UN summit on sustainable development

As Glocalisation Dominates, Sustainable Development Needs a New Paradigm

What is required is to use the notion of sustainable development to benchmark all growth machine induced policies and programs.

Admittedly, increasing uncertainty in climatic patterns has its origins in glocal (global + local) factors. The present version of globalization has promoted intra-industry trade that has led to a convergence of incomes among trading partners.

Trade between nations happens in two ways: inter-industry and intra-industry. Inter-industry trade takes place between dissimilar economies, is based on Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. On the other hand, intra-industry trade occurs between similar economies, is based on Krugman’s model of competitive advantage of nations. In intra-industry, domestic and international firms compete to manufacture similar products to sell in the local market. For example, rising wages in Japan and Europe increased demand for goods and services similar to the U.S. In turn, this led to increased intra-industry trade among the US, Europe, and Japan.

A major part of the Indian and Chinese growth story is also explained by increased access to intra-industry trade. Modernization of production technology permitted production processes to be split to be located in different parts of the world, and China benefited. On the other hand, outsourcing of services due to advances in information technology was advantageous to India because service outsourcing, unlike free trade earlier, had the potential to equalize “non-tradables” (e.g. wages). Services in the developed nations command high wages, and the advantage of high wages could only be enjoyed by physical migration to the high-income countries, which was available to a few only. Now, software professionals produce services in India and are paid high wages without actually shifting to high-income countries. In turn, high wages earned by software professionals has led to market demand for products, similar to the products consumed in developed nations, thus, accelerating intra-industry trade with multiplier effects on job creation and income enhancement.

Also read: COP25 Goes Into Overtime as Governments Refuse to Recognise Climate Emergency

As a result, consumption increased in geometric proportions – what took consumption the UK in 100 years and the US 50 years has happened in less than half a century in China and India – and the most deleterious effect has been on biological capital. Earlier biological capital (e.g. soil, water and oxygen and freely available for human use) had a chance to recuperate because consumption was concentrated in one part of the world and among one set of people. Globalization of biological capital has impaired the ability of the Earth to act as an effective sink and one consequence is the extraordinary levels of carbon dioxide, resulting in climatic uncertainty and instability.

At the local level, the idea of growth at any cost has led to the formation of growth machines. Typical machines manufacture products efficiently and consist of moving parts that accomplish production goals efficiently, add value to inputs, and overcome resistance at one point by applying force at another point (leverage). Similarly, the growth machine produces high levels of consistent economic growth and the organization consists of groups of industrial firms, local businesses, realtors, business organizations, and the “entrepreneurial state”. The growth machine also adds value, efficiently, to land by erecting new structures – tourist facilities anywhere, river dams, hydro-electric power projects.

The Government has become an entrepreneur and pro-actively promotes business activities through regulatory and planning support, institutionalizing pro-growth strategies and practices and promoting connections through intermediaries. This promotion of business activities occurs within a broader vision of public interest. Moreover, the entrepreneurial state attracts “footloose capital” by a slew of incentives and benefits to boost economic development. Finally, the attitude of the local officials is also focused on growth “partly because most accept the dominant ideology of growth, partly because some may personally benefit from increases in land rents”. Therefore, the dominant theme of the glocalization is that “growth feeds upon growth” and has put the notion of sustainable development on the back-burner.

Also watch: Watch: Eight-Year-Old Activist Asks Modi to Pass a Climate Change Law at COP25

What is required is to use the notion of sustainable development to benchmark all growth machine induced policies and programs. One way of making the idea operable is to use the sustainability triangle to achieve dual positive outcomes. The sustainability triangle consists of 3Es (economic development, equity, and environment preservation) represented by three corners of a triangle and the purpose of policy design is to reach, the centre, as much as possible. The 3Es interact with one another in complex and unknown ways and the complexity creates interdependence making prediction difficult. Moreover, in order to prevent gaming and cronyism, another recently added E, ethics, becomes important.

Simply, policy design has to include an evaluation of the winners and losers, among the 3Es, and informed, knowledgeable decisions made. Importantly, sustainable development goes beyond existing paradigms that are founded on either/or terms, such as environmental degradation has to be ignored during the process of economic development, the poor cannot wait for delays caused by including environmental concerns in programs.

