anti-retroviral drugs, to fight AIDS. So the point is, official development assistance, to be effective, and public finance in general, to be effective, requires a serious process. Like anything we do. We need to be thinking, planning ahead, back casting and road mapping, monitoring, evaluating and updating our strategies. If we do this and if we provide an adequate level of public finance the Sustainable Development Goals are in a cost range of one to two percentage points of our national income for the kind of transformations needed. Maybe if the costs are on the high end, maybe two to three percentage points of our national income. They won’t break the bank. But they won’t happen on their own through market forces alone. A clear effective strategy of official financing of national budgets for national needs and of official development assistance for the poorest countries, in particular, will play a vital role in the success of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Proposal for Sustainable Development Goals- II

Goal-Based Development

The world’s governments have called for sustainable development goals and they are being negotiated in the United Nation’s general assembly. But does it really make a difference? Will a new set of goals somehow help the world to do what it hasn’t yet been able to do? To shift from a business as usual and increasingly dangerous path of economic development to a path of true, sustainable development. Well here, we can look at some evidence, and I think it is pretty powerful evidence. And that is to ask, what have the Millennium Development Goals meant for the world? The UN adopted, in September 2000 in the General Assembly, the Millennium Declaration including the Millennium Development Goals. And as we have talked about it at some length, those eight goals became the centerpiece of the development effort for poor countries around the world. Did they really make a difference? The answer seems to be yes. That there has been a marked acceleration of poverty reduction, disease control and increased access to schooling and infrastructure in the poorest countries of the world, and especially in Africa, as a result of the Millennium Development goals. They helped to organize a global effort. Why do goals matter? I think that the answer has many different aspects to it. First, goals really are critical for social mobilization. The world needs to be oriented in a direction, to fight poverty or to help achieve sustainable development. But if we don’t enunciate for ourselves that that’s important, it’s very hard in our very noisy, desperate, crowded, congested, overwhelmed world to mobilize a direction and a consistency of effort to achieve any of our common purposes. And so, stating the goals helps all over the world, for individuals and for organizations and for governments to say, yes we’ve agreed, that’s a good direction. There’s a second aspect that the MDG showed and that is peer pressure. When the MDGs were adopted by all governments, governments had to show we’re doing something. And even if they were not necessarily so inclined innately or deeply, to take on this effort, by being international goals they knew that progress was going to be reported, or the failure of progress, even worse, was going to be reported. And peer pressures came in where leaders at summit meetings, for example, or at the UN General Assembly, would say, how, how are you doing on the millennium development goals? What steps have you taken, what progress? I saw you didn’t make so much progress these past years. That kind of dynamic has been absolutely real. A third way that goals have mattered is in mobilizing what I’d like to call epistemic communities, or knowledge communities, to be little bit more prosaic about it. Epistemic communities are networks of expertise, knowledge and practice around challenges like growing food or fighting diseases or designing and implementing city plans. And when goals are set, those communities of knowledge and practice come together. I’ve watched how the goal to fight Malaria, for example, has helped to organize the world’s malariologists, that is, the scientists and practitioners who, as a career, and as a life calling, in many cases, have taken on the challenge of fighting malaria. By virtue of having that goal, that community rose up, said, we as a community of expertise and practice, need to do something about it. That’s extremely important because governments by themselves polit, politicians, elected officials certainly do not have the expertise that exists in these epistemic communities to guide action. And these knowledge communities can make critical recommendations of what actually to do. The MDGs mobilized epistemic communities in malaria control, in HIV AIDS, in safe health, in primary education, in access to water, in access to energy. How do I know? I watched it happen and I participated in some of it. When I was a director for, then UN secretary general Kofi Annan, we had the Millennium Projects under his auspices, which mobilized about 250 experts from around the world, of these various epistemic communities, to think through much, in much more detail, how the various millennium development goals could actually be achieved. And finally, goals not only mobilize knowledge networks, but they mobilize stakeholder networks as well. What’s a stakeholder network? By that I mean that if you’re fighting malaria in Ghana or in Tanzania or in Uganda, you need to get around the table community leaders, politicians, Ministry of Health, the scientific community, leading non-governmental organizations. Perhaps church groups that have a major presence and participation in the Public health sector, International organizations, Donor organizations, Foundations. It is a roundtable of constituents that needs to be pooled together. And that kind of multi-stakeholder process is essential for the complex challenges of sustainable development and of the fight against poverty, hunger, and disease, more specifically. That has happened by conscious design in area after area of the millennium development goals. And it is one of the clearest ways that the merest statement of goals, leads to improved outcomes. By bringing together these multi-stakeholder processes. I believe that to summarize all of this no one has ever put it better than President John F Kennedy. 50 years ago, in one of the greatest speeches of the modern presidency, which I will refer to shortly at somewhat greater length, because I think it is a, a, a model, also, for us. But in his famous Peace Speech in June 1963, President Kennedy had a word to say about setting goals, because he was interested, in that speech, in setting a goal of peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Kennedy said, by defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it. That’s the essence of the importance of goal setting; helping people to see the goals. And by making them more manageable and less remote. By spelling out how they can be achieved, people can be led to move towards it and as President Kennedy said on that occasion, to move irresistibly towards the goals. So, what have been the accomplishments of the Millennium Development goals and what have their, been their major weaknesses. Probably the biggest accomplishments have been in the area of public health. Remember that three out of the eight millennium development goals are about health: reducing child mortality, maternal mortality, and the control of the epidemic, communicable diseases. And in all of those cases, the MDGs have made a very big difference. Why were they so effective in those areas? First, MDGs four, five and six could be stated in terms of specific, quantifiable targets. Reduce under five mortality by two thirds. Reduce maternal mortality by three fourths. You can measure. You can count. You can assess. You can compare outcomes with targeted pathways. And so, the ability to state goals clearly is very, very important. Second, you could make those goals seem more manageable and less remote by saying, here’s how malaria can be fought. Not just out of good will but out of long lasting insecticide treated bed nets. Under the deployment of community health workers. The use of rapid diagnostic tests. The use of Artemis and in combination therapies. In other words. That panoply of technical innovations that underpin a practical path to success. Third, there were specific funding mechanisms attached. Most importantly was the arrival of the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, which was agreed in 2001, one year after the MDGs were adopted and put into motion in 2002. Pretty quick turnaround time. No doubt in my mind, my experience, I was there helping in that process, the MDGs made a very big difference to the birth of the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. And many individual countries, and I’m happy to say the United States the leader among them, also took on national efforts motivated by this new will to solve these problems. The U.S. adopted in 2003 the PEPFAR Program, which was the emergency program of response to AIDS, where the U.S. has put in billions and billions of dollars to the fight against AIDS in Africa. And in 2005, the United States adopted PMI, the President’s Malaria Initiative. Also, motivated by this new public health will to achieve the millennium development goals, and PMI has played a major role alongside the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, in reducing the malaria burden. Finally, the MDG succeeded in those areas because of monitoring, measurement, evaluation and feedback to program design. Now, the MDGs did not work as well in certain other