Last updated on March 29, 2015
This week’s issue of the Economist has three articles about development bloat (see here for my 2014 article in Foreign Affairs on the topic; see here for the blog post that led to Foreign Affairs asking me for said article on the topic). The first is a leader (i.e., editorial) titled “The 169 Commandments”:
Moses brought ten commandments down from Mount Sinai. If only the UN’s proposed list of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were as concise. The SDGs are supposed to set out how to improve the lives of the poor in emerging countries, and how to steer money and government policy towards areas where they can do the most good. But the efforts of the SDG drafting committees are so sprawling and misconceived that the entire enterprise is being set up to fail. That would be not just a wasted opportunity, but also a betrayal of the world’s poorest people. …
Their supporters justify the proliferation by saying the SDGs are more ambitious than their predecessors: they extend to things such as urbanisation, infrastructure and climate change. The argument is that cutting poverty is not a simple matter. It is rooted in a whole system of inequality and injustice, meaning that you need lots of targets to improve governance, encourage transparency, reduce inequality and so on.
There is truth in that argument, but the SDGs are still a mess. Every lobby group has pitched in for its own special interest. The targets include calls for sustainable tourism and a “global partnership for sustainable development complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships”, whatever that means.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, this should sound familiar.
The other two articles are more in depth, and are titled “Unsustainable Goals,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Hideous.” All three are essential reading if you have any interest in big-picture international development.