However, this leads to zero-sum outcomes. What is required is a new paradigm that produces triple-positive outcomes. Identifying elements of this new paradigm is one key agenda for the COP25.

Sameer Sharma has a Ph.D. from the USA and a DLitt from Kanchi University. The article is based on his research and practice and views are personal.

How Modi Should Play the Global Game of Thrones

The PM needs to make better use of India’s diplomatic energy and talent than the childish squabbling with Pakistan that we have seen over the past few days.

The PM needs to make better use of India’s diplomatic energy and talent than the childish squabbling with Pakistan that we have seen over the past few days

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at G4 Summit in New York last month. Credit: PTI Photo by Subhav Shukla

Rabindranath Tagore, on a visit to the US to raise money for Visva-Bharati, once ran into John Rockefeller, who instinctively assumed this dark, bearded man in odd clothes must be a beggar, and pressed a dime into his hand. None of the American CEOs Narendra Modi met would have made any such mistake.

Whether he gets the investment, manufacturing, trade and technology he was looking for will depend on what he does over the next few years, but his performances were mesmeric. However, now that the Prime Minister has ended his triumphal swing back and forth across the United States, hypnotising his audiences like a chubby pendulum, it’s time to wake up from the trance he induces, the willing suspension of disbelief that comes with it, and to ask if perhaps he also lulls himself into a stupor. What he said on foreign policy issues was often muddled, and it did not help that reports from the Indian journalists with him were the dying declarations of moths flying into an irresistible flame.

Wasting time on a Terrorism Convention

In California, the Prime Minister claimed that the UN had not defined terrorism in 15 years and asked how long it would take to fight it. This is odd, when India has plaintively claimed for those fifteen years to be one of the battlegrounds in the Global War on Terror. It is also odd because the General Assembly has in fact adopted a definition of terrorism in its “Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism”, adopted in 1994, reiterated after 9/11 in January, 2002.

“that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify them;”

It is true that the world is stuck on definitions in the draft Comprehensive Convention against International Terrorism that India proposed in the mid-1990s, when the UN only had a raft of sectoral conventions that banned specific acts of terrorism – nothing that addressed the issue comprehensively. After 9/11, though, the Security Council has adopted a series of resolutions on terrorism, acting under Chapter VII measures, which makes them mandatory. A definition of terrorism is unnecessary, because all that is needed, from SCR 1373 onwards, is a determination that an individual or a group commits acts that the Council considers to be terrorism. This might be and is arbitrary, and means that names are placed on the list only if the P-5 agree. Even with China’s foot-dragging, most of the groups and individuals we want to ban already are on the Council’s list. If Pakistan does not comply with the Council’s requirements, we should highlight this, which we do not.

Clearly, the Prime Minister has been persuaded that the Comprehensive Convention will give us more, since, apart from yoga, this was the only initiative he flogged in his speech to the General Assembly last year. He has brought it up again, and the External Affairs Minister echoed him in the general debate this year, but a Convention now will be academic. If its provisions make Pakistan uncomfortable, it will make itself immune from scrutiny simply by refusing to become a State Party. It cannot be compelled to join, any more than we (or Pakistan) can be to accede to the NPT, the CTBT or the International Criminal Court. It is a pity that the Prime Minister wastes his time on a chimera; it would be an even greater pity if India frittered away energy and diplomatic capital in its pursuit.

It was also not very wise, speaking to an audience that included US law-makers, to link international terrorism with global warming as the two global challenges that remain. Firstly, for most developing countries, and certainly for India, ending the poverty that cripples the lives of billions is the supreme challenge. So too are all the problems that batten on it, including disease, malnutrition, illiteracy (and, in our case, open defecation), which most developing countries would insist are challenges they can overcome only with the help of others, or, as the Prime Minister said, only if humanity unites to meet them. Secondly, it ignores other current challenges that the world faces, including refugees, and the whole complex of issues around cybersecurity and cyber-freedom.

Most importantly, this plays into the hands of the OECD, led by the P-3, who want to project climate change as the greatest current threat to international peace and security, together with terrorism, and would much rather have the Security Council become the forum where decisions are taken. On terrorism, that suits us, on climate change it would be a disaster, since the first casualty would be the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, which in his speech at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development the Prime Minister described as “the bedrock of our collective enterprise”.

