Welcome back to Changemaker Q& A, everyone. I am Tiyana J, founder of the Humanitarian Changemakers Network and currently a PhD student researching communication and social change. Changemaker Q& A is the show where I answer all of your questions about anything social change related, and in today’s episode, we’re going to be going back and addressing one of the questions that a member of our community asked us earlier in the podcast, and that is the question of “what are the sustainable development goals and when might I need to use them in any work across the social change space?” So this episode is going to be a little bit of a hot take on the SDGs and particularly my kind of opinion of some of the shortcomings of the SDGs that I’ve noticed after really focusing on some of the targets and indicators of the sustainable development goals through my PhD research. If you have any questions related to social change, it can be about the SDGs, it can be about anything else I mention on the podcast, or anything that you can’t seem to find a nuanced answer to across the internet, then definitely head to our website and ask us your questions.
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So. What are the sustainable development goals? Essentially, back in the year 2015, 193 member countries of the United Nations came together and they agreed upon 17 goals for sustainable development that they would work towards. Now, prior to this happening, I think it’s important to touch on what led to this and the evolution of the SDGs because before we had the SDGs, we had the MDGs, the Millennium Development Goals.
Now, the MDGs something that I’m old enough to remember. If you are a young person, you may or may not remember the MDGs. You may not have been aware of them. You may have been aware of them through your work. But essentially at the start of the new millennium in the year 2000, Back then it was 189 member countries of the United Nations all came together at the UN headquarters and they signed the millennium declaration.
And that was a commitment to achieving eight specific goals. There were very measurable goals, very quantitative, very tangible goals. That ranged from halving extreme poverty to promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, and promoting environmental sustainability by the target date of 2015.
Now, the MDGs were incredibly significant at the time, but I think just in general, this was probably the first big global agenda for something like development. That we have kind of seen since the inception of the United Nations. The United Nations, as I’m sure you’re aware, is essentially an intergovernmental organization that is made up of its member states.
And it is responsible for, A whole range of different things from governance and dealing with things like international crime through the International Criminal Court through to human rights with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights all the way to things like promoting peace through the UN peacekeepers and the Security Council to development and inclusion, equality.
And all of the agencies that fall under the United Nations. So within the banner of the UN or kind of under the work of the UN, you have UN agencies like the World Health Organization, you have the World Food Program, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the FAO, you have UNICEF The agency for women and children.
There’s a whole range of different agencies that kind of all falls under this umbrella of the United Nations. So… The Millennium Development Goals and the Millennium Declaration was kind of the first big global agenda that the United Nations kind of created when it comes to international development.
The work was all kind of happening for a long time in peace and security, in human rights in international justice. But development didn’t really kind of become… Such a big thing until the MDGs prior to that, there was still a lot of work being done within the UN in the development space, but it tended to be very regional focused or focused at kind of like the national or state level.
And this was the first time that every single country came together and kind of agreed on a global agenda that primarily focused on addressing poverty within the context of development. Now, there were eight different Millennium Development Goals. The first was to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty.
The second was to achieve universal primary education. The third was to promote gender equality and empower women. The fourth was reducing child mortality. The fifth was improving maternal health, the sixth was to combat HIV, AIDS, malaria and other diseases, the seventh was ensuring environmental sustainability, and then the eighth goal was developing global partnerships for development.
Now, like I mentioned before, The MDGs set very clear targets, they were all quantifiable, they all kind of relied on quantitative measurements and outcomes, which made it very easy to kind of see whether or not a particular country or a region or the world as a whole had or had not achieved these goals that it set.
Now, when it comes to the success of the MDGs, I think that through most accounts, the success is kind of mixed. There was incredible progress made in a lot of different areas within the Millennium Development Goals. In particular, The number of people living in extreme poverty, which was defined at the time as under 1.
25 U. S. per day was reduced. The number of girls enrolled in primary education more than hit, I think it, overtook the goal. The goal was to match how many boys were enrolled and I think we actually saw more girls enrolled by the end. So there was lots of success, but at the same time there was some shortcomings, in particular, even though there were less people living under extreme poverty, the number of people living in poverty in general slowly increased.
