While some of the material resonated with me, I disagree with part of it as well. Ultimately, I agree with the authors from Quartz Africa that the issues, such as gender equality, climate change, building peace and jobs of the future, discussed in UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are worthy of concern (Smith and Gladstein 2018). However, I also agree addressing the issues cannot be achieved without a requirement of human rights and democracy from its formulators. Therefore, I disagree with Matthias Klettermayer (2017) who perceived any sort of lacking of progress being due to the comprehensive quality of the tasks at hand. Klettermayer’s talk seemed to be surface level, and I would agree with the authors from Quartz Africa that Klettermayer does not have much to criticize because he is not closely looking at the issues. While Klettermayer mentioned the need for the public to be involved so the goals are not being addressed from solely a top-down approach, he did not acknowledge the problem of political corruption as thoroughly as the authors from Quartz Africa did. Allowing the root of the problem to continually fly under the radar is only going to worsen it. Ultimately, I agree with Michael Green (2019) that the UN does not alter its approach now, the problems are going to get exponentially worse every year. In the face of climate change, I agree with Green (2019) that the evaluation mechanisms do not measure whether the goals can be achieved within the planet’s environmental limits.
I agree with Green (2019) that setting policy at the international level through the UN brings the opportunity to allow the richest countries scoring highest on the performance indicator to assist the relatively poorer countries. For example, although still subject to corrupt leaders, at least Bangladesh and Ethiopia have been making progress in terms of issues such as water sanitation since the goals were set in place. I also agree it brings opportunity to look into the data generated by the measurement of whether the goals are being attained (Green 2019). Analyzing the data can help with refining policy to be more successful. However, I see the importance of involving the leaders of countries who are in desperate need under a dictatorship which may not agree with the argument from Quartz Africa. Other countries telling corrupt countries what to do would be another type of democracy. However, the UN Sustainable Development Goals would improve by involving non-government leaders from developing nations in the discussion. That way, the citizen needs of these nations are going to be made known to those who do not see the ins and outs of the situation. The biggest challenge of setting policy through the UN is making it so society is inclusive and gives its people personal rights (Green 2019). Data from 2015-2018 shows many of the countries have retracted success in those categories since the goals were established. Therefore, a challenge of setting policy at the international level is assuring no one is left behind as the policy is being created by such a governing body that is large in scope.
Source:
Green, Michael. 2019. “The Global Goals We’ve Made Progress on — and the Ones We Haven’t.” TED. Accessed June 25.
Klettermayer, Matthias. 2017. “The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.” TED. Accessed November 12 2020.
Smith, Jeffrey and Alex Gladstein. 2018. “How the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals undermine democracy.” Quartz Africa. Accessed November 12 2020.
Comment by Josh Mabis:
Hi Mary,
Great job on your discussion. I agree with your point about Klettermayer saying it will be hard to achieve these goals with only a top-down approach. Klettermayer could have easily brought up that one of the reasons the top-down approach won’t work is because so many of the leaders involved in the goal setting process operate repressive regimes. If they allow citizens to have an equal say in the democratic process then they’ll lose their power. The goals don’t mention the words democracy, free and fair elections, or anti-corruption once, mainly to appease the dictators who are against all of that, but the UN still lets them tout their involvement in the goals (Smith and Gladstein 2018). We will never make meaningful progress as long as dictators are allowed to commit atrocities and set goals for the rest of the world at the same time.
Reference
Klettermayer, Matthias. 2017. “The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.” TED. Accessed November 12 2020. https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_the_global_goals_we_ve_made_progress_on_and_the_ones_we_haven_t/Links to an external site.
Smith, Jeffrey, and Alex Gladstein. 2018. “How the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals undermine democracy.” Quartz Africa, June 7, 2018. https://qz.com/africa/1299149/how-the-uns-sustainable-development-goals-undermine-democracy/
My Response:
Hi Josh,
Thanks for your comment. I agree insofar as citizens are able to participate in fair elections, the dictators would lose power. There is a study from the American Journal of Political Science that investigates when elections in authoritarian regimes lead to democracy (Donno 2013). The author argues the presence of relatively weaker incumbents renders competitive authoritarian elections more prone to democratization, but only when domestic and international actors choose to actively pressure the regime (Donno 2013). From there, the author looked into two different types of pressure: opposition electoral coalitions and international conditionality. Results showed the effect of electoral pressure is conditional on the type of authoritarianism and that this greater vulnerability to pressure is the reason why competitive authoritarian elections are more likely to lead to democracy (Donno 2013).
