SDGs and Beyond

Views, commentaries and opinions on the current SDGs

Who are the bottom 40%?

Who are the bottom 40 percent of society? Where do they live? What do they do? What other characteristics do they have?

These are just some of the questions we are hoping to answer as part of the World Bank Group’s new mission critical – to end extreme and chronic poverty by 2030 and boost shared prosperity. The renewed effort against poverty is needed as more than one billion people in the developing world continue to live in abject poverty (i.e. on less than $1.25 a day).

The following post first appeared on the Huffington Post.

Half the world's adults, approximately 2.5 billion individuals, do not have an account with a formal financial institution. Lack of access to finance is disproportionately skewed towards the poor, women, youth, and rural residents. Defined as the proportion of individuals and firms that use financial services, financial inclusion is increasingly seen as critical for ending extreme poverty and supporting inclusive and sustainable development. It provides people with the tools to invest in themselves by saving for retirement, investing in education, capitalizing on business opportunities, and confronting shocks (Global Financial Development Report, 2014). According to the World Bank Group's newly launched Global Financial Development Report 2014 on Financial Inclusion, most of the unbanked cite barriers such as cost, lack of documentation, distance, lack of trust, or religious reasons.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) put the fight against poverty at the center of the international development agenda. And progress has been noteworthy - so much so that it is now fueling more ambitious goals on poverty reduction. But this also brings new demands for better data to measure progress.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently called the MDGs “the most successful global anti-poverty push in history.” With their mutually reinforcing linkages, they committed the world to reducing extreme poverty to historically low levels, while also improving education, health, nutrition, and other development prospects for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people. There is no doubt that since their announcement in 2000, the MDGs have raised the profile of poverty reduction in national development strategies, aid discussions and allocation, and the international development discourse. Systematic cross-country monitoring of simple to understand targets proved to be an effective tool in raising this profile.

From a demographic point of view, more than 9 billion people are expected to live on planet earth in 2050, two-thirds of them in cities. Actually, the entire anticipated population increase is to take place in urban areas, with over 90 percent in Africa, Asia, and Latin American and the Caribbean ; so, global urbanization has long since shifted to developing countries and emerging economies. Approximately 2.7 billion people live in urban agglomerations in developing and emerging economies today; in 2030, that number will rise to 3.9 billion – and reach 5.1 billion in 2050. Around 95 percent of this urban momentum is going to take place in metropolitan regions. Established mega regions like Sao Paulo or Mumbai, as well as urban agglomerations composed of rapidly growing small and medium-sized cities will become the key living and economic spaces of the urban millennium.

Earlier this year, I attended a first-rate workshop on the Post-2015 Development Goals, hosted by Barry Carin (Centre for International Governance Innovation) and Wonhyuk Lim (Korean Development Institute). The event took place in the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center on the shores of Lake Como in Italy, a truly idyllic place for productive brainstorms. The groundwork for the workshop was flawless. CIGI and KDI had prepared an excellent report that outlined 11 goals, ranging from inclusive growth and environmental sustainability to security and political rights. The report put flesh on the bones of that skeleton by specifying multiple targets per goal and numerous indicators per target. It is difficult to find something on the post-2015 development agenda that is more comprehensive, more convincing, or more operational.

The recently launched report by the High Level Panel on the post-2015 Development Agenda puts forward that the post-2015 agenda needs to be driven by five big, transformative shifts. The first one it highlights is that the new agenda should leave no one behind. It states that:

“We should ensure that no person – regardless of ethnicity, gender, geography, disability, race or other status – is denied universal human rights and basic economic opportunities. We should design goals that focus on reaching excluded groups.”

Clearly, the world will have to pay particular attention to slum-dwellers, who are left behind in many areas of development and in the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

On May 30, 2013, the High Level Panel of eminent persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, a group that had been asked for advice by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, issued its report, ‘A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development’. Even though this is not the first report on the topic of what the sequel to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) should be (and it will certainly not be the last either), it is perhaps the first comprehensive report that links voices from around the world with some of the political realities facing the General Assembly as it looks to find a consensus agreement on the post-2015 agenda.

The Secretary-General established the High-Level Panel (HLP) in July 2012, right after the Rio+20 conference. It consisted of 27 persons and was co-chaired by the President of Liberia, Ms. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Indonesia, Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and the Prime Minister of the UK, Mr. David Cameron, MP. The HLP was tasked to provide bold yet practical thinking for the post-2015 development agenda. Its report highlights the need for a single agenda that brings together social, economic and environmental issues, and for a universal agenda that is relevant to, and actionable by, all countries.

I think it’s fair to say most of us don’t typically take UN reports with us on our summer vacation. But you might want make an exception in the case of the high-level panel (HLP) report on the post-2015 development agenda. It offers a nice opportunity to reflect how – over the last 15 years or so – we have seen some serious global shifts in values, expectations and motivations.

The HLP feels the MDGs were worthwhile: “the MDGs set out an inspirational rallying cry for the whole world”. As my colleague Varun Gauri argues, goals inspire if they are underpinned by a moral case, and the panel pushes hard on issues of rights and responsibilities, social justice, and fairness: “new goals and targets need to be grounded in respect for universal human rights”; “these are issues of basic social justice. Many people living in poverty have not had a fair chance.”

It sounds impossible. Unthinkable. A world free from extreme poverty. A world in which no child is born to die, no child goes to bed hungry, every child lives a life free from violence and abuse and has quality health care, nutrition and learns in school. This has long been Save the Children’s vision but could now be a shared global vision, and by 2030 perhaps, a reality.

On May 30, 2013, a special panel of world leaders handed in their recommendations to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General on the future of global sustainable development and they, too, believe this can be our reality.

As the old Japanese proverb goes: Vision without action is a daydream, while Action without vision is a nightmare. This could not be more prophetic as we turn our attention to what’s next for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Now, after more than ten long years since the launch of the eight United Nations MDGs, we have real targets that move toward ending hunger and, for example, improving maternal health.

SDGs and Beyond

Who are the bottom 40%?

The Promise of Financial Inclusion

Poverty reduction at the forefront of development

The challenge of metropolitan governance in the face of rapid urbanization

Maria Montessori and the MDGs

Slums and Slum-dwellers: the untapped potential of collective capacity

Five fundamental transformations to end poverty

Health and the post-2015 development agenda: Stuck in the doldrums?

Ending Extreme Poverty In Our Generation

Make MDGs about the HOW, not just the WHAT

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