areas. In areas like sanitation the MDGs are lagging behind. There hasn’t been a global fund for clean water and sanitation the same way as there emerged the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and malaria. And where the international funding was not elaborated and increased, where the goals were not made to seem more manageable and less remote, through specific detailed plans of action. Where the epistemic communities did not organize quite as well or where the political leaders were more neglectful, the MDGs tended to lag. Public health, that came very high on the agenda. Education, surprisingly, not quite as high and not as well financed and with not the same dramatic progress as in public health. Agriculture, even a bit further behind, despite some nice words about fighting hunger while progress has been real, the mobilization of global efforts have not been as effective and the real change of, of policies and politics have not been as dramatic as public health. What this shows is that there’s nothing inevitability, nothing inevitable I should say, about stating a goal and having the good results achieved. Stating a goal, helping to make it seem more manageable and less remote, is the first step implementing a plan of action. Taking the feedback is the real, long-term, importance,  of what goals can achieve. And that kind of feedback mechanism is shown here in this very, very simple flow chat. The point that I want to make in this flow chart is that one starts with a set of goals and then with a way to address those goals. Next is to design policies that can implement that program of action. Next is that when the outcomes occur, to measure the feedback, and from the feedback to rethink, adapt the strategies in a continuing loop of policy, feedback, all under the, pressures and the motivation of a set of goals and a set of time tables. Now, when we turn to sustainable development, our agenda is even harder than the millennium development goals. And I can tell you the millennium development goals of fighting extreme poverty is pretty tough and very hard to get results in certain areas. But sustainable development goals will include not only the continuation of the fight against extreme poverty, but also the integration of that goal with several others, including environmental sustainability and social inclusion. So, we’ve got an even more complex set of challenges. And there are at least two aspects of sustainable development that make the problems yet more complicated. First, the natural time horizon for results is longer term. Decarbonizing the energy system is going to be a 30 to 40 year effort, even if we’re moving as fast as we can. Making our cities more resilient is a decade or more. Remember that our roads, our buildings, our power plants have a lifetime of of many decades. We’re often talking about power generation facilities that have a lifespan of 40 or 50 years. And therefore, there’s tremendous inertia in this system and there’s also, therefore, a tremendous need to be able to look forward, not to two years or five years but to 20 years or to 30 years. In setting the kinds of frameworks to actually achieve those ten sustainable development goals or their equivalent. There are two specific tools that will be important for translating SDGs into reality. The first of those tools is called back casting. I’d mentioned it before. Rather than forecasting what’s going to happen in 2040 or 2050, one backcasts to say, in 2050 we need to be in such and such location. We need to have such and such level of greenhouse gas emissions. Now, instead of trying to predict or forecast, we’ll start at our target and then move backwards to say how are we going to get to that target? How are we going to cut emissions by half by 2050? Back casting is quite different from prediction. If you look in the news papers, listen to a stock analyst. They’re, they’re guessing about the future. There not designing the future. Backcasting, even though it sounds backward, is about designing the future. Because it is starting at a future date and then working backward from the future date to the present to say, how can we get from here to there? It is setting that path. The second tool, closely related, is road mapping. Road mapping says, okay, we know where we want to be, we know where we start today. We can see the kind of trajectory. What does that terrain really look like? What are our big challenges? What are our technological barriers to overcome? If we are on a hike, we may have to cross a mountain range. If we are on a pathway of sustainable development, we may have to cross a technological mountain range. We have to get over the hump of intermittency of power. We have to get to power storage, we have to overcome the high costs of certain alternative energy possibilities. We have to pass the mountain range of a grid that connects North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, or connects the Dakotas and the Eastern seaboard of the United States, or the Mojave Desert and the population centers of California. In other words, we also need a road map for passing through difficult terrain. Now, this may seem to some people, especially to those steeped in free market economics, as a kind of planning that is impossible and is contrary to the market process. That is not correct. Why? Because in high technology industries, there is, as a norm of behavior in sophisticated industries, exactly that kind of road mapping taking place. And the most successful of all should be kept clearly in mind, it’s a great example and a great motivator for us. And that is the road mapping of Moore’s law. Remember Moore’s law because Moore’s law has created our world today. It is the information technology principle that the capacity of integrated circuits is doubling roughly every 18 to 24 months. Gordon Moore, who back in the 1960s when he enunciated Moore’s Law, was the CEO of Intel, the leading company in integrated circuits. And he noted at the time that for the past ten years or so, the number of transistors that could be packed into an integrated circuit was doubling roughly every eighteen months to two years. And that was doubling the capacity of, processing, the ability to store and, and, soon to transmit data. And cutting by half the cost of doing that because of the doubling of the capacity, in essence. And Moore, back in 1965 when he enunciated Moore’s Law said, there’s some headway ahead. This could go on another decade or two decades, more doubling, doubling, doubling. And of course that means a tremendous increase of the information capacity of central processing units or storage, or ability to transmit enormous volumes of information. All of that has transformed our world. The powerful point is that Moore’s law has continued roughly for half a century since Gordon Moore first enunciated it, and we’ve had roughly a billion fold improvement in the capacity to process, store and transmit information. And therefore, we live in a world of inter connectedness of information that was unimaginable at the time that Gordon Moore first enunciated this principle. But how was it suc, achieved? How did the industry succeed? Well, part of it was individual brilliance and genius of engineers and scientists. Part of it was the competition in the industry, but part of it was industry-wide road mapping. That’s the conclusion that I wanted to emphasize.  And one of the aspects of that road mapping is a formal process called the international technology road map for semiconductors, where leaders in the industry got together and said, what are our mountain ranges to cross in the future in getting the continuation of Moore’s law. How do we push ahead another two decades of this doubling of capacity of the integrated circuitry every two years? They road mapped the steps that were needed. They did it brilliantly and we know that they did it successfully. And that has transformed our world, but it also should tell the skeptics about looking ahead. It is possible to look ahead, not to know the future, but to plan on how to overcome certain obstacles to think ahead. To be prepared for the problems that will come and to take measures so that one can pass through the mountain passes and get to the next range, the next difficulty, because we know where we want to go in 20, 30 or 40 years. The final point of sustainable development that will be absolutely crucial is that like the millennium development goals, the SDGs will be a multi-stakeholder process. We need engagement across the public sector, the private sector, civil society, individuals and their own motivation, scientists and engineers in academia. In research centers, foundations, this is all a hands on, this is an all hands on effort this is the kind of challenge where humanity from every part of society is going to have to get involved. It may seem fanciful. We don’t want those planetary boundaries staring us in the face. We don’t want these risks coming so intensively and so rapidly, but that’s where we are. And that’s why the speed of action is so important. And why the multi-stakeholder approach, that mobilizes all parts of society, will be so vital. That’s a big round table. It’s a lot of discussion, it’s a lot of harmonization of different approaches. Some for profit, some not for profit. Some basic science, some very applied decision making. Some on the ground in communities all over the world, some training and educating the leaders of the future. But all of these interconnected parts of the global social network will need to be brought together in effective problem solving, decision making and implementation of the sustainable development goals.