And… According to the UN Secretary General at the time, Ban Ki moon, he said that the MDGs helped to lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty, to make inroads against hunger, to enable more girls to attend school than ever before, and to protect our planet. Yet for all the remarkable gains, I am keenly aware that inequalities persist and that progress has been uneven.
So, while the MTGs were somewhat revolutionary, I think, in providing a kind of roadmap and a plan to reach a global agreement when it came to addressing poverty and challenges related to poverty the targets were very easy to communicate. They had very clear kind of measurements and monitoring mechanisms attached to them.
The… Sustainable development goals, which then emerged as a response to these in 2015 are much more comprehensive. I think they are much better in general. So after the MDGs, we had the SDGs. And I guess the purpose of the sustainable development goals is. Somewhat different to the millennium development goals fundamentally.
I think at their core, they are very different now from the beginning, all of the stakeholders that were involved in the process were very intentional about making this a global agenda for development, whereas the MDGs were a Goal for development in the developing world that was globally agreed upon.
The SDGs are a plan for global development and each of the goals are applicable within every country around the world. All 193 member countries that agreed upon them. So it’s not just addressing things like extreme poverty and hunger, diseases like malaria, HIV, AIDS. It’s actually addressing more things like inequalities, injustice, and all of those things that kind of Are applicable in any country, even the most progressive, most developed coun, most developed countries.
So we get 17 goals out of the SDG process as opposed to eight. It was a very participatory process and it involved members of civil society. Governments different NGO organizations, the private sector, unlike the MDGs, which just engaged members of government at the state level. So we expand the scope from those eight millennium development goals to 17 goals from 2015.
So the 17 development goals are no poverty is number one, zero hunger is number two. Good health and well being is the third. Quality education is fourth. The fifth is gender equality. The sixth is clean water and sanitation. Seventh, affordable and clean energy. Eighth, decent work and economic growth.
Ninth, industry, innovation and infrastructure. 10. Reduced inequality. 11. Sustainable cities and communities. 12. Responsible consumption and production. 13. Climate action. 14. Life below water. 15. Life on land. 16. Peace, justice and strong institutions. And 17. Partnerships for the goals. So something I really like about the SDG agenda is that they tend to take a more holistic whole systems, systems thinking approach.
I recommend if you’re not really sure what systems thinking is to listen to our podcast episode all about systems thinking. And it’s really important to more conventional approaches to thinking, SDGs address, and
particularly when we are addressing these so called wicked problems, which are problems that kind of transcend economic, social, cultural political boundaries, it’s really important that we take a more holistic and systems thinking approach. And that’s exactly what the SDG agenda. does. It recognizes the interconnected nature of a lot of local and global challenges.
It acknowledges that these actually don’t exist in isolation, which is something that I think the Millennium Development Goals wasn’t able to do. The MDGs also tended to focus, like I said, on issues that really targeted developing nations or regions of the world. And the role of more developed nations in the MDG framework tended to be more about providing humanitarian aid, setting up trade partnerships, or development assistance.
The SDG framework, by contrast, really presents a number of goals that are going to address issues that are faced by both developing and developed nations alike. So the way the SDGs work is that the implementation process starts with each member country, each state, selecting and adapting the aspects of the SDGs that are most relevant to their national context.
So this is where it gets a little bit murky where we can begin to kind of question the effectiveness of the framework. A lot of criticism. is targeted at countries that have a tendency to maybe cherry pick goals and targets that are going to be easier for them to achieve. It’s really easy for them to kind of say, Oh, look at all the progress we’ve made in addressing these SDGs and whatever, when it’s something that you were pretty close to doing before.
There’s, I guess, not… The degree of accountability to hold member countries responsible for actually addressing those most pressing needs, which is a bit of a criticism. But I think all in all, because the formulation of the SDGs was the result of a consultative process with all member States, civil society, the private sector, a whole range of different stakeholders, And because the goals address such different and interrelated issues, a good thing about it is that it opens up action to non government or non state actors. So civil society members, the private sector, big corporations, businesses are equally as responsible for actually addressing the SDGs as member countries are, which.
I think is really important. So I guess my biggest criticism of the SDG framework, and I just want to preface this by saying I am in no way against the Sustainable Development Goals. I think as a framework it is, I think it is really good. I think it addresses a whole range of different issue areas. I don’t think there’s any kind of broad issue areas that get left out of the framework.
