Comments

Hi Jo, These are excellent comments. To be honest, I also feel a bit ambivalent about the soft diplomacy rationale. But it is clearly part of the equation for the current aid program and - to be truthful - for all aid programs (to varying degrees). So one does need to provide some suggestion that there will be positive engagement by Australia and positive reputational impacts for Australia. That being said, we would hope that the values that are shared are ones of collaboration and listening and support rather than some of the ones that would make for bad partnership. And I do feel strongly that standards need to be determined by the local partner. It does not make sense to train Solomon Island nurses as if they are about to work in the emergency department of Royal North Shore Hospital. Joel

Hi Terence, and thanks for your provocative post... I like your challenge to the lexicon of development, which can become incredibly entangled within its own world of jargon. I was going to comment on 'innovation' and compare it with 'sustainability' as a word with many meanings. And suggest despite that - or perhaps because of it - it had a role to play as a conversation starter, which could lead into many areas of development, including problem identification, focus in designs, drawing out the things that are working well in implementation, and engaging new entities to help scale-up the successes. But then I realised another aspect of your post is perhaps more interesting to explore. Your "world of aid" seems distinct from the private sector? Don't these 'far flung places' have people working in the private sector, be it farmers selling into markets or local companies working for the donors? Are they not looking at ways to innovate to get an edge in the market place, or even access to donors? Also under learning - there is much aid-related learning activity within the local and international private sector that falls under this banner, including a range of interesting engagements between sectors on aid-related issues. Perhaps I'm suggesting a way to bridge your distrust of innovation and your words of choice. The concept of starting with a blank sheet of paper for an "ideation" (!) session may be a useful tool for creative thinking, but any innovation before it 'goes to market' (development speak - gets piloted / implemented), definitely needs rigorous testing against knowledge drawn from existing and historic programs, as well as ensuring its relevance to the development context. How then to extract and package the relevant learnings and knowledge about context around emerging innovations to improve their traction, and reduce risks associated with failure? Not an easy task, but neither's expungement... goodluck!

Thanks Joel. As anticipated, I like the idea. I do have one concern, however, which is in the attempt to 'sell' it in soft diplomacy terms. You state: "But the partnerships could certainly be clearly branded, and the presence of Australian teachers would mean that a much larger number of young Indonesians or Fijians or Burmese would absorb Australian ideas and values." This raises a tension, and links with the conversation on Jim Adams' <a href="https://devpolicy.org/capacity-building-important-but-unsuccessful-20150716/" rel="nofollow">two</a> <a href="https://devpolicy.org/capacity-building-how-to-do-better-20150717/" rel="nofollow">blogs</a> on capacity development. Learning is values-based, as is capacity development. And values are linked with culture and context. As we know, successful learning and capacity development has to be grounded in culture and context, and therefore values. Too often, the values of the people on the receiving end of donors' efforts are ignored. So if the health workforce training integrates a goal to install Australia values and ideas, how will this then lead to successful learning? (And there is the more tricky question of how these Australian values and ideas are to be weighted - there are a lot of Australian values and ideas that I, and many Australians, would never wish to see promulgated elsewhere.) You do actually highlight this issue, when you state: "Importantly, the expectations would have to be driven by local realities and local best practice, rather than artificially imposing Australian standards where not relevant." So perhaps it is best to avoid arguing for health workforce training on soft diplomacy grounds, and simply argue for it on its merits alone in terms of improving everybody's health, and if it is necessary to use enlightened self-interest arguments, use those about the spread of disease. What do you think?

Hi Ben, Thanks for continuing to shine light on the SDGs. While it looks like the 17 goals and 169 targets are a product of simply accepting everyone's pet issue you just have to spend a bit of time in a room with a children's rights campaigner, gender specialist or environmentalist to know that this final framework really is pretty selective and does not include all wish lists. In terms of 'implementability' it seems to me that if I were prime minister of a country I would find them a bit overwhelming. But if I were minister for education, or minister for agriculture or minister for health etc (or a campaigner in any of these areas) I think I would find my section of these goals to be a useful and manageable tool for my work. In terms of communicating the SDGs to the public 17 goals obviously will not work. However something like the following is understandable: "The SDGs are a set of goals which countries have agreed to achieve by 2030. They focus on three areas: 1. to reduce poverty and inequality, 2. to support equal rights, peace and opportunity for all, 3. to grow our economies in an environmentally sustainable way."

Thank you Carmen for such a relevant article! PNG as a nation has so much more to offer than what is perceived by the world!

I tip my hat to you sir. Both out of respect for your prowess when it comes to writing development country and western. And with respect to your very sensible comment about our ongoing need for more evidence in development work. Indeed, maybe there's a song to be written about evidence too? Perhaps, "My baby left me for someone with a better RCT"?

Thank you Karori, I completely agree that the real challenge will most likely be in execution, and whether (both developed and developing) countries' governments take the Goals as a serious matter or whether they just pay lip service to them. I'm not sure, however, whether formal rules monitoring the Goals (presumably associated with sanction), or the behaviour of political elites, would be feasible (in the specific case of the SDGs). Rather, I think the best approach lies in local and international civil society actors leveraging the normative weight of the Goals (and other development and human rights norms) to hold states to account. This will, by necessity be imperfect, but I think it is where the Goals may best help with the issues that you describe. Thanks again for your comment. Terence

Hopefully they will not be remembered as the UNsustainable Development Goals.