The Proposal for Sustainable Development Goals- I

The Sustainable Development Goals

What to do. The world has a major problem and that is that we are way off course in our goal in achieving sustainable development. We have had a 40 year run so far. Dating back to the first global conference on the environment and development in Stockholm in 1972, and the simultaneous pubication of limits to growth which correctly pointed out for the world that the challenge of combining economic development and environmental sustainability was still an unmet challenge and in unmet conundrum how can this be done. 20 years later, the world met at the Rio World Summit and adopted 3 major treaties that we have discussed on climate change and biological diversity and on combating desertification.

20 years later in June 2012, the world met for a third time on these great issues. Leaders came together from all over the world and took stock and what they realized was a very unsettling and powerful set of truths. On the one side, all of the evidence pointed out that the diagnosis first made back in 1972 was fundamentally correct that the problem of combining economic growth with social inclusion, and especially environmental sustainability, was a challenge that was so far, unaddressed and getting worse. Second, they concluded that the major actions which were hailed at the time as historic breakthroughs, at the Earth Summit in 1992, had not succeeded.

512I’ve already noted on several occasions the Three Fs on the report card given by Nature Magazine to the Earth Summit. The F for climate change, the F on biological diversity, the F given on the treaty on combating desertification, not one of them delivered as promised. So with that in mind, world leaders at the Rio+20 Summit in June 2012 resolved once again to join this battle and that’s where we are today. What are we to do with the world that is going in one direction with very strong momentum. Some good, of economic growth spreading to many places of poverty being reduced in many parts of the world, but a lot that is seriously awry, and getting more and more dangerous. High inequality, some parts of the world still trapped in extreme poverty and cycles of violence and poverty and hunger and disease. And with the growing crisis, of the global environment, whether it is climate change, the sixth major extinction of species on the planet, the dangers to our cities of pollution, overcrowding, lack of infrastructure, we now need as the leaders realized at Rio Plus 20, a new and dramatic approach. Well what did they put on offer, how should the world respond? The first thing the world leaders said is we absolutely must not give up and quoting from the final outcome document of the conference called The Future We Want, the world leaders said, and I quote, we commit ourselves to re-invigorating the global partnership for sustainable development that we launched in Rio In 1992. We recognize the need to impart new momentum to our cooperative pursuit of sustainable development, and commit to work together with major groups, and other stake holders such as business, NGO’s, Universities in addressing the implementation gaps. They also noted something very important and that is that the most urgent task of all in all of the interconnected challenges of sustainable development, of economic development, of social inclusion, of environmental sustainability is the task that the world did take on in the year 2000. When world leaders adopted the millenium development goals, and that is the fight against extreme poverty. We’ve talked a lot about extreme poverty. We should recall, why it is the highest priority, and the most urgent priority and that’s because it is a matter of life and death in the absolute present conditions. One could even define extreme poverty as a condition in which survival is a daily struggle. Remember the people living in extreme poverty, are wondering when their next meal will come from, whether the next drink of water will carry pathogens that could threaten their lives, whether the next bite of a mosquito might transmit malaria to them. In other words, the challenges of extreme poverty are here and now and life and death. And since 7 million children are dying every year before their fifth birthday of conditions that are completely preventable or if not completely preventable essentially fully treatable. We have this crisis, the opportunity, the moral challenge in front of us. And so when the world leaders met at Rio Plus 20, they also noted right at the beginning of the future we want, something that I regard as completely correct. They said, and I quote, Eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. Unless we tackle the end of extreme poverty, we are not going to complete the challenges on the other aspects of sustainable development either. Quote, In this regard, we are committed to free humanity from poverty, hunger as a matter of urgency. We reaffirm our commitment to make every effort to accelerate the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals including millennium development goals by 2015. So in 2012, the world leaders said we have 3 years left of the 15 year period on the millennium development goals. Let’s use those to accelerate progress. Let’s remember that the millennium development goals called for cutting extreme poverty by half, something already accomplished if we take the developing countries as a group, but not accomplished country by country or region by region. And so a lot of work left to do to 2015. But then continuing on after 2015 to complete the job, now here’s where I think the leaders made the single most important step at Rio Plus 20. They said, and I quote, we recognize that the development of goals could also be useful for pursuing focused and coherent action on sustainable development. In other words, they looked at the Millennium Development Goals and said, that was pretty good. That helped to mobilize world efforts on fighting poverty. We need a similar approach on mobilizing world efforts on sustainable development in all of its complexity. And I quote, we further recognize the importance and utility of a set of sustainable development goals, or SDGs. These goals should address and incorporate in a balanced way, all 3 dimensions of sustainable development and their inner linkages. I would summarizeit as saying that the world leaders agreed to make the transition from MDGs to SDGs, from millenium development goals, to sustainable development goals. Taking a leaf from the millenium development goals, the world leaders also made some points about what these new SDG’s should be. And I quote again from the future we want, we also underscore that SDG’s should be action oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national politics and priorities. We also recognize that the goals should address and be focused on priority areas for the achievement of sustainable development, being guided by this outcome document, The Future We Want. Governments should drive implementation with the active involvement of all relevant stakeholders as appropriate. Well here you have it, what I think is a potentially historic decision to move to a new global agenda with a set of universally applicable, sustainable development goals and to have those goals help guide the world, rich and poor countries alike in a new era, giving new impetus, new power, new social mobilization, new resources, new political will to a challenge that’s been more than 40 years somehow in our awareness, 20 years under international law, but to date not successfully causing a change of direction for the world. Now, in the outcome of Rio Plus 20 and the call for putting sustainable development at the very core of the international development agenda U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon honoured me and gave me a, a good challenge also which was to help create a global network of problem solving. And I’d mentioned before this new sustainable development solutions network, the idea that we need not only new goals, new political motivation and will, but we need an era of intensive problem solving, of the kind that we’ve been discussing in each of the areas of health and education and sustainable agriculture, sustainable cities, sustainable energy systems, conservation of biological diversity, and all the rest. The SDSN guided by its leadership counsel took on a challenge to advise the United Nations and the Secretary General in particular on what the new sustainable development goals might be, because these will be negotiated to the year 2015, and then be operational beyond. And so the Sustainable Development Solutions Network proposed a concise set of 10 goals that could be a framework of action. These are an illustration of course, because the governments’ meeting in the United Nations, in the general assembly, will ultimately be the ones to choose the goals. But I want to discuss what the STSN proposed, because I think that it shows the power, the range, and the kind of orientation that the SDGs should have and can have to guide us after the year 2015. So the SDSN group said, 10 goals maximum and I think that that’s a reasonable number. It’s pretty hard to get all of the objectives of economical development, social inclusion, environmental sustainability and good governance within a list of 10 goals, but to have more than that would take away the concise power of a limited clear easily understandable set of universal goals. So here are the 10 proposed by the sustainable development solutions network.

