A blind spot in the push to meet development goals
Plus: 3 themes to watch in 2024 🌐
WorldWise readers—
I’d like to think that every new year begins with hope.
What we cover in this post reflects two sides of the state of the world today. On one hand, the vision of a more sustainable and equitable future captured by the UN’s development goals almost a decade ago—and on the other, the reality of turmoil after a series of setbacks since then.
It’s often difficult to believe in something better. It can even be risky, in the words of Rebecca Solnit. Because trusting that a different reality is possible while we know doing so may well result in disappointment—while history and experience and knowledge tells us so—means taking a risk.
Her words, in Hope in the Dark, reveal an emotional undercurrent in the choice to act (or not) in that belief. But that’s where we need to find our courage. To keep trusting, striving for, creating—even in the smallest of ways—a better we cannot yet see.
Anita
VIEW EDITION | insight and news for a rounded take on global affairs
INSIGHT | views & analysis
Remember the SDGs?
As we enter 2024 with a news agenda dominated by conflict and other crises, the United Nations’ flagship development agenda seems more ambitious than ever.
World leaders agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, and set a 2030 deadline to achieve them. It’s an international project that created a vision for a better world—the goals range from ending poverty and achieving equality to protecting the environment and health—along with a mind-boggling 169 targets designed to steer policymakers and development practitioners in a quest to make that vision a reality.
Development organisations, scientists and educators have been aligning their work with the SDGs since their launch.
But recent assessments, at the half-way point to 2030, confirmed what was already becoming clear: that none of them are on track to be met.
The world has suffered from multiple challenges that set back this agenda in the few years since the Goals were signed off, from conflict to the climate crisis and lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic—captured by the notion of ‘polycrisis’, last year’s contested buzzword, and amounting to a grim economic outlook.
At this point, the gloomy predictions come as no surprise. And there’s no shortage of recommendations or efforts to jump-start progress, not least the UN Secretary General’s SDG summits, conceived as a “rescue plan” for the Goals.
But there’s one key ingredient missing from the day-to-day work of implementing this agenda, Rana Dajani and I argue in a piece for Devex: robust measurement of impact for many of the programmes designed to meet the goals.
Without it, we don’t really know what works—and how to take steps forward effectively.
The argument in a nutshell
Rana and I have known each other through our work for some time, but the idea of collaborating on this piece was born soon after a chance meeting on a flight from New York last year, having attended different events at UN headquarters. It soon became apparent that we’d arrived at similar ideas about the role science has—and should have—in implementing the 2030 agenda.
As a scientist and social entrepreneur working across cultures, Rana has seen the evaluation-quality deficit first hand. For the op-ed she recalls one example, of a quantitative tool used to study women’s empowerment.
The actual quantitative tool did not show impact. But when the research team tried to understand what the women were describing in their perception of what empowerment was about, we were able to discover the impact—that’s because it was rooted in the women’s narrative, and not in the survey, which was designed based on Western notions of how empowerment is expressed.
It’s not an isolated problem. Criticism of evaluation efforts has also been levelled at programmes funded by the US Agency of International Development (USAID), for one. “Even when USAID does conduct impact evaluations, unfortunately, they’re often not very good”, Daniel Handel points out in this piece for Vox. “Roughly half don’t meet USAID’s own definition of impact evaluation, despite bearing the label, and only 3 percent are of the highest quality.”
From my side, I was aware of the evaluation ‘blind spot’ from journalistic work covering the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report, an independent scientific contribution to the UN process of facilitating implementation of the Goals.
The text is peppered with examples of how “transformations” have been achieved in the past, an effort to help decision makers visualize the necessary changes. But you’d be hard pressed to find specific policies that have been evaluated and shown to work across the board. In part, that’s because this information is missing from the literature. There’s a need for more systematic evidence on what works best, and where.
If you’re asking “so what?”, that’s fair enough. We point out why weak evaluations are problematic, and why that matters in the bigger picture.
The bottom line of not having culturally rooted and robust-enough measurement of impact is that we don’t really know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. Nor is it inconsequential for national budgets, considering estimates that put the cost of achieving the SDGs at $5 trillion-$7 trillion per year globally between 2015 and 2030.
The piece then expands on the case for getting better systematic evidence. We argue that rigorous monitoring & evaluation can go a long way to help with providing systematic evidence of what works—but there is a need for a different way of assessing impact, which begs for social entrepreneurs and scientists to join forces. That also means finding new ways to fund research for impact measurement, and we propose a model to make this happen.
As resources get more scarce, money set aside for meeting the SDGs will simply go further if policymakers and practitioners can focus on programmes proven to work.
Read the op-ed in full on Devex, here.