Reform at the UN is far from done

On Security Council reform, the Prime Minister took the lead, apparently believing that the decision adopted on the last day of the 69^th session of the General Assembly was a breakthrough that must be exploited. The G-4 countries met at his request, but only to reassure each other that they were the worthiest candidates possible. That contrasts with the decisiveness of the first summit, after which the G-4 tabled a draft resolution in the General Assembly in 2005. Sadly, they did not coordinate with the African Group, which put out a competing draft, the two were played off against each other by their adversaries, neither was pressed to a vote, and the G-4 suffered a calamitous loss of nerve and confidence. The decision to try informal consultations followed, and has led, almost a decade later, to the collation of the responses of all states and groups which honoured the President’s request for written submissions. This is what the 69^th General Assembly adopted as its last act in September.

Opponents of an expansion of the permanent membership would much rather have had exactly the same procedural draft that the General Assembly has adopted for the last few years, just renewing the mandate for informal consultations. Rather foolishly, they tried to block a reference to the collation, even though it was a redundant compilation of positions endlessly repeated for 20 years, and often mutually contradictory.

They failed, and the Indian diplomats who thwarted them, with the help of their colleagues from Germany, Japan and Brazil, deserve unstinted praise. It is not easy at the UN to get a decision through that the US, China and Russia oppose, and the fact that the G-4 could pull it off shows that they have a fair diplomatic heft too. But it is also the case that the opponents of reform were being bloody-minded. It is hard to get votes for a position that is pointlessly obstructive, which is why they caved in and accepted a consensus. However, it would be foolish to believe that because the nay-sayers tried to block the adoption of a meaningless document, it must be meaningful. It is not, and it is not a negotiating text.

Get ready to roll the dice

If the Prime Minister is serious about getting the General Assembly to act on Security Council reform at this session, he needs to seize the initiative. This means reviving the G-4 draft, which remains valid, and tabling it again with modifications if needed, this time with the co-sponsorship of the African Group and as many others as possible. By coincidence, several opportunities will soon present themselves to prepare the ground. As next steps

The Prime Minister should raise this with Chancellor Merkel during her visit and get her to agree that this is the way to go. Of the G-4, Germany now carries the most influence. Japan and Brazil will agree if it does.

If Germany agrees, he should raise this with the African leaders he is hosting later this month, and ask them to co-sponsor a draft with the G-4 at the current session. It would be ideal if a draft can be agreed upon between officials and adopted at the summit, but if not, a decision that the G-4 and the African Group would present a joint text should be announced at the end of the summit.

The government should leverage other events it is hosting or co-hosting, as for instance the Conclave with Latin America and the Caribbean that the CII will hold in October in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs, to send word back through the ministers and magnates who attend that India wants to get a decision through at this General Assembly, and will value their support of their governments.

Once a draft is ready, and every effort should be made to put it together within weeks, we should pull out all the stops to get our neighbours to co-sponsor. In 2005, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives came on board. This time it should be possible to enlist Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well, even if Nepal is a problem. If Pakistan is the only hold-out, that deepens its isolation on reform.

A G-4 draft, tabled with the African Group, and sponsored by a wide range of countries, including neighbours of the aspirants, would be very hard to defeat. This would be a better use of India’s diplomatic energy and talent than the childish squabbling with Pakistan that we have seen over the past few days.

Satyabrata Pal is a former Indian diplomat. He served as India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, and as a member of the National Human Rights Commission

Achieving SDGs a Stiff Challenge for Modi Government, World

UN headquarters in New York. Credit: John Gillespie/Flickr CC 2.0

New York: At the end of this week, the leaders of over 190 countries will gather at the United Nations to adopt a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – an updated and greatly expanded group of global development targets meant to replace the previous Millennium Development Goals – and in the process give people around the world a future and vision that they can work towards.

And yet the very nature of the SDGs – the fact that more than a few of its 169 sub-targets are contingent on the outcomes of other political and global forums that pit multinational corporations and rich-country politicians against NGOs and developing-country diplomats – signifies that they represent a formidable challenge to developing countries such as India.

Bureaucrats, think-tank analysts, NGOs and members of civil society groups who have this week been engaging in consultation and multi-stakeholder dialogue over implementation of the SDGs identify a number of issues that will need to be grappled with over the next nine months as diplomats go back to their host countries with the list of goals in their hands.