Goal number 1 – End extreme poverty including hunger and the more specific definition is End Extreme Poverty in all its forms, in other words, complete the Millennium Development Goals including hunger, child stunting, malnutrition and food and security and give special support to highly vulnerable countries. The basic idea of goal number 1, and it’s goal number 1 not by accident, but because it is the highest priority, is to complete the task started by the Millennium Development Goals of ending extreme poverty. Now, one thing to keep in mind: the World Bank, in its leadership group voted in 2013 to take on this specific objective for the bank, to contribute to ending extreme poverty by the year 2030. So the idea that completing the millennium development goals in the sense of ending extreme poverty in all its forms – income, hunger, disease, lack of access to basic infrastructure can be accomplished by our generation is becoming official policy.

SDG number 2Achieve development within planetary boundaries. Now, this ought to make sense by now. It says in the subtitle: All countries have a right to development that respects planetary boundaries, ensures sustainable production in consumption patterns, and helps to stabilize the global population by mid-century. So, the idea is to give support to continued economic growth, especially in the developing countries, to give support to convergence, that developing countries and developed countries should converge in living standards by the developing countries being able to raise their living standards, but for this to happen within the planetary boundaries. And we know through all of our discussions that that means changes in the way that we use energy, produce energy, changes in the way that food is grown, changes in the way that cities are designed and built and so forth.

SDG number 3Ensure effective learning for all children and for youth for their lives and their livelihoods. So this is the education goal. It is not stated simply as children in school, though that’s important. It’s stated as effective learning, so that children are imparted with the skills that they need to be productive, to be fulfilled in their lives to be good citizens, and to be able to find decent jobs. We know that as technology is changing, the pathways to decent work also require decent skills and good education. And SDG3, as recommended by the sustainable development solutions network, puts a focus on that.

SDG 4Achieve gender equality, social inclusion, and human rights for all. The point is clear. We know that sustainable development rests on one core dimension of justice, fairness, social inclusion, and social mobility and we’ve seen that gender discrimination, discrimination against minority groups, discrimination against indigenous populations are huge barriers to full participation in economic life and to a life satisfaction that is attainable if we honor human rights, if we live up to the universal declaration of human rights.

SDG Number 5 – Again as recommended by this sustainable development solutions network achieve health and wellbeing at all ages. So the subtitle of this is to achieve universal health coverage at every stage of life with particular emphasis on primary health services including reproductive health to ensure that all people receive quality health services without suffering financial hardship. All countries will also promote policies to help individuals to make healthy and sustainable decisions regarding diet, physical activity, and other individual or social dimensions of health. We saw that it is possible to reduce child mortality dramatically, to reduce maternal mortality dramatically, to raise life expectancy, to control many diseases at very, very low cost.

SDG Number 6Improve agricultural systems and raise rural productivity and in the more elaborate statement, it says improve farming practices, rural infrastructure, and access to resources for food production to increase the productivity of agriculture, livestock and fisheries, raise small holder income, reduce environmental impacts,  promote rural prosperity, and ensure resilience to climate change. We saw the challenges facing small holder farmers, we’ve seen the problems of depletion of fresh water, depletion of fisheries, the impact of climate change. The need to create new technology based, and information based systems for small holder farmers to help raise the most impoverished of these families out of poverty, and to ensure that farm systems are resilient to the changes that are coming, and more productive. So SDG 6 recognizes the centrality of sustainable agriculture and as part of that, the sustainable, sustainability of the food supplies.

