Efficacy of Global and Regional Frameworks

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Why is Multi-stakeholder Cooperation Essential for Sustainable Development?

In the field of development, there is a multitude of actors that promote the SDGs and work towards improving the world on many different levels. These levels can go from grassroots movements, to local government action, to International cooperation. Each level of development has its own methodology, its own approach to resolving the Grand Challenges that we face, and each development actor presents different tools and knowledge for resolving the issues.

At the grassroots level where NGOs and other developmental organizations that are locally based perform hands on development work, they operate directly with the target population and do most of the developmental field work necessary to help local communities grow. These organizations collect over time the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work on a local scale, and it allows them to understand the needs of the population, making the development work as efficient as possible. However, grassroots organizations often lack the funding and resources to expand the scale of operations to affect more people, and because of this, the impact of their development work remains local.

Governments also play an essential role in development work as they manage the resources of the country and therefore have more power to fund development projects. The government also has a large extent of knowledge on the needs of the population. However, what the government has in resources and knowledge, it lacks in efficiency. Governmental development is often criticized for its bureaucratic red tape that makes it very difficult to efficiently manage and run development projects, and this lack of efficiency results in development operations that become much more expensive and yield lesser results.

Finally, international developmental organizations such as the World Bank, the IDB, the United Nations, the HLPF, and many others offer a macro approach to development through international cooperation. The advantages to this approach are that it allows to create a conversation surrounding specific developmental issues and brings them to light, making governments realize the importance of development work in the grand scheme of the SDGs. It is also a good place for different governments to propose ways to implement development with the purpose of meeting a particular criteria and through treaties, binds countries to meet the goals. Unfortunately, there is not a strong enforcement mechanism that forces countries to implement the development work they signed off to.

At each level of development there are partial solutions to meeting the SDGs but still encounter specific difficulties at each layer. The difficulties that the different levels of development encounter however can be solved using the tools and knowledge that other actors operating at different scales have to offer. No single actor possesses the solution to development, but by putting actors together, the optimal combination of knowledge and resources would be met, allowing for the maximum amount of progress to be made. This is fundamental to understanding the importance of multi-stakeholder operations in development and why it is essential to have platforms where the different actors operating at different levels of development can share ideas and knowledge to all resolve Grand Challenges.

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How Does the NUA Include Rural Development as an Essential Part of Its Implementation?

When the New Urban Agenda: Habitat III conference was held in October, 2016, the main focus of the conference was to promote the idea of sustainable cities and start developing ideas on how to implement strategies of urban development. Although this document’s main purpose focuses on the urban landscape, the first draft of the NUA III official document contains fifteen mentions of rural development as a part of the plan for urban development:

Article 43: integration of rural development in the framework of developing cities and human settlements

Article 44: integration through ” transport and mobility, technology and communication networks and infrastructure”

Article 62: working with both urban and rural areas, “strengthening the sustainable management of resources ”

Article 77: ensuring coherence of local governmental policies regarding land development keeping rural areas in mind

Although it may not be evident how including rural development helps meet the targets of Habitat III, it is essential to consider what dynamics exist between the two and how improving one can indeed improve the conditions for the other.

One of the biggest challenges that we are currently facing is the overpopulation of our cities and how to accommodate for increasing numbers. This increase in population is mostly due to the migration of poor populations living in rural areas that look towards the city for better work opportunities. If we are to resolve overpopulation of cities, we need to look to what can be done in the rural landscape to provide sufficient opportunities and benefits to rural populations to keep them from migrating to the cities. This is the main goal of articles 43 and 44, where a stronger integration of rural-urban development through technology, communications, and infrastructure can bring a level of development to the rural setting, providing more economic opportunities in those areas and mitigating rural-urban migration.

Another important aspect is the effect that urban development has on the rural landscape. As cities grow, the need for resources such as land, water, food, electricity, etc… increases and most of the time, the use of those resources impacts rural communities. A lot of the waste generated by cities ends up polluting rural communities, which affects the crop outputs and therefore the livelihoods of the populations living in areas most affected. Article 62 emphasizes a strong partnership between the two in order to advance the goal of sustainable cities that would benefit rural areas as well. The urban sector bring to the table new technologies that can help improve the efficiency of the resources it uses, such as creating the infrastructure for green energy (solar panels, hydroelectric, wind energy) and reduce the amount of pollutants that cities emit, and the rural sector provides the conditions under which these resources work best, and provides insight on the effects that the pollution has. Sustainability is therefore an issue that needs to be addressed with the rural sector in mind if it will work at the highest degree of success.

