The global community adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the special session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015. These global goals are universal and call for an action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that everyone enjoy peace and prosperity. The 17 goals included 169 targets and 227 indicators. Central to 2030 Agenda are five critical dimensions: people, prosperity, planet, partnership and peace, also known as the five Ps and are traditionally viewed through the lens of three core elements — social inclusion, economic growth and environmental protection.
This new agenda has an explicit focus on means of implementation (MoI). MoI is the operational tool through which the SDGs are to be realised. Not only each of the goals documented separately have a reference to MoI, but also Goal 17 explicitly talks about MoI for all 17 goals of SDGs. Four aspects under it are necessary for achieving SDGs. They are issues related to finance, technology, capacity building and trade.
While Goal 17 talks about the national policy space, the global agenda to strengthen means of implementation receives overwhelming attention. World leaders this time under this new agenda have pledged a high level of commitment in terms of a meaningful global partnership in support of implementation of all goals and targets, bringing together governments, the private sector, civil society, the United Nations system and other actors and mobilising all available resources.
India had been actively involved in the negotiations of Goal 17 (on means of implementation and global partnership) to champion a leadership position among developing countries. It strongly supported an agenda of progressive reforms of the global institutional architecture governing economics, technology and environment. The world is already experiencing a shift of global centre of gravity from North towards South in several areas. In this article we explore India’s possible future strategy to achieve SDGs and challenges associated with indicators of SDGs in general and Goal 17 in particular.
The global partnership enshrined in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) is a vehicle for strengthening international cooperation for implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
Commitments enshrined in AAAA are:
- To reinvigorate the global partnership for sustainable development.
- Recognises that the enhanced and revitalised global partnership for sustainable development, led by governments, will be a vehicle for strengthening international cooperation for implementation of 2030 agenda; and that multi-stakeholder partnerships and resources, knowledge and ingenuity of the private sector, civil society, the scientific community, academia, philanthropy and foundations, Parliaments, local authorities, volunteers and other stakeholders will be important to mobilise and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, complement the efforts of governments, and support the achievement of the sustainable development goals, in particular in developing countries.
- To respect each country’s policy space and leadership to implement policies for poverty eradication and sustainable development, while remaining consistent with relevant international rules and commitments.
- Encourages and promotes partnerships to support country-driven priorities and strategies, building on lessons learned and available expertise.
As mentioned above, the four dimensions of MoI for achieving SDGs are finance, technology, capacity building and trade. However, these four dimensions are highly contested in the global arena with clear distinction between global North and South.
The Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (July 13-16, 2015) as mandated by the UN General Assembly rightly prioritised the most crucial issue, i.e. financing of development ahead of the formal adoption of Agenda 2030 and SDGs. The decline in official development assistance (ODA) in relative terms (as percentage of combined gross national income (GNI) of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member states of the OECD since 2011 has been a matter of grave concern. While the dip in official flows post economic crisis during the last phase of the previous decade is discernible, the current levels indicate stagnation much below 0.7 per cent of GNI, even as the world has taken bold steps towards meeting SDGs and commitments on climate change. In terms of changing composition, ODA is also undergoing visible shifts from grants to loans having implications for developmental outcomes in developing and least developed countries (LDCs). For a major emerging economy like India, ODA from DAC members stands at 0.09 per cent of its GNI. India, thus, needs to mobilise resources through means other than ODA.
Above and beyond these issues, the developing countries are suffering from financial malpractices with regards to domestic resource mobilisation:
- Illicit financial flows (wealth generated through money laundering, etc)
- Transfer pricing practices of multinational businesses
- Inability to tax capital gains with cross-border asset ownership
In a report by the Global Financial Integrity group funded by the Government of Finland, it is suggested that between 2004 and 2013 the developing world as a whole lost $7.8 trillion and in real terms these flows increased at 6.5 per cent per annum. While under the FfD3 process proactive efforts have been made to address the issues of domestic resource mobilisation in poor countries and strengthen their domestic revenue generation capacities to check illicit flows, the global community has been oblivious of the vast amount of resources that are leaking out of the developing countries in the form of tax evasion under profit shifting practices. It has sometimes been elaborated as manifestation of 21st century colonialism when resources are sucked out of the developing countries in the absence of prudent international taxation norms. The amount of development assistance flowing into the global South is much less than the quantum of profit shifting from developing and poor countries. This necessitates that countries of the South must get a share of the resources generated within their jurisdiction.
India has been foremost in highlighting the scale of revenue loss in developing countries on account of profit shifting practices of multinationals (transfer pricing) and inability to adequately tax capital gains under existing global norms. These are over and above all forms of illicit financial flows that keep substantial revenues out of the reach of the developing countries. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s simulation indicates that the amount of corporate profits shifted from developing economies is about $450 billion — implying, at a weighted average effective tax rate across developing countries at 20 per cent, annual tax revenue losses of some $90 billion (World Investment Report 2015). Other relevant studies, such as Christian Aid (2008), focusing on the revenue losses for developing economies generated by corporate trade mispricing schemes, calculate such losses between $120 billion and $160 billion a year. Recovering some or all of these losses could significantly contribute to domestic resource mobilisation in developing countries.
The importance of science and technology and availability of innovation-driven solutions, particularly to mitigate and address sustainability challenges globally has been a central theme in all important global platforms in the recent past, including the Rio+20 process that led to the 2030 Agenda, the FfD3 leading to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, the climate change negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) including COP 21 and the Istanbul Plan of Action (IPoA) for the least developed countries (LDCs). The FfD3 prioritising S&T delivery perhaps signals collective willingness to address issues of resource availability and financing of a global mechanism to facilitate and support the process.
The LDC Technology Bank has emerged from the Istanbul Plan of Action for the LDCs (IPoA) 2011 and is now integral to Agenda 2030. The proposed Technology Bank is envisaged as a facilitating mechanism to help LDCs build science, technology and innovation base to improve LDCs’ technology access, acquisition and utilisation. Turkey shall host the headquarters of the Technology Bank. Profile of activities in this mechanism shall include human and institutional capacity building, technology incubation, IPR management and connecting with LDC diaspora. The Feasibility Report defining the scope of activities has been submitted.
To facilitate the implementation of the global indicator framework, all indicators are classified by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG indicators into three tiers on the basis of their level of methodological development and the availability of data at the global level.
Tier 1: Has an internationally established methodology and standards are available, and data is regularly produced by countries for at least 50 per cent of countries and of the population in every region where the indicator is relevant.
Tier 2: Has an internationally established methodology and standards are available, but data is not regularly produced by countries.
Tier 3: No internationally established methodology or standards are yet available for the indicator, but methodology/standards are being developed or tested.
As of May 11, 2018, the updated tier classification contains 93 Tier 1 indicators, 72 Tier 2 indicators and 62 Tier 3 indicators. In addition to these, there are five indicators that have multiple tiers.
Fluctuations in ODA, difficulties of debt serving among poor countries, uneven resource distribution, wide technology and capacity gaps, falling commodity prices have contributed to deepening of marginalisation in the global South in recent years. Despite difficulties, the South has steadily emerged as the engine of global economic recovery. South-South Cooperation has matured from knowledge partnerships, exchange of development ideas, humanitarian cooperation, movement of knowledge workers, and positions of joint bargaining at multilateral forums to global thinking on economic recovery, strengthening bilateral/regional economic cooperation, joint knowledge initiatives and collective efforts on institution building. SDG 17 mandates partnership on trade, finance and technology.
— Charkha Features
