2023-07-02 07:00:47
The world is facing many challenges, between the impacts of inflation and high interest rates, the lingering effects of the covid pandemic, or geopolitical conflicts such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Amid all this, 2023 marks the halfway point for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a sprawling list of 169 targets in which world leaders have promised everything to everyone.
Governments around the planet have promised to end hunger, poverty and disease, stop climate change, corruption and war, while ensuring quality education and every other good thing you can think of, including apples. organic and community gardens for all.
Not surprisingly, the world is failing on almost all of its promises. We’re halfway there, but nowhere near halfway.
We must do better.
Firstly, we need a better debate on priorities. My group of experts works with governments around the world, from Uganda to Tonga to Uzbekistan, to help them make decisions about national spending by researching which policies bring the greatest benefits for each Argentine peso spent. If there is political interest, we have the resources to do it for Argentina as well. The starting point is a national conversation about top priorities.
Secondly, we have to rescue the global objectives and end the wavering. As resources are scarce everywhere, we have to prioritize what is most relevant.
Unfortunately, many world leaders continue to believe that the way forward is to go to the UN later this year and make bombastic speeches about the importance of keeping every one of the 169 promises, then suggest that only by aiming for the stars will we achieve anything.
But wishful thinking will not change the fact that there is no way to deliver all these promises on time. UN Secretary General António Guterres is now implausibly calling for a $500bn annual stimulus fund for the SDGs, a figure that is several times what rich countries already spend on foreign aid. It is something that is not going to happen.
Even if taxpayers around the world could be convinced to pay the requested half trillion dollars, it would still be twenty times insufficient. It is estimated that fulfilling all that was promised would cost between 15 and 20 billion dollars a year. Currently, less than a quarter is funded, and most of that spending goes to rich countries, not poor countries, where development is most needed.
This leaves an annual deficit of between 10 and 15 trillion dollars, which is equivalent to the total tax collection of 13 trillion dollars of all the governments of the world. It is a fiscal loophole that simply cannot be closed.
We need to move from empty rhetoric and trillion dollar promises to real and efficient trillion dollar action. It’s time to focus our attention where it matters most.
The truth is that, among the SDGs, some promises do not have cost-effective and powerful solutions. While other promises involve investments that are incredibly effective and can achieve staggering gains of a few billion dollars a year.
Take the crucial promise of the SDGs to improve education. Research has consistently shown cheap and efficient ways to increase learning. Tablets with educational software used for just one hour a day for a year cost just $20 per student and result in learning that would normally take three years. Semi-structured lesson plans can make teachers teach more efficiently, doubling learning outcomes each year for just $10 per student. We could dramatically improve the education of nearly half a billion primary school students in the poorest half of the world for less than $10 billion a year. This investment would generate long-term productivity gains worth $65 for every dollar spent.
Or consider the promise to reduce hunger. We need a second Green Revolution. More efficient seeds were created in the 1960s that allowed farmers to produce more food at lower cost. Now the poorest half of the world is in desperate need of agricultural R&D. This spending would reduce malnutrition, help farmers be more productive, and lower food costs. Spending $5.5 billion annually could yield an incredible $184 billion in long-term profit return.
Simple measures to improve conditions around childbirth could save the lives of 166,000 mothers and 1.2 million newborns each year, for less than $5 billion annually.
Economists contributing to the Copenhagen Consensus think tank have identified 12 powerful policies that would bring huge benefits to the SDGs at relatively low costs. You can read more about them in my new book Best Things First. For a total of $35 billion a year, we could do all of the above, plus prevent a million TB deaths a year by 2030, improve land ownership records, boost trade, reduce malaria, enable a Greater circulation of skilled workers to reduce inequality, improve immunization levels, make breakthroughs in child nutrition, and save 1.5 million lives from chronic diseases like hypertension.
In total, these policies can save 4.2 million lives a year and make the poorest world $1.1 trillion more prosperous every year. In economic terms, for every dollar spent, 52 dollars of social benefits will be obtained.
Chasing these 12 phenomenal investments is probably the best thing the world can do this decade.
We should start a national conversation about priorities in Argentina. And we should make sure the world has a similar conversation about his many promises. Let’s rescue the SDG agenda and make the most of the seven years we have left. Let’s prioritize what will bring the most incredible benefits to the world.
*President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. His most recent book in Spanish is False Alarm: Why Panic Over Climate Change Won’t Save the Planet.
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