It is impossible to achieve the goal of “sustainable cities” without considering the effects that it has on rural communities and without taking into account the tightly wound relationships that exist between the two. This is why rural development plays an important part in the development of Habitat III and helps us reach most of the Sustainable Development Goals in the 2030 agenda.

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Limitations of the MDGs

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), active from the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 to 2015, have been an important global framework for how state and nonstate actors address poverty reduction. The Goals successfully created a unifying framework to guide behavior around project premises, set norms and values, allow for an exchange and evaluation of best practices, start highly visible dialogue about new topics, etc.

One major limitation is access to the table of influence in the creation of the framework itself. If one does not understand the systems or cannot attend because of the financial burden, their ideas and values are automatically discluded from the conversation. Those able to attend and access Prep Coms must have the resources to be able to do so, so these resource disparities limit access to setting the agenda in a huge way. Before the major groups and other stakeholders framework, non-state actors had much less influence altogether.

Persons with disabilities are one group that was majorly left out of the MDG framework. By not including persons with disabilities, Kett, Lang, and Trani claim that the international community cannot achieve its goals of poverty reduction and human rights under the MDGs. There hasn’t been a lot of substantial research done on the subject, so the lack of information makes it hard to create inclusive policies and frameworks that really benefit the disability community. Janet Lord, a representative of the Landmine Survivors Network, indicates an example of doing this well was a recent decision to “give 12 seats on the Working Group that will formulate a negotiating text to NGO representatives”, which increases access to civil society and the agency of persons with disabilities as well as the outcome document of the 2013 HLPF meeting, which focuses on the lack of inclusion for persons with disabilities in the MDGs and how to correct for that going forwards.

Monitoring and implementation is another huge issue for the MDGs because the Goals are not legally binding. Rhetorical commitments and actual practices and implementation often have a huge disparity,  Caoimhe de Barra. A large part of this is because the MDGs set outcomes without elaborating on the process by which to get there. Deepak Nayyar highlights these limitations by discussing the multiplicity of objectives, particularly emphasized in the difficulty in contextualizing the Goals in different local and country settings.

Every framework has its limitations and its opportunities for success. By raising awareness of the MDG limitations, newer frameworks like the SDGs are able to correct for some of these failures by including 11 mentions of persons with disabilities. In the future, hopefully there will be an response to the increasing demand for accountability and access to the table.

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Entitlement Theory and Access to Communication

Amartya Sen, author of “Development as Freedom,” first coined the term of entitlement theory in his paper “exchange Entitlements” as a way to describe the causes of famine. What he found was that famines often are not due to a lack of food, but rather a lack of access to the food that the country has available. In class, we discussed the importance of ICTs in the development framework and how people living in different societies and living in different areas of the world don’t have the same access to communications resources as people who live in large concentrated urban areas.

In the Maitland Commission Report, the ITU presented the idea of a “missing link” in the age of communication as there is still a large percentage of people that live completely isolated from the rest of the world due to a lack of access to telephone lines, internet and other forms of ICTs. One of the reasons that these populations remain without access to these technologies is because companies in charge of installing the infrastructure do not see any benefit in spending time and resources to provide this technology to marginalized communities. Another issue is that often, even if the technology is available to the communities, they are unable to afford the fees for using the internet or cellular reception. How then can these populations be given access to these technological entitlements?

One way to address this issue is through government intervention to ensure all people get access to the ICTs. By providing subsidies to companies providing the communications infrastructure, it gives private enterprises an additional motive to provide the services to marginalized communities. Another way to provide the service is through government acquisition of the technology and provide it themselves. However, involving the government in providing ICTs to the population leads to other challenges such as a loss in efficiency due to additional bureaucratic transaction costs, an increase in prices as the government tries to compensate for the higher costs, and problems with the quality of the good provided due to lack of competition.

In order to find the perfect combination of public and private that would allow marginalized communities to access ICTs, there are several conditions that need to be met that Amartya Sen defined. The first condition is that the highest level of efficiency is achieved in democratic governments. This is because democratic institutions provide greater stability and are subject to the interests of the voters, and therefore have a responsibility towards the population. There are cases in countries where the government intervened in the distribution of ICTs in order to spike the prices for personal gain or for military spending, but in the case of democratic institutions, there are checks and balances that keep that from happening.