I think any challenge that any nation or community is facing can fit into these kind of broad categories where I think it does fall a little bit short. Is perhaps when it comes to the measuring and the indicators for the sustainable development goals. So, I mentioned that the MDGs had a really clear, quantitative easily measurable targets.
Whereas the SDGs have a mix of both quantitative and qualitative targets and indicators for the 17 goals. Now, the qualitative nature of the SDG targets means that there can sometimes be a mixture of ideals, norms, values, or principles that become I guess the indicators of the targets and.
There tends to be some criticism towards this a quote I have here from the OECD is that a healthy dose of objectivity should be warranted. Otherwise, we risk falling victim to the tyranny of acronym suspending critical thinking because it could endanger the agreement about the SDGs. Now, I don’t necessarily agree with this sentiment.
Personally, I think that it’s really unreasonable to assume that we should be setting universal and objective clearly measurable, quantitative targets for each of the Sustainable Development Goals, given each country is so unique and has its own unique context, there are goals and targets when this works and when this does not work.
So. I will use the 5th Sustainable Development Goal just to illustrate this a little bit more clearly to you. This is the Sustainable Development Goal that is most relative to my PhD research, so this is the one that I am most familiar with. Now, we know that there are 17 Development Goals. Each SDG also has a number of different targets and indicators.
So, we have A broad goal, one of the 17 goals, there are targets that are expected to be met within those goals. And then there are also indicators that allow us to know what to look for, what to mark or measure as successful within those targets. And there are two types of targets for each sustainable development goal.
So there are outcome targets and there are means of implementation targets. The outcome targets are exactly what they sound like. They are targets that are about the outcomes. The specific changes that we expect to see at the end of a change process. The means of implementation targets are. Targets that address the ways in which we expect the particular outcomes that we want to see to be brought about, the means in which we want to see those ends.
And then for each of those targets, there will be at least one indicator, sometimes there will be more. Now, personally, I think that with the Fifth Sustainable Development Goal, the outcome targets I think are all really good. We have things like ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere as an outcome target.
I think that is absolutely valid and One of the indicators for that target is looking at whether or not there are legal frameworks in place to promote, enforce and monitor equality and non discrimination on the basis of sex. Another example of an outcome target is recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure, and social protection policies, and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.
And the indicator for this is the proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work by sex, age, and location. So if we’re looking at the proportion of a particular population, we’re looking at the number. It’s a very quantitative very tangibly measurable, uh, indicator. And I think that that is an appropriate indicator for that outcome target.
Now within the SDG framework for those of you who are interested, The outcome targets are those that have a number, so there’s 5. 1, 5. 2, 5. 3. The means of implementation targets are the ones that are indicated by a letter. So we have 5. a, 5. b, 5. c. Now, this is one of the means of implementation targets for the fifth sustainable development goal which is to promote gender equality and empower women.
And it is to enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women. Completely reasonable outcome target, one that is, What my PhD research is focused on, but where I think it gets a little bit problematic is when we look at the indicator for this target, there’s only one indicator for this target, and it is the proportion of individuals who own a mobile telephone by sex.
So again, this is a quantitative indicator. We’re looking at the proportion of women to men in a particular population who own a mobile phone. And while that might be an important indicator when it comes to things like access to technology and inequality, does this indicator Really say that much about whether we’ve achieved our means of implementation target to use technology, to promote the empowerment of women.
Obviously, I think it doesn’t, I think most people would agree, you know, and this is probably my biggest criticism of the SDG framework, it’s that. We’ve set these incredible targets that can achieve, I think, real meaningful change. These, you know, were not just arbitrarily set. These are targets that were set through a consultation process with governments, NGOs members of civil society, experts, academics, the private sector, the public sector.
And, you know, we’ve got these great… Targets about how we want to implement this change, like using technology to empower women and how are we going to measure whether or not we’re successful at this, we’re going to look at the proportion of men to women in a population that own a mobile phone. I don’t think that is very effective and.