BRIEFING | around the world
3 themes to watch in 2024
The year is kicking off with disruptions to two of the world’s most important shipping routes, which could add to already rising costs of goods for consumers. Yemen-based Houthis have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea, forcing them to avoid the Suez Canal. Trade volume through the canal has dropped by 40%. Having to navigate around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope adds 2,000 miles and 10 days to each trip, which in turn can add more than $1 million in additional fuel depending on vessel size. Over in Latin America, historically low water levels are forcing the Panama Canal to lower its capacity for large cargo ships. The impact on shipping is severe: traffic has declined by 30% since November in what is the word’s second-busiest human-made shipping lane. The driving force here isn’t geopolitical but linked to climate change, brought on by drought and expansion in infrastructure. There are no easy solutions—the canal’s infrastructure was upgraded in 2016 to allow for an increase in traffic, but this didn’t account for pumping in enough water. [Economist + James Bosworth for WPR; + Shola Lawal for Al Jazeera + Ishaan Tharoor for The Washington Post + Ken Opalo in An Africanist Perspective + Jonathan Yerushalmy for The Guardian + Peter Millard, Michael D. McDonald and Bloomberg for Fortune]
Multiple humanitarian crises are competing for attention, and dwindling resources. 2023 was a year of record levels of conflict, famine and refugee flows. In two separate pieces, editors at The New Humanitarian outline the most important crises that call for attention now—in addition to the “indescribably high” needs in Gaza—as well as broader humanitarian trends, from policies aiming to deter migrants to information warfare, water scarcity and political conflict. Like last year, famine and hunger loom large too. Some of the policy trends on the horizon don’t sound particularly encouraging in terms of responding to these realities: see limited finding, the rise of the political right and mistrust in multilateralism. But the aid sector is adapting how it works, and geopolitical alliances are shifting, notably with the expansion of the BRICS group of countries. And there’s a wildcard coming up this year… [Paul Poast in WPR + TNH + TNH + Irwin Loy and Will Worley for TNH + Economist]
TIME magazine has called 2024 “the ultimate election year”. It will be the biggest in history—potentially unmatched for another 20+ years—with at least 60 countries and as many as 76 holding elections, depending on the count. This translates to over 4 billion people heading to the polls, roughly half the planet’s population. And it’s not just scale that matters. This is all happening against the backdrop of a decline in democracy across every world region. Many voters in countries including Indonesia, South Africa, and Mexico have some experience of autocracy, while disillusionment with democracy appears to be widespread, especially among young people. And some of these elections—namely in the United States and India—will be significant in terms of setting the tone of public support for strongman rule. [Paul Poast in WPR + Ishaan Tharoor in The Washington Post + Bryan Walsh in Vox + Amy Davidson Sorkin for the New Yorker + Joe Mathews for The Los Angeles Times]
“We’re electing illiberal leaders democratically. We will know whether democracy lives or dies by the end of 2024.”—Maria Ressa, a prominent journalist and Nobel laureate from the Philippines, during an address to the National Press Club in Washington DC.
Plus: the trends we highlighted at the start of 2023 are still relevant, as are other key issues we covered over the course of the year—the planetary crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, shifting geopolitics, a push to reform the global financial system to better support developing countries.
Eye on Gaza
South Africa has filed a landmark case at the United Nations’ top court, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and seeking a court order to force a stop to the attacks. A hearing is expected to begin today, and the spotlight on the case is now strong. Although a decision could take years, the interim “provisional measures” requested could be issued within weeks. South Africa is the first nation to compile a case against Israel in this war—a solid one, by most accounts—and it’s only the second time a state has taken another to court over such a claim. The country’s move is rooted in apartheid history, including longstanding ties between Palestinians’ and Black South Africans’ liberation struggle. Analysts also suggest it’s part of the BRICS-country’s challenge to the US-dominated international order. Both Israel and the US have denied the genocide charges. [AP + FPIF + The Guardian + The Guardian + Africa is a Country + Euronews + Vox + Africanews]
Plus:
Israeli calls for Gaza’s ethnic cleansing are only getting louder - The Washington Post
UN humanitarian chief calls Gaza 'uninhabitable' 3 months into Israel-Hamas war - AP News
GAZA: More than 10 children a day lose a limb in three months of brutal conflict - ReliefWeb
👤 OPINION | I’ve always helped the victims of war. Why am I shunned for helping people in Gaza? - Paul Spiegel for The Guardian
HOUSEKEEPING NOTE
This newsletter comes in two editions, both focused on interconnected and pressing issues for humanity—development, health, environment, human rights. The VIEW offers insight and news briefings for a rounded take on current affairs, and the MEDIA edition is full of opportunities and resources for journalists or anyone else interested in communication work.
Signing up to WorldWise grants access to both editions automatically, but you can also subscribe or unsubscribe to one specific section—there’s a handy how-to here.
MEDIA | working communications
If you find yourself in New York City some time from this coming Friday to mid-March, treat yourself to a visit to the Jack Shainman Gallery in TriBeCa for the immersive video installation Broken Spectre by Richard Mosse. Filmed in the Amazon Basin, the work is a unique audiovisual take on the destruction of the world’s largest rainforest. Read a review by The New York Times—one of many positive reviews—and my science-focused take in Undark magazine (or a more detailed version below).
Plus: There’s still time to catch some of the opportunities shared in the last MEDIA post of 2023 before they close—and keep an eye out for more to come in the next edition or our LinkedIn page.