The three most contentious, and recurring, issues include: the financing and funding of the SDGs, the climate talks later this year in Paris, and implementation of the SDGs on a country or national level.

India and the Modi government, according to civil society organisations, are affected and challenged by all three obstacles.

Funding the key

If there is one spectre that constantly haunts discussions in the sustainable development summit and the Post-2015 process here, it is the failure of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda – a meeting of countries that was convened earlier this year as a means of finding the estimated $2.5 trillion needed each year to fund the SDGs.

“Addis Ababa could have gone a long way in telling us how we all are supposed to fund the SDGs. It is difficult to count on more aid from the OECD countries. The question then becomes: What do we do in the next one year? The SDGs and the United Nations must look to take advantage of the post-Bretton Woods global financial architecture,” said Sarah Hearn, Associate Director, Center on International Cooperation during a side event consultation on institutional architecture and development.

A United Nations representative to a developing country, during another side event, described the issue of mobilising funds more bluntly when he pointed out: “Without having a conversation on looking at white, grey and black money..without shoring up capital flight, we have to assume that this discussion simply isn’t serious. The foundation of our discussions aren’t serious. ”

With the Addis Ababa conference failing to crack down on global tax avoidance and illicit money transfers, and with official development assistance from developed countries becoming less dependable, developing countries such as India are forced to rely solely on their own resources to achieve the SDGs.

Arvind Panagariya, Vice-Chairman of the NITI Aayog – the institution that will lead India’s implementation of the SDGs – alluded to this state of affairs during an India-specific session earlier this week by linking the potential success of the SDGs to India’s future growth trajectory and Prime Minister Modi’s Make in India campaign.

“We simply cannot overstate the importance of robust economic growth… Without it, none of our objectives, be it eradication of poverty, empowerment of women, provision of basic services or even protection of environment would be possible by 2030. As an example, it was on the back of 8% growth over a full decade that India was finally able to introduce and sustain the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and greatly expand its public distribution system through the National Food Security Act,” Panagariya said.

Nevertheless, he added, later in his speech, “we live in a highly globalised and democratic world and the sequence of growth first and redistribution later is not a choice”.

The climate change challenge

One of the defining characteristics of the SDGs is of course its sustainable component: Goals 11, 12 and 13 focus on ensuring sustainable consumption, making cities safe and sustainable and taking “urgent actions to combat climate change and its impacts”.

However, the credibility of these specific goals will not be tested this week here, but will instead be decided by the details of a climate-change deal what will be announced in Paris in December.

“The problem of implementation is quite simple. The earlier MDGs were specific, almost technical targets set by a handful of experts. The SDGs have been formulated by a huge number of actors, both governmental and non-governmental, and as such represent a huge array of aspirations. The aspirations of citizens, NGOs and civil society that are formulated here will consequently be tested at different forums where they have a lesser say,” the head of a global civil society coalition told this reporter.

“Here we promise sustainable development… but there is a disconnect when delegates walk into climate change negotiations later this year with different motivations and mindsets.”

Perhaps the most fundamental obstacle surrounding the sustainable development goals is how countries around the world will integrate them into their national development plans. More broadly, a number of civil society and government actors fear that the expansive nature of the SDGs – which number at 17 goals and over 150 sub-targets – do not lend themselves to easy action plans or prioritisation. The diplomat of an African nation, on condition of anonymity, pointed out that if he took this long list and presented it to the bureaucrats of his government they would “be taken aback by sheer confusion”.

Closer to home, Sindushree Khullar, the chief executive officer of the NITI Aayog, has already stated that the lack of funding and sophisticated data collection and monitoring mechanisms will prove to be an uphill challenge as India starts work on the SDGs.

When combined with the fact that the Modi government has slashed social sector spending and reduced plan expenditure for the health sector, the first such cut in almost a decade, the resonance that the government claims its policies have with the SDGs appear to be less than accurate.

India nevertheless remains at the centre of the debate on whether, globally, the sustainable development goals will prove to be a success. “The relative success of the MDGs were a result of one country – China. If the SDGs are a success, it will be because of India,” pointed out WPS Sidhu, Senior Fellow, Brookings India, during an India-specific consultation session.

“The SDGs need to involve state governments in the country. If this is to be a success, the NITI Aayog needs to reach both within and without the country.”

Note: The Wire is covering the UN summit on SDGs at the invitation of the United Nations