It can be really easy, I think, to brush this off and say, well, you know, okay, the indicator might not be great, but at least the framework and the overall agenda for sustainable development is quite comprehensive and worthy of pursuit, but. When you’re actually on the ground doing the work to address the sustainable development goals, indices are one of the most important communicative and strategic tools that we actually have.
Because when we are developing a theory of change, we’re strategizing how we anticipate to achieve something. How do we know if we’re going to be successful in achieving that thing? We’re looking at the indicators. And if we’re using arbitrary or insufficient indicators, then we’re not going to have Any idea of whether we’re actually directing our efforts at something that is indicative of the type of change that we want to see.
And that’s the best case scenario. I think the worst case scenario is we end up with actors who say, well, look, look at this. We have achieved a sustainable development goal. Five target five B. You know, we’ve achieved this and really what they’re saying is, yeah, the same amount of men and women own mobile phones in this population that says nothing about whether they’ve actually used mobile phone technology to empower women.
So it’s really important that we have indicators that communicate to the general population and to actors and to the beneficiaries of interventions. They effectively communicate how we actually know whether we’ve been successful in achieving this. And whether they actually do that. So this tends to be, I think, a problem within the Sustainable Development Framework for the means of implementation targets, more so than the outcome targets.
We have these kind of Quantitative indicators that tend to measure static spatio temporal differences. And what I mean here is we’re essentially just comparing the conditions or the state between a population at two points in time. Between maybe two different populations, like men and women, or between populations in different locations, so comparing rural to urban women.
And the problem with this is that these static differences are the outcomes of change. It’s not change itself. Change itself is dynamic. It’s constantly moving. It’s the thing. It’s the process. It’s the evolution of things that is constantly happening. That’s what change is. These types of indicators can only ever measure the changes, the outcomes of that change.
And if we want to measure change, which is what our means of implementation targets are essentially addressing, we need more effective indicators for measuring dynamic evolving change processes, not just the outcomes of change. Now that could be a whole nother episode distinguishing between how we might look at and address change processes compared to the outcomes of change in different interventions.
But for now, I think it’s just important to note that this is probably one of the biggest shortcomings of the Sustainable Development Goal Framework. We are halfway through the Sustainable Development Goal agenda. So we have until 2030. To keep addressing these targets and these goals and if I had to think what the world might look like in seven and a half years time when we reach 2030.
I would think that the evolution of our global development agenda would probably still be addressing these same issues and the same areas that the SDG framework addresses, but hopefully by then we will have some more nuanced, some more effective ways to measure change. In our understanding of change in the ways that we work towards change, that is what I think will need to come out of the sustainable development framework.
So with all that said, Obviously the SDGs are still really important. They are kind of like the global agenda when it comes to development. So anybody working in the social change space whether you’re working in the development space, whether you are addressing human rights, social justice, inequality, anything like that, it’s important to just have an understanding of what the SDGs are, which SDGs might be applicable to the work that you’re doing.
And maybe just having a look at what the specific targets are for any of the relevant goals to your work, looking at the ones that are applicable in the contexts that you might be working in, in the locations and the communities that you might be working in, and looking at those indicators and kind of…
of say seeing whether they are an appropriate way to measure any success that you might have towards those goals, or whether you might need to come together with other people that you’re working with and come up with your own indicators that are better indicators for measuring these targets in the specific context that you are working in.
That is what my PhD research has largely been doing working with development organizations in India and essentially saying, Hey, this indicator about the proportion of men to women who own mobile phones is not an effective way for us to measure whether our interventions are actually empowering women.
And what a lot of my research is looking at. is what indicators these organizations can actually use to determine whether their mobile phone technology and campaigns run through their mobile phone network is empowering women. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I hope you maybe learned something new.
If you did, I would really appreciate it if you left us a rating or review on whatever platform you are listening on. If you have any questions that have come up, from listening to me and my little hot take on the SDGs, then feel free to ask more questions. I’m always happy to answer your questions.
There are no dumb questions when it comes to social change. And. I will see you guys, or you guys will hear me, rather, in our next episode of the podcast. Don’t forget that you can connect with me or the Humanitarian Changemakers Network on Instagram, all linked below in the episode description. I look forward to connecting with you and seeing all of the incredible things you are doing to make change happen in your community.