SDG 7 – Empower inclusive, productive, and resilient cities.With the longer statement to make all cities socially inclusive, economically productive, environmentally sustainable, secure and resilient to climate change and other risks. Develop participatory accountable and effective city governance to support rapid and equitable urban transformation. We’ve talked a lot about the urban challenge and we have seen using the illustration of New York City how cities can plan in detail for their sustainability on many dimensions and be recommended as SDG 7 calls on cities all over the world to take on this challenge.

SDG 8 – Curb human-induced climate change and ensure sustainable energy. Clear. And the longer statement of this goal is to curb greenhouse gas emissions from energy industry agriculture, the built environment, and land use change to ensure a peak of global CO2 emissions by 2020 and to head off the rapidly growing dangers of climate change to promote sustainable energy for all. We know that we need to cut approximately by half, world emissions by 2050 even as the world economy grows perhaps threefold between now and then. This means the decarbonization of the energy system while at the same time, ensuring that electricity and modern energy services are available for all. A huge challenge, it can be done, but it will require much faster action than we have been taking to date.

Goal Number 9Secure ecosystem services and biodiversity and ensure good management of water and other natural resources with the text saying that biodiversity, marine and terrestrial ecosystems of local, regional, and global significance should be inventoried, in other words, measured, managed, and monitored to ensure the continuation of resilient and adaptive life support systems and to support sustainable development. Water and other natural resources are managed sustainably and transparently to support inclusive economic and human development, in other words biodiversity. Maintaining ecosystem services, maintaining the biodiversity that is vital for the functioning of eco systems.

And Goal Number 10Transform Governance for Sustainable Development. The public sector, business and other stake holders should commit to good governance including transparency, accountability, access to information, participation, an end to tax and secrecy havens and efforts to stamp out corruption. The international rules governing international finance, trade, corporate reporting, technology, and intellectual property should be made consistent with achieving the sustainable development goals. The financing of poverty reduction and global public goods including efforts to head off climate change should be strengthened based on a graduated sets of global rights and responsibilities. Bottom line, 10 goals to orient the world in clear, specific ways, measurable ways, concise and understandable ways, so that the world can make the shift from our business as usual and increasingly dangerous course, to a trajectory of sustainably development for all. These are the recommendations of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It’s up to the world’s gov?ernments, following the mandate given at the Rio Plus20 Summit, to choose the sustainable development goals and set a sustainable development agenda for the post 2015 period, to make the transition from MDGs to SDGs. Can these SDGs be achieved? Can this huge effort succeed? Let’s take a look.

Biodiversity V

International Dynamics

The world’s nations realizing how much danger there is to global biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, have taken at least some steps to try to pull back from the sixth great extinction.1351

Some are indirect, for example, riding on the climate control effort, as feeble as it is, through red plus the initiative to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. There have been treaties of course limiting some kinds of trans-boundary pollutants that, that threaten the oceans. There have been agreements of some sort, though often quite weak, on global fisheries. In addition to those, there have been at, at least two direct important attempts to focus on biodiversity through direct international treaties. The most important of these is the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity[1]. Whose core purpose is to slow, to stop, to reverse the loss of biodiversity. The second is CITES[2], a treaty that predates the CBD, or the convention of biological diversity by a couple of decades to try to restrict trade in endangered species.

1352Both have experienced ups and downs. It’s important for us to have a look at what’s being accomplished, what isn’t to understand what we’re going to have to do.  think the most important point to emphasize time and again, is that the pressures of the global economy are so strong that even when treaties or regulations are put in place, vested interest often give a powerful counter force to these measures.

And control mechanisms are often at the mercy of illegal activities, at bribery, at corruption of other limits of enforcement. So the weight and the force, and the momentum of the world economy is often so powerful that it just runs roughshod over attempts at regulation. Well CBD, the Convention on Biological Diversity, is at least a valiant attempt to try to get under control, the human threat to biological diversity. It is one of the three great multi-lateral, environmental agreements MEA has reached at the Real Earth Summit in 1992. You’ll recall that the other two are the UN Framework Convention on climate change, and the UN Convention to combat the desertification. CBD is the third of the three. And I would say that it has had a rather unhappy history. It’s accomplished a bit, but it has not accomplished at all its core purpose of heading off the massive loss of biodiversity.

1353So what is the CBD, the Convention on Biological Diversity? It, it says, and I’m quoting from the preamble, that affirming that the conservation of biological diversity is a common concern of humankind. It put, as the core of the convention. And I quote, the objectives of this convention to be pursued in accordance with its relevant provisions  are the conservation of biological diversity. The sustainable use of its components and the fair, and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. Nothing wrong with fair and equitable sharing. But what was thought about at the time in 1992 was an incredible bonanza that was expected at that point in what was called bioprospecting.

That scientists would enter the world’s forest regions and one after another would identify new blockbuster drugs that would not only be of profound value in the, in and of themselves but a profound income stream. And the question was how to make sure that the host countries rather than say the pharmaceutical companies would, would get that. It’s not completely fanciful by any means, that idea. Nature does have in its store houses still to be discovered chemical compounds of profound benefit. One of the greatest that I see in my everyday work is a, an herbal ancient remedy for fever in China. The wormwood plant called in Chinese [Xing-kuah-Soo] which became the source of the modern molecule artemisinin used to fight malaria. So nature offers wonderful products, but a lot of the driver in 1992 and a lot of the mishaps with the convention on biological diversity. Since then came from the notion that we should be focusing our efforts on who’s going to get rich out of bioprospecting rather than how we should control human activity in order to prevent a collapse of ecosystems and biodiversity for our much deeper, longer term well-being.