A second condition is to ensure perfect competition and a breadth in the market. Having a large diversity of suppliers that can compete on an even playing field would cause prices of ICTs to go down and would also decrease the prices of the infrastructure, therefore making it more beneficial to provide the good to the most consumers possible, making it more affordable and more available to people in marginalized communities.

Finally, in order to set these things in motion, it is essential to raise awareness of the importance of bridging the “missing link” because through awareness, the government can act and start implementing strategies to provide greater access to the rest of the population living outside of concentrated rural areas.

In a quickly modernizing society where technological progress increases exponentially with each passing year, it is essential to make sure that no one gets left behind. ICTs are an essential part of development work, and without this access to information and communication, marginalized societies will be perpetually trying to catch up with the progress in the rest of the world and will never be able to achieve the same levels of development.

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Moonshot Thinking in Economics: Grameen Bank

Throughout the discipline of economics, scholars study models of perfectly functioning markets and what these markets would look like if all of the right conditions were met. It is a fascinating discipline which shows what a perfect world could look like, but the difficult reality of things is that often these models represent unrealistic expectations based on human behavior, availability of resources, and allocation of land, capital, and labor. We do not live in a perfect world where capitalism is a well-oiled machine that works perfectly for all people, or where everyone in the world embraces a single communist ideology. No, we live in a very diverse world with people from different backgrounds who have different interests, beliefs, norms, and values. This diversity is a fundamental element of our existence that makes our world more beautiful, but also more complex, and this is something that is often left out of economics.

When the Grameen Bank in India was founded in 1983, it was met with a lot of criticism because people expected it to function the same way any other bank functions, by loaning money with high interests and making a profit. People held the Grameen Bank to the standards of what people already knew, without thinking that they could ever operate differently. Instead of operating for profit, the Grameen Bank is a rare institution that offers microfinancing opportunities to poor communities by loaning them money to expand their operations, but offering very low interest rates that give the customers flexibility and reduces the pressure of paying back the loans. This model of operations is extremely risky from the perspective of a bank that runs on making a profit, because society leads us to believe that poor people are a liability when it comes to managing money. The Grameen Bank didn’t see poor people as a liability, but more as an opportunity to give back to the community and allow rural areas to develop and grow.

Not only is the Grameen Bank the first microfinancing institution of its kind, but it is also the first that favors women entrepreneurs and empowers women to become business managers and participate more actively in societies where they were often oppressed. According to statistics by the bank, around 95% of the women that took out loans from the bank consistently managed to pay back their debts and the interest, showing a high rate of success.

Why is this bank an example of moonshot thinking in my opinion? No one ever believed that there could be a “Bank of the Poor” and people never believed that a banking system could have the effect of reducing rural poverty and protecting social capital whilst also empowering women in local communities. The Bank was met with much opposition from people that believed that it was merely exploiting the poor and believed that the bank just put poor people into more debt that previously, or people criticized the bank for overstepping and intervening in the role of the government in providing poverty alleviation strategies, but it is undeniable that this Bank has brought a new way of looking at poverty alleviation and has generated a new conversation looking specifically at how this could potentially provide solutions for people not just in India, but around the world as well.

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Efficacy of Global and Regional Frameworks

International goals like the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) have many strengths and challenges. With the MDG’s specifically, I think they were most effective in spreading and promoting awareness about international development and the varying conditions of life across the world. For the most part, the goals in the MDG’s were not met, but I think a conversation was started about international development and what could be done to improve gender equality, increase literacy or provide adequate health care.

I think the goals also brought nuance to the concept of development and how it’s measured. Like Amartya Sen noted in the 90’s, development is so much more than just economic indicators. I think the MDG’s biggest strength were their ability to quantify a different way to measure development. The goals were not as comprehensive or inclusive as they should have been, but I think they paved the way for more complex and nuanced goals like the SDG’s. The MDG’s served as a beginning point for so many issues to be explored.

As we often discussed in class, I think one of the largest challenges these global frameworks face is implementation and monitoring. It is really difficult to ensure that these huge goals are effective and feasible. Countries are coming from all different contexts and historical backgrounds and it is difficult to rally together from so many different starting points. However, I think the biggest limitation to the efficacy of global frameworks is the Western dominated ideals that they inherently internalize. For the most part, the West is the major governing body that creates these goals, so the ideals and standards they are striving for are things that the West values. The goals are not universal, nor are they conducive to all cultures and ideologies. I think this is a challenge for global goals, but a place for great opportunity for regional frameworks. If the global goals do not fit the goals of the area, then the regional bodies can create their own strategies and indicators.