It does seem true that the MDGs helped to focus development efforts (or at a minimum, funding efforts) in the past 15 years. Progress was made on several key indicators, and the MDG scheme can be credited for helping to focus efforts and funding. Still, development work continues to be plagued by a lack of evidence-based programming supported by high quality, quantitative and qualitative impact data. Part of the problem is created in the design flaws of much development work, where evidence-based data are not examined, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and tools are inadequate to the creation and sharing of high quality data. Short-term projects make valuable longitudinal studies very challenging, if not impossible. Lack of international data standards and data gathering standards cripples our learning. So, in the spirit of this post's title, below are the lyrics I wrote today for a proposed country song for our discussion: Ode to MDGs I said good-bye today to a trusted mare I rode, and fed fifteen years of hay to merit this mournful ode. Chorus She’s been with me all these years; I chose her from among the foals. Through disappointment, joy and tears her name, Millennium Development Goals. She took me where I needed to go; she gave me comfort, direction and hope. She lifted me when I was low; she showed me how to cope. Chorus Now as I prepare to say good-bye to a friend, a partner, a mare, I wonder about a new ride, and how I will ever get there. Chorus I hear of a new herd in town with more variety and breeds, bred by a team well renowned to meet all relevant needs. Chorus So today I’m buyin’ a new mount, from among the long line of foals, and hopin’ she’ll give good account, her name, Sustainable Development Goals. Altered Chorus She’ll be with me in years ahead; I chose her from among the foals. Through disappointment, joy and dread her name, Sustainable Development Goals.

As I read it, the logic of this article's argument is: 1. Coca-Cola has extensive reach and "its supply chains are second to none". The company's supply chains have been used successfully to transport medicines in Africa. 2. Coca-Cola contributes to an unhealthy diet, and an unhealthy diet causes serious health problems in the Pacific. 3. Therefore, it is unethical to use Coca-Cola's supply chains to distribute medicines in the Pacific. I'm struggling to make the leap from 2 to 3, especially where health products can be "de-branded" and disassociated from Coke. Mostly the conclusion rests on the inherent unhealthiness of Coke. But the premise of #1 assumes that Coke is already everywhere regardless. In order to offset the real benefits that would come from the improved transportation of medicines, this argument would need to establish how hitching a ride on Coke's already established supply chains would in any way affect consumption of Coke. Or to put it another way, how not using Coke's supply chains (and forgoing the health benefits associated with improved medicine distribution) would in any way reduce the consumption of Coke. I can't see how it would. We should be careful not to compare an ideal public solution with a real-world private sector solution (holding the two to different sets of standards). It would be great if public supply chains functioned in an ideal way -- reliably providing subsidised merit goods to all on the basis of need. However, we know this is not the case. Private supply chains are structured in a way that incentivise the reliable provision of goods in remote areas. This is not true for public supply chains in many developing countries, and this is unlikely to change. If public supply chains were working as intended, we would not be here talking about piggy-backing on Coke's. We should compare this proposal (with all its challenges) to the alternatives that currently exist, not a perfect ideal.

I am delighted to go through your post, Terence, and would like to add some of my observations. It is really nice that global community is empathised to suffering human beings and designing SDGs to replace MDGs. It is certainly an expression of the intentions of the international community. I am sure, these will get UN approval very shortly. The problem will start at the level of execution. The developing countries will definitely show enthusiasm in UN. The 'third world elite strategy' is to enthusiastically accept SDGs or any other such proposal to extract grant/aid from the developed countries and sabotage it in implementing at the domestic level when it hurts their interest. The success of SDGs, therefore, will be determined by the commensurate legislation, policy and cultural context of these countries. Quite often we can observe unintended results. For instance, inclusive policy was initiated for elimination of exclusion and it has empowered the impoverished to some extent but strengthened the 'exclusivity'. So there must be some safeguards in SDGs to prevent such unintended consequences. Similarly, as regards the governance, any goal or strategy which is likely to weaken the domination of the 'master strategist elite' in developing countries will be sabotaged at the operational level. Can there be a possibility to incorporate code of governance or norms of elite behaviour in the SDGs? Certainly it will be resisted on the pretext of sovereignty but there must be some kind of global monitoring of the operational dynamics of SDGs in national boundaries without which there will be limited realisation of SDGs. Of course, resources (both material and nonmaterial) component is important but more significant are commensurate policy, legislation, institutions and socio-cultural context of the developing countries. How far and what way SDGs are designed to conform such a prevalent situation is of critical importance. Will you be able to anticipate and elaborate the SDGs-context interface?

Thanks Susie, I certainly agree that better monitoring of progress and better data are essential. That said, I'm not sure something as sweeping as the SDGs or even the MDGs could have their implementation monitored in any meaningful way. (Although I am still mulling this over). Thanks for an interesting comment. Terence