1354The treaty has accomplished a certain bit but it fell far short of what it should be doing. And one of the main reasons for that is the disgraceful behavior of the government of the United States. I of my own country. Already during the negotiations of the treaty, even though US scientists and some politicians were leading movers of the treaty negotiation itself. The right wing in the United States started to lobby against the treaty. And by the time the treaty was finalized for the Rio Earth summit, President George Bush Sr. in 1992 decided on the basis of members of his own party, not to sign the treaty. The next year President Bill Clinton came to office, signed the treaty, and submitted it for senate ratification which in the United States system requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The senate committee looking at this treaty gave it its approval. But the senate never ratified the treaty then, and up until today. What happened is that, so called free marketeers said, why should we our activities?

Why should we agree to equitable and fair sharing of biological products our, its our drug companies, let them go make a profit. Isn’t this going to call into risk, they said, intellectual property of the pharmaceutical industry? One suspects that powerful industrial lobbies were having their say at the time. And then more and more senators, especially from Western states in the US where there are a lot of federal lands that private developers crave. Give us those lands so we can mine on them, so we can create ranches and so we can drill for oil or hydrofrack for Shell gas and so forth, said this treaty is going to be a menace to our property rights. It was a startling the kind of free market sentiment that arose that is so misguided because markets are to serve human purposes. But when markets, don’t take into account the profound externalities of individual behavior, such as the loss of biological diversity, or driving species to extinction, free markets are not our friend.

1355They become the enemy of human well-being, the antagonist of human well-being. And an ideology that says, leave me alone, I have perfect right to destroy species is obviously an ideology that can create havoc. And it is as odd as it sounds, an ideology of tremendous political and economic force in the United States and in other parts of the world. Here’s what senator at the time from Montana said about the treaty. US environmental laws are currently encroaching on our property rights. Provisions like the endangered species act and wetlands laws are dictating what private landowners can and can not do with their own land. This treaty, in other words, the Convention on Biological Diversity could give a panel outside the United States the right to dictate what our environmental laws should say. That is wrong. He and his colleagues prevailed. The treaty was never ratified and the US while an observer to the treaty has been conspicuous by its absence of responsibility. Of providing required and adequate financing under the treaty, and of taking the steps as a signatory in enforcing the treaty. CBD is hardly known to the United States a, as a result. I, I don’t think people of the street have the slightest idea of what the convention on biological diversity is. And when the convention signatories signed back in 2002, a commitment. A pledge to reverse the loss of bio-diversity to slow it and reverse it by the year 2010. Making a global goal to get the loss of biological diversity under control. It’s fair to say that that global goal had, I don’t know if it’s fair to say, no impact at all. I, but I think it’s probably right to say no discernible impact in actually slowing the loss of biodiversity. Well, those three multilateral environmental agreements were reviewed 20 years later at the Rio+20 Summit. And when the world went off to Rio in June, 2012, to review progress that had been made, or the lack of progress.

Nature Magazine, one of the two great English language scientific journals weeklies in, in the world, gave an in-depth analysis of what had happened under the various treaties. And they gave a report card, and you’re looking at the report card, that nature magazine gave on the convention on biological diversity. And you see main assignment. Reduce the rate of biodiversity loss. Grade an F, total failure. This treaty has not slowed the loss of biodiversity. Other assignments. Develop targets, a D. Protect ecosystems a C. We’ll look at why at least there was a passing grade for that though not a very high one. On and on, recognize indigenous rights, provide funding. A D, for recognizing indigenous rights, something we’ve already seen, indigenous communities the world over continue to face massive discrimination. And lack of recognition of their rights. Financing to offset the loss of biodiversity a solid F. The one high grade that was given was creating a regulatory framework around genetically ma, modified organisms. Whether that serves the human purpose, or chokes off the benefits that advance to genetics might give for seed breeding, for example, remains to be seen. The only other passing grade, decent grade of, it’s not even decent, but of, of a C given on that report card was of protecting areas. One of the provisions in the convention on biological diversity was to set aside protected zones and this graph shows you  the cumulative protected areas in the world. National parks and national reserves, protected wildlife refuges, marine protected zones and so forth have been on the increase for decades. We see the rise in protected areas and the rise in particular of marine protected areas. [This is a contribution we, we can say of the convention on biological diversity. It has some effect, but overall that verdict of F as the overall grade on the main goal of the treaty stands and gives us a fair warning. Now, another very important treaty preceded the convention on biological diversity by a couple of decades. That is, the convention on international trade in endangered species which was signed in 1973 and went into effect soon thereafter. The idea of CITES is to reduce the pressures and dangers of species’ extinction by regulating trade specifically in endangered species. And the way that the treaty works is that the treaty takes a classification of endangered species. Species that are not yet endangered with extinction but could become so unless trade is reduced, and a third category of species whose trade indirectly imperils the species in endangerment of extinction. And with those three categories, CITES covers around 34,000 plant and animal species right now. The main idea is to stop or to ban, trade in endangered species to, and to regulate trade more generally. To head off the endangerment of species and, and of course to prevent their extinction. This treaty has an effect, but again like all international law, the real forces of the world economy can sweep aside what’s on paper and often lead to consequences that are absolutely devastating even if illegal. An example of this is the recent surge in trade, illegal trade in rhinoceros horns, and the massive kill off of rhinoceroses because of this world soaring demand. Most of this demand, virtually all of it, comes from china where rhinoceros horn is a treasured part of the pharmacopoeia of traditional Chinese medicine. It’s sometimes said that the rhinoceros horn is coveted as an aphrodisiac. Apparently that’s not the case. the, rhinoceros horn is ground into powder, and used to fight varies, diseases, in traditional Chinese medicine. And it as a extraordinarily valued commodity. But the black rhinoceros is an extraordinarily endangered species, and the numbers have fallen precipitously. One can say that the populations of the black rhino have plummeted in recent years as demand has soared for the rhinoceros horn. It’s not surprising why when you take into account that the market price for a rhinoceros horn estimated to be around $50,000 per kilo is just about the same as the price of a kilo of gold. This is a commodity worth it’s weight in gold, literally and such a commodity is bound to give rise to tremendous pressures at every part of the supply chain. Bribing local game park officials. Bribing people at port facilities that are supposed to be monitoring trade. Bribery and corruption all the way along the supply chain until the final market.  Thanks to a very important recent study by Professor Lenzen at the University of Sydney and his colleagues. We find that trade in rhinoceros horns or in elephant tusks and the dangers that they pose are a pervasive problem not specific to a couple of headline areas, but involving thousands and thousands of endangered plant and animal species. Professor Lenzen and colleagues looked at thousands of threatened species. And millions of bilateral trading patterns between countries, both source countries of these products and destination countries demanding products that are using these endangered plants and animals as inputs in the production process. And their results are stunning. A very significant proportion a third or so of the endangered species that they looked at are part of important global trading chains. Meaning that it’s not good enough to stop local pressures say small holder farmers entering into a forest area. Or to think about the endangerment of an ecosystem based on local economic forces and local economic incentives. We’re talking about essentially the full weight of the $80 or $90 trillion world economy, which is providing the fuel for this massive loss of biodiversity. In this graph from the Lenzen study, you see a differentiation of species threatened by net importers, and by net suppliers of the species. So, net importers are rich countries. Like the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, U.K., and so forth. And the net suppliers are countries typically poor or middle income tropical countries that are supplying the, the tropical hard woods, or the forest products, or the other plants and animals coming from the tropical ecosystems. Cameroon, Cambodia, Russia, Thailand, Sir Lanka, Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, Indonesia All places that are net exporters of this endangered of these endangered species in large numbers. One of the useful graphics from the Lenzen study is the ability to trace the world wide supply chains. This is shown by this illustration from the study of two parts of this worldwide supply chain. One are trades in species where Malaysia is the supplier, and that’s shown in orange in this global map. And then our, the trade in species where Germany is the net importer, the demander. So you can look at these supply chains of endangered species, both from the suppliers side and the demanders side. And the, the main point of this graph without having to go into detail is that we’re talking not only about pervasive trade influences on the loss of biodiversity, but we are talking about global supply chains. And not simply one point to the next, but multiple countries engaged in multiple threats as consumers. And of course many, many countries engaged in threats to biodiversity as suppliers to those consuming countries. What’s our conclusion? Our conclusion is that global efforts stretching over many decades have not yet come to grips with the sixth extinction wave on the planet. Humanity is the power of influence over ecosystem functions, and its endangerment of biodiversity is so vast and coming from so many different directions. That we still lack the comprehensiveness and the weight of our politics, and our public awareness as well as our economic incentives, to get this right. When the world met at Rio plus 20, 20 years after the Rio world summit. And they had that report card of an F on implementing the convention on biological diversity, an F on implementing the UN framework convention on climate change, an F on implementing the UN convention to combat desertification. They knew that something, something different needs to be done. And we’re going to look at what the prospects are for the breakthrough of policy to a true age of sustainable development under a set of sustainable development goals. That at least have the potential to energize our actions and raise our awareness, our understanding and our motivation to take hold of these forces and make sure that we move from the very threatening business as usual path, to a true path of sustainable development.