Education is a field where many disconnects can occur between local communities and global goals. For example, if the disability community in an area does not want inclusive, mainstream education, then I think the regional frameworks can adjust parts of Goal 4 to reflect those wishes. Not everyone in the international community agrees on education, so I do not think that all communities should be held to the standards of the West and their best practices. I think the efficacy of global frameworks can be best summarized by reminding ourselves that development will never be universal. What works for some communities will not work for others and global goals will never work for everyone.

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Global and Regional Frameworks

For multiple reasons, we understand how the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) remain an important topic of discussion. Many are concerned with it because of the importance in learning from the mistakes implemented. The Post–2015 UN Development Agenda explains how others concentrate on the present in order to “consider the implications of the financial crisis and the Great Recession in the world economy” (3). There were three different dimensions to the significance of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which included:

  1. “Recognition of the reality that a large proportion of people in the world were deprived and poor” (5).
  2. “It was a statement of good intentions that sought a time-bound reduction in poverty to improve the living conditions of those deprived and excluded” (5).
  3. It was an attempt to place this persistent problem, until then a largely national concern, on the development agenda for international cooperation” (5).

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were important in creating a sense of imagination by the international community. Ideally it was also a way in which governments could become accountable to people “just as the international community could be held accountable by national governments” (5). That being said, in actual real life, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) did not help alter the international approach to development because real life practice was unable to fully maintain that relationship of accountability between governments and civil society.

In terms of the overall limitations of global strategies and frameworks, looking at its large-scale structure is pivotal to understanding its strengths and weaknesses. Often, the large-scale structure of global frameworks such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) means that they are operating with a top-down approach. This poses the risk of development not being assessed from the grassroots level that it needs to be. It also means that the framework is weak in implementation ability. We learn of how “the limitations of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a construct, in conception and in design, provide some basis for an evaluation of the (MDGs) as a framework” (8). The document makes two interesting statements in which it describes the weakness of the (MDGs) as their strength, but also how their strength serves as their weakness. Its simplicity was its strength in that it was easy for the international community to comprehend and thus in theory implement. However, its simplicity led to the assumption that “one-size-fits-all” which fails to take into account the intersectionality and diversity of the development spectrum.

 

 

 

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Efficacy of Global and Regional Frameworks

Although the Millennium Development Goals in a lot of ways were effective in setting the stage for global international development, there have still been many criticisms towards the true efficacy of the framework when put into action after the United Nations Millennium Summit in the year 2000. The MDGs were effective in the sense that they brought to international attention some of the major developmental issues existing in developing countries such as child mortality and starvation. Although the MDGs could be considered to be successful in the sense that some development goals, such as poverty levels, have seen improvement (with “the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day has been reduced from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015” (The Guardian)), one of the criticisms regarding the structure of the MDGs is the distance that exists between the theory and practice of this development framework (Trocaire Development Review 2005 11). For example, although foreign aid is aimed towards progressing the goals of developing communities, and promoting sustained development solutions, often time, governments as well as aid organizations can engage in wasteful spending or ineffective projects that do not fall in line with their original development goals. For these reasons, it has been concluded that there must be greater emphasis upon a more “meaningful partnership between donor agencies and recipient governments” (Trocaire Development Review 2005 11). A more meaningful partnership between actors may help to mitigate issues such as corruption (within the recipient government), as well as may help to improve a recipient government’s capacity building capabilities. Capacity building is an important element for developing country governments to be structured around, since having the capacity to address developmental issues within one’s territory will essentially decrease dependence on external aid.

Furthermore, one may also question the inclusivity of the MDGs as there were essentially no mentions, for example, of persons with disabilities. Total inclusion of all members of society is vital in reaching development goals since the foundation of development is to essentially improve the well-being and quality of life for all persons around the world, regardless of which “groups” they may belong to. All persons have the potential to contribute to growing and thriving communities, so it is key that all persons are provided with the equal capabilities to do so. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (or CRPD) was a monumental stepping stone for persons with disabilities in the way that it called for the international community to recognize the importance of including persons with disabilities in global development discourse and frameworks. The SDGs, adopted by the international community in 2015 is an indicator of the effects that the CRPD had upon the structure of global development goals as it saw the mention of including previously (more or less) ignored stakeholder groups.

