Emily Alice Pandis
Political Science 4331
Paper Topic #2
Friday, April 6, 2018
Funding Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations has undoubtedly played a significant role in the cooperation and relations of countries across the globe. These relationships have been fostered through a series of collective objectives such as: peacekeeping, ensuring the maintenance of universal human rights, and the promotion and development of economic sectors, to name just a few. However, it is inevitable that dealing with international matters at such a large scale would come without complications and a need for constant adaptations. One aspect of the United Nations that should be given more attention because of the potential it has to significantly impact communities of both developing and developed countries alike are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). The Sustainable Development Agenda is comprised of seventeen global goals with 169 targets aimed at covering a broad range of socioeconomic and development issues. The framework of the SDG’s was designed with goals intended to apply to all countries covering issues such as poverty, gender equality, sanitation, social justice, and others. With a budget of $5.4 billion, and more than thirty funds, organizations, and specialized agencies that fall under the UN budget umbrella, there is not enough money being allocated to the SDG’s in order to effectively move towards achieving these seventeen goals. As the world changes economically, technologically, and socially, the UN has to ensure that it can as well by creating organizations as needed, but also merging and abolishing those that are no longer serving as needed. Given the need for global cooperation is rapidly growing, the current budget is no longer sufficient for a viable UN. In order to increase the budget and allocate it appropriately, mainly focusing on SDG spending, a proposal for this includes a three-pronged approach. Firstly, high-income, middle-income, lower-middle-income, and low-income counties would adjust their contributions accordingly per capital annually, secondly merging, abolishing or reforming UN programs that no longer fulfill their role, and thirdly expanding expertise on focus areas such as technological innovation, renewable energy resource availability, and disease control.
With top twenty countries including but not limited to the United States, Japan, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom contributing nearly 84% of the annual budget, while the remaining countries comprise a mere 16% of it, the brunt of the spending falls on high-income countries. The problem, however, is determining what is a logical and realistic contribution that a country could make per capita in order to raise the budget that, in the end, is beneficial to all member states. If, for example, high-income countries were to contribute $15 per capita annually, middle-income $3, and low-income counties $0.35, that would raise the budget significantly to $25 billion which would allow the expansion and growth of many new or developing programs that could emerge from the SDGs. At the current budget of $5.4 billion, the average spent per individual (considering the population 7.6 billion people) comes to $0.71, if divided equally. This, of course, does not accurately represent proportions of spending, but rather presented to give an idea of how individuals contribute versus collectively as a country. With that being said, these figures are also shown to encourage more economically able and stable countries to increase their spending accordingly. Getting such a budget reform proposal passed, however, would be nearly impossible with the current structure of the Security Council. Due to the P-5 also being the heaviest of spenders in contributions made for the budget, it is unlikely that there would be a unanimous vote on such a proposal.
Secondly, the merging, reformation or abolishment of funds, programs or organizations that are no longer in the playing field of necessity or are not adequately fulfilling their positions could help increase the spending and focus put on the SDGs. The UNHCR, for example, is a vital council as human rights across the globe are among the top priority, but there are certain countries that are members of the UN without even coming close to meeting the Human Rights Council requirements. Of the current Human Rights Council members, nine are accused of having violated human rights, according the OHCHR report issued. If internally these problems cannot be solved, their effectiveness is no longer present, and reforms need to be made. Instead of having an individual council that deals with human rights, the responsibility can be placed within the SDGs seeing as many of the goals include universal human rights such as gender equality and education. Instead of doubling up the councils, abolishing the ones proven over the course of many years to have serious cracks that are taking away from valuable budget could instead be focused elsewhere. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are two separate organizations that lead movements for fighting hunger in mostly rural populations. If by cooperating in negotiating agreements between countries and taking advantage of joint technological resources, these two could merge together in creating a program that develops a framework for the elimination of malnutrition through joint efforts. By merging, this could in return cut some of the unnecessary spending on developing individual internal projects for each program. The spending would then be focused on SDG resources.
Thirdly, the UN needs to ensure that it has the ability to keep up with the proposed sustainable development. This would include expansion on untapped or neglected areas such as marine sustainability, which also happens to be one of the SDGs. As stated by Miroslav Lajčák the current President of the United Nations General Assembly for the 72nd session, “The first will focus on water. The use and management of water can mean the difference between conflict and peace; between poverty and growth. Those without easy access to safe water can suffer both disease and indignity. On 22nd of March, I will convene a high-level launch of the International Decade for Action, ‘Water for Sustainable Development’”(Lajčák 2018). However, to ensure that movements towards this goal are being met there could possibly be “deadlines” implemented by independent international organizations that overlook the work done by the UN. By introducing external governance, this could hold the UN accountable for actions through environmental protection agencies that help with the continuous process. By creating a structured agenda that includes, goals, projected (realistic) budgets, that are approved by an environmental agency before beginning the process as to ensure that the proposals are manageable.
There are of course a number of reforms that could be implemented and limitless brains that work together tirelessly to try and provide the most resourceful and effective programs available, but there will be matters that slip through the cracks. However, by creating a formula for budget expansion, and then allocating the new financial resources to the most up-to-date programs, specifically ones falling under the umbrella of SDGs, there could be tremendous success in cooperation and improvement in socioeconomic and environmental sectors.