[1] http://www.cbd.int/

[2] http://www.cites.org/

Biodiversity IV

Deforestation

Forests remain one of the major parts of terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. e know that forests cover something around 30% of the total land area.

And we also know that forest cover used to be a far higher proportion of, the earth’s land area, before humanity got to it[1].

1341Humanity’s been in the business for thousands and thousands of years of clearing forests. And we read accounts of the massive deforestation in ancient Greece, or in the Roman Empire, or in ancient China and India thousands of years ago. This is an ancient story, but we continue to lose a lot of rainforest, and a lot of other forest areas today, because of the increasing populations and pressures on the planet and the forces of international trade. So what has been going on from ancient times, continues and in some ways, intensifies, till today. When we lose forests, we degrade ecosystems. We also lose a tremendous amount of biodiversity. Our rainforest areas, the three great rainforest areas of the Amazon basin, the Congo basin, and the Indonesian archipelago, are home to countless species and much of the greatest biodiversity on the planet. And as those rainforests are being depleted right now, or are at threat of massive deforestation and degradation, we are also losing huge amounts of biodiversity as well. This map gives us suggestion of the extent of past deforestation, and some of the challenges of current deforestation. Every area shaded in this map, is an area that originally had forest cover.

1342The very light shaded areas, let’s say in western Europe or across China, or across Russia and, the Eurasian land mass. The light shaded areas in the eastern half of the United States, are areas that were original forest cover that have been deforested. So western Europe, much of the eastern half of the United States, essentially all of China, lost its original forest cover to human activity. In the case of China, hundreds of years ago that process was already complete. India as well having lost a huge amount of its original forest cover. Europe having lost a huge amount of its original forest cover hundreds and in some cases thousands of years ago. Today, most deforestation is taking place in the fast growing tropical and subtropical regions. And notably in the rainforests where population densities were low traditionally.

But had been rising and where these rainforest regions are increasingly being encroached for human provisioning, for tropical log woods, or for clearing, for farm land, and for pasture land. Or for provisioning of peasant small holders who go into the forests for fuel wood, or for bushmeat or for other needs of people living on the margins, of the forest. And the result is that while temperate zone areas were deforested in historical time, it’s now the tropical areas that are under the most direct force of deforestation today. Not because there’s something intrinsic about tropical deforestation, but rather, in a way, from a historical point of view, because it’s coming last in line. It’s a, set of ecosystems that were relatively less disturbed previously, but now are facing major disturbances in human impacts. Some of that human impact is internally driven by growing populations within countries, within Brazil or within Central Africa for example, or in Southeast Asia. But, a huge amount I’m going to want to draw our attention to, is coming from international trade.