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Efficacy of Global Frameworks

Efforts towards tackling grand challenges are culminated in the creation of global frameworks. Examples of global frameworks include the Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda, and the Sendai Framework. These global frameworks aim to empower States into incorporating efforts domestically. However, because frameworks merely provide guidance to stakeholders on a specific issue, there is no legally binding obligation upon the Member State to incorporate the practices of global frameworks domestically. This proves to be problematic at the monitoring and implementation stage. This was increasingly true for the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), a set of eight goals focused on addressing grand challenges including education and poverty eradication.

The MDG’s fell short of meeting its’ goals and therefore have received much criticism. In “MDGs After 2015: Some Reflections on the Possibilities,” Deepak Nayyar criticizes the effectiveness of the Millennium Development Goals, but also provides important imperatives regarding the succession of the MDG’s. Nayyar criticizes the MDG’s for their (1) multiplicity of objectives; (2) lack of specificity of objectives; and (3) misleading indicators. I found it especially interesting that the MDG targets were used a scale for assessing individual State performance, while they were meant to measure collective performance. This is precisely why the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda adopted specific goals, targets and indicators to inform stakeholders. Nayyar also addresses three important imperatives in exploring alternative constructs to the MDG’s. He notes that it is imperative that (1) there is structural flexibility at the national level; (2) there is cognition of inequality in any assessment of outcomes; and (3) the new MDG framework incorporates something on means rather than simply focus on ends.

The Sustainable Development Goals deliver upon Nayyar’s imperatives. While the SDG’s are an improvement on the broad themes of the MDG’s, the SDG’s are already facing criticism in regards to its’ monitoring and evaluation capabilities via the HLPF.

Monitoring and evaluation of international frameworks will continue to be problematic. It is increasingly difficult to monitor and evaluate the process toward eradicating global challenges, given the national differences and inequalities among nations, as well as the institutional hurdles. The HLPF will serve as a test for the implementation and monitoring of the SDG’s.

In my opinion, due to very nature of global frameworks, there will always be critics. These critics do not take into account the importance of an interconnected global world focused on tackling grand challenges. While, of course, improvements can always be made, the current trajectory toward inclusive sustainable development seems promising. This is evident in the shift from the MDG’s to the SDG’s.

 

 

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Understanding Global Frameworks with Private International Law

I know that my work on this blog has referenced international law extensively, but I have included another version of my argument from my final paper here with the hope that any peers reading this will ask me questions that will help challenge my project’s validity. The efficacy of global frameworks relies on their being operational. The operation of all of these frameworks rely on understanding international law within their frameworks. The prohibitive complexity of private international law (PIL) has kept it from becoming involved to any significant degree in the mainstream discourse occurring at most of the more prominent conferences on international law, let alone international development. Diversity and ambition of the Sustainable Development Goals make it literally impossible for a conference to cover every issue. That being said, there are several forums in which PIL could be discussed as a relevant dimension where it has to this point been neglected to the detriment of each of these forums. For example, in the conversation concerning inclusive cities, PIL is fundamental to, but not included in, the topics covered. Individuals working with certain international corporations that have local offices in specific cities need to be able to interact legally with their employers. This is a major issue in cities which act as hubs of international trade and commerce. Often the corporations for which these individuals work are established in one country but open smaller offices all over the world. Occasionally these corporations are created as limited liability corporations of LLCs which add further separations between the employee and employer as legal entities. These barriers make the employee legally mute in many cases from making it legally impossible for him to interact with the real employing company. This can greatly complicate any employment-related cases which the employer wishes to try against the parent company or, theoretically, when the parent corporation looks to try a case against employees or a group of employees. Without an ability to navigate PIL effectively, these urban workers cannot interact legally with their employer, and they cannot have full access to justice.

This obstacle between employers and employees is also relevant to the High-level Political forum. Of their listed goals, Goal 9 codifies a commitment to “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”. The persistence of the aforementioned problem inhibits any international firm investing in physical infrastructure. It impedes any organization or individual seeking to invest in an industry in another country, and it impedes a worker from the industrializing country engaging legally with an industry that may have its headquarters on the other sides of national borders. The information barrier also acts as a disincentive to individuals or corporations which seek innovation through international cooperation. It is ironic that this forum based on international cooperation is another forum that fails to address a substantial impediment to international cooperation.