Source:
Donno, Daniela. 2013. “Elections and Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes”. American Journal of Political Science. 57 (3): 703-716.
Comment by Erin Cleere:
Hi Mary,
I appreciated your comprehensive post and bringing up a variety of viewpoints. I also felt that Klettermayer’s talk was lacking in substance – it felt a bit like PR for the UN SDGs. To be fair, though, his implications were good ones regarding students from different countries understandably having different foci for some of their questions, but that there’s also common ground in what they’re wondering about – and that it goes beyond their own country – which makes sense since when it comes to emissions, conflict, etc. it’s not like we exist in a country bubble – actually, maybe we need bubbles for countries. Perhaps that would force some dictators to finally change?! I’m sure that’s, aside from not based in reality for being able to put a bubble around a country, not realistic that intractable dictators will change their tune. So I guess I sort of disagree with you there – about involving them, but I don’t know how we (or the UN) gets around that. It feels like it legitimizes the human rights abuses they’ve committed to some extent, as Smith and Gladstein cover. Obviously I don’t have helpful answers, but it does seem like if developing nations could shift their financial and energy priorities to something more sustainable, they could better assist developing countries where it makes sense to (and learn from them in the good work some of them have done on conservation with much, much more limited resources.).
Comment #2:
Original Post by Jenny Murphy:
This week’s materials were super interesting to me. I have actually never even heard of the UN Sustainability Goals until this week. I am unsure of how many others know about them, but I feel that in order to achieve such lofty goals, they should be made well known to the public.
Although I would love to see all of these goals come to fruition, I am shocked that an entire group of nations believe this was attainable in just 15 years. According to one of the Ted Talks, Michael Green states, the UN Sustainability Goals are complicated, and have 169 targets. Projections made on these lofty goals estimate that the 2030 target will not be reached until 2094 (Green 2019.). To me, this sounds like a more realistic goal. One of the goals, to end poverty worldwide, within 15 years is completely unattainable. Poverty has been around for centuries, and changing that is going to take much effort, time and money. In addition, the way to end some of these issues such as equality, inclusiveness and freedom is completely opposite of what an authoritarian regime wants. 93 of the countries that have committed to this agreement are authoritarian rather than democratic, which is said to be the best way to achieve equality and freedom. Many of the countries, including the purely democratic United States have seen consecutive years of decline in the goal to reach worldwide freedom initiatives (Quartz Africa 2018). The UN Sustainability Goals do not require any political reform in their plan to reach them. This is probably the biggest issue facing the UN.
Personally, I feel the UN Sustainability Goals were set up for failure and many changes will need to be made if this will ever be successful.
References:
Green, Michael. 2019. “The Global Goals We’ve Made Progress on — and the Ones We Haven’t.” TED. Accessed June 25. https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_the_global_goals_we_ve_made_progress_on_and_the_ones_we_haven_t/Links to an external site.
Quartz Africa. June 7, 2018. “How the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals undermine democracy.” Accessed June 23, 2020. https://qz.com/africa/1299149/how-the-uns-sustainable-development-goals-undermine-democracy/
My Comment:
Great point that, in order to achieve such lofty goals, they should be made well known to the public. Matthias Klettermayer (2017) ended his TedTalk by going one step further in terms of urging the public to get involved in holding the leaders accountable. Lofty goals have the potential to achieve lofty results if administrators and implementers are held accountable. Throughout the course, we also saw, in cases such as Silent Spring and the Love Canal, how public involvement leads to massive strides in the environmental movement.
Also, Green (2019) shows it is so important to understand where the metrics composing goals are derived from. As you mentioned, the nations should not have believed it was attainable in just 15 years if Green’s projections estimate that the 2030 target will not be reached until 2094. Perhaps, if policymakers do not outline a route specifically depicting how to achieve lofty goals, the goals should instead be called intentions. The 93 countries subject to dictatorships would not even honestly agree to these goals even if they were just only intentions. Here is another example of policy failing to tackle the problem’s root.
Sources:
Green, Michael. 2019. “The Global Goals We’ve Made Progress on — and the Ones We Haven’t.” TED. Accessed June 25.
Klettermayer, Matthias. 2017. “The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.” TED. Accessed November 12 2020.