From demands halfway around the world for these forest products and this is very, very difficult to control because it means high levels of demand, often from rich countries or rapidly growing economies like China. Even overwhelmed local protective services. It’s easy to bribe. It’s easy to engage in illegal activities even when they are on the books under legal control. This map that you’re looking at now shows us the current patterns of deforestation. It emphasizes that in areas that were traditionally deforested, say, the eastern part of the United States or western Europe, or northern Europe, there is some reforestation taking place in those areas. That’s a very healthy point. But the red areas shown on this map are areas that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment identified as being areas under a current intensive process of deforestation. And that includes parts of the tropical rainforests I’ve mentioned. Large regions in Southeast Asia. Of course the Andean region as well. Many parts of the world where there are remaining forests find those forests under threat. Forests are major providers and regulators of ecosystem services, and this means that the threats to these forests are threats to human well being. And it’s worth listening to the words of one of the great scientists of our age, James Lovelock who is the creator of the Gaia theory which is basically the theory of the interconnectedness of the world’s ecosystems and the interconnected regulatory processes of those ecosystems. Lovelock more than, most earth scientists, 30, 40, 50 years ago, emphasize the interconnectedness of the climate regulatory functions. that, and other natural flux functions of energy heat dissipation nutrient flows, and so forth, played by ecosystems. Emphasizing that when we degrade one ecosystem, we impede or undermine the functioning of ecosystems in other parts of the planet. So here’s what Lovelock says for example about the deforestation of the tropical rainforests. He says, and I’m quoting, no longer do we have to justify the existence of humid tropical forests on the feeble grounds that they might carry plants with drugs that cure human disease. Because he’s saying that was one argument that conservationists were emphasizing. Maybe the main one. Don’t cut down the rainforest, there maybe a lifesaving medicine there. There’s proof to that, but what Lovelock is saying is that’s not the only proof. Gaia theory forces us to see that they offer much more than this. Through their capacity to evapotranspirate vast volumes of water vapor, they serve to keep the planet cool by wearing a sunshade of white reflecting cloud.

1343So the rainforests have cloud cover above it. A lot of that cloud cover reflects the incoming ultraviolet radiation, sending it out into space, rather than having it hit the earth, warm the earth, reradiate as infrared. And so, the changing reflectance of the planet, caused by the existence of the rainforests is a regulatory feature of climate. Not intuitive, not of our everyday nature, but recognized by an interconnected earth systems science. So, Lovelock concludes their replacement by crop land could precipitate a disaster that is global in scale. The point, the point is that when we degrade large ecosystems such as tropical ecosystems, the impacts can be far more then we would recognize in the absolute direct impact of the loss of the local ecosystem services. Earth systems science teaches us that the interaction of the ecosystems in their global regulation of climate, water cycle, other nutrient cycle, nitrogen fluxes, are also of huge significance for planetary balances and for human well being. Well, the extent of degradation is enormous. The pressures are vast, and the pressures are coming from many different directions. Have a look at the island of Borneo, which is shared in the present day, by Malaysia and Indonesia. Malaysia, with its two states of Sabah and Sarawak. And Indonesia with the state of Kalimantan. This island is absolutely under the most incredibly rapid and deep transformation, because one of the most diverse, wondrous ecosystems of forest area is essentially being cut down and replaced by monoculture, for palm oil production. Palm oil is in huge demand, since palm oil is a very versatile product. It commands a good market price. It’s used in many home products. It’s used in cooking and for for home use. And it’s soared, in demand in recent decades.

And the maps that you’re looking at produced by UNAP, both show the actual decline of forest cover on the Island of Borneo. Up through the year 2005 and then projections that were made under a business as usual trajectory for 2010 and 2020. What you’re observing here essentially is deforestation to replace a highly biodiverse rainforest area with a monoculture of of palm oil. Now palm oil in limited production is okay and when it’s carefully monitored and measured and kept within certain boundaries, it can make sense. But if it sweeps the island of Borneo and as is similarly taking place in Sumatra and Indonesia, if you get a massive replacement of a diverse ecosystem with a monoculture, the losses will be phenomenal. The losses to regulatory functions of these ecosystems. The losses to biodiversity in the specific context of Indonesia, Malaysia.

1344Huge threats to the loss of, again, one of our closest Great Ape relatives, the orangutan whose habitat is precisely in these rainforest areas, whose numbers have declined, and whose habitat is under tremendous threat. And unless we take into account what is a sustainable harvesting of tropical forests. What is in the same way that we need to take into account the sustainable harvesting of fisheries, and other ecosystems. We will, before we know it, have lost these ecosystems. They will have fallen into an irreversible collapse. There’s an attempt to do something about it of course. In fact there are several attempts. One that is notable, is to link the conservation of the rainforests, and forests in general, with the climate change agenda. Because remember that perhaps 15% of the total carbon dioxide emissions each year are coming from land use change especially from deforestation. And so, the idea was taken several years ago that as part of the mitigation effort, not only should we be reducing our carbon footprint in the energy sphere, but also the carbon emissions coming from deforestation. And the project that has grown up from that is called REDD Plus, R-E-D-D Plus. Which stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. And so, it’s both the thinning of forests and the clearing of forests that are the target of the REDD Plus Initiative. The idea, and it’s a good one, is to give financial incentives to farmers and to communities and to forest communities in general, often including indigenous populations. To protect the forests and to replace part of the income that in the short term they would lose from their over exploitation of the forest products, with a sustainable flow of income of other kinds including a top-up of income being provided by donor countries. Norway for example, has offered a billion dollars to Brazil. In a REDD Plus Initiative to slow or stop the deforestation of the Amazon, [COUGH] and to use this funding to create financial incentives for forest communities in the Amazon to play the role of protecting the Amazon rather than facilitating its loss. The map that you’re seeing here are the participating countries. The countries in red are countries that are actively receiving from the United Nations, support for developing REDD Plus programs. Other partner countries are shown in blue. It is a, an important effort. The funding by some countries like Norway has been extremely generous. But, it’s still a small counter pressure to an overwhelming force coming from the global marketplace for the products, either directly off the forests themselves, or for the products that are grown. The meat products or the soy beans or others that are grown, when the for, and palm oil, when the forest are cleared and replaced by other kinds of economic activity. Let’s look in more depth at programs like REDD Plus to see what the international response is to the loss of bio diversity. To see how that response is functioning to date, and to make a kind of assessment of how we might and need to strengthen that response, if we are to reverse the very powerful wave of species extinction and ecosystem loss that now is engulfing so much of the planet.

[1] http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest, http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C56/forests_2012.