This article from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) argues that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are failing not just due to a lack of money, but because the global economic architecture inherently reproduces structural inequalities. Written by Fadhel Kaboub, a member of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, the piece asserts that the modern rules of trade, finance, and taxation are evolved versions of colonial-era systems designed for extraction rather than equitable development.
The Core Problem: Three Structural Deficiencies
1) Developing countries remain trapped at the bottom of global supply chains because of three core gaps that drive external debt and stall progress:2)Food Deficits: Dependence on food imports instead of localized food sovereignty.
3)Energy Deficits: Relying on imported fossil fuels rather than renewable energy infrastructure.
Manufacturing Value-Added Deficits: Exporting raw materials and importing high-value manufactured goods and technologies.
The Solution: Structural Transformation
Pouring cash into the current model will not work. Instead, the author advocates for a New International Economic Order built on:1)Strategic Investments: Prioritizing agroecology, renewable energy sovereignty, and clean public infrastructure.
2)Green Industrial Policies: Advancing regional South-South and South-North collaborations to boost local manufacturing.
3)Systemic Overhaul: Moving away from incremental financial aid adjustments toward total structural decolonization of international economic rules.
You can read the whole article here: https://www.un.org/en/desa/the-sdgs-need-more-than-financing-they-need-structural-transformation
Niloufar, thank you for sharing this. The article identifies genuine problems, including dependence on imported food and energy and exporting raw materials rather than manufactured goods.
ReplyDeleteBut the explanation is depressingly familiar. The West is again the culprit and poor countries the victims. Corruption, poor governance and destructive economic policies get virtually no attention.
And where is economic growth? Without rising productivity, profitable enterprises, employment and a growing tax base, there is no development.
Can anyone remember economic growth being discussed in UNICEF? If it was mentioned, it was as a capitalist poison. We were much more comfortable discussing wealth distribution, while no one gave a thought to where it would come from.
To be fair, economic growth did matter a lot to us in one area: the steady growth of our already too generous, tax-free salaries.
Hi Thomas, while I could understand your comments and mostly agree with the points that you make. However, I am trying to figure out the connection between UN salaries to the SDGs?
DeleteThere is no direct connection. We often spoke about equality and redistribution, but not about how poor countries could create wealth through economic growth. Meanwhile, one form of economic growth that we welcomed was the growth of our own salaries. Perhaps the irony was too subtle.
DeleteI always thought our formula for core funding (RR) was off - while initially a good idea - over time it became meaningless - as those countries that were doing worse after endless decades of investment got more RR than those that did well. I was in Pakistan and their backslide on key indicators means we got more RR all the time - and yet that RR was not going to change the situation. Of course this is all based on the false premise that core funding somehow moves the needle on child indicators - or that any ODA or UN or UNICEF budget moves the needle when it is such a small amount vs the national budgets of countries we work in (not of donor GDP but of the national budget in say - Pakistan or Tanzania - where the UN is a mere single digit of the budget). Ownership, revenue collection and allocation changes needle.
Delete"Ownership, revenue collection, and allocation change needles," but can't be achieved without GDP growth. That said, some African countries received a very high percentage of their national budget in aid. Tanzania is a case in point. But it did not do much for Tanzania's economic development
DeleteAt its peak, aid amounted to roughly 50% of Tanzania’s national budget—around 2001. It remained close to 45–47% during the following several years.
DeleteSince independence, Tanzania has probably received more aid than any other African country. Yet its income per person has fallen dramatically relative to the world average. After more than sixty years of very high levels of aid, it remains one of the world’s poorest countries.
DeleteAid sustained Ujamaa's inefficiencies. Aid shielded governments from the consequences of their failures. Aid fostered dependence and weakened accountability.
A major purpose of aid was to promote democracy, human rights, and good governance. Yet after sixty years, a rigged election awarded the president 98 percent of the vote, and her security forces killed thousands of their own people protesting the results.
By any objective measure, Tanzania’s enormous aid experiment can only be judged a monumental failure.
Apparently, even the much-heralded UNICEF nutritional program in the southern highlands failed.
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