DAVID ADAMS speaks with Micah’s Ben Thurley about the new Sustainable Development Goals…
Fifteen years after the unveiling of the Millennium Development Goals – a series of eight benchmarks aimed at everything from halving extreme poverty through to halting the spread of AIDS and achieving universal primary education around the world by this year, the United Nations last month adopted a new series of 17 goals with the aim of furthering and expanding upon progress made.
Known as the Sustainable Development Goals, the 17 new goals – which break down into 169 specific targets and come with the deadline of 2030 – will provide a new focus in the fight to end poverty and inequality and create a more sustainable world. “The new agenda is a promise by leaders to all people everywhere,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after the UN’s 193 member states adopted the goals last month. “It is an agenda for people, to end poverty in all its forms – an agenda for the planet, our common home.”
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NEW GOALS: The United Nations headquarters in New York lit up ahead of the adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by the General Assembly last month. PICTURE: UN Photo/Cia Pak The Sustainable Development GoalsGoal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhereGoal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agricultureGoal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all agesGoal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for allGoal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girlsGoal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for allGoal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for allGoal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for allGoal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovationGoal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countriesGoal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainableGoal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable developmentGoal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity lossGoal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levelsGoal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the Global Partnership for Sustainable DevelopmentSource: UN |
One of the Christian organisations which has long been campaigning for the MDGs to be met has been Micah Challenge, an international coalition of churches and Christian groups.
Now relaunched as Micah with the aim of continuing to raise a “voice for global justice and a world free from poverty”, the organisation, says national coordinator Ben Thurley, is broadly supportive of the new goals which will continue to focus world attention on addressing poverty and justice issues.
Mr Thurley says that while Millennium Development Goals had resulted in substantial progress being made on some issues – such as access to clean water dramatically improving child survival with the result that 19,000 fewer children under the age of five were now dying every day when compared with 20 years ago – the results overall were a “mixed bag” with much work still be done.
While all of the MDGs are represented in the new goals, Mr Thurley says that “some have changed slightly, many of them for the better”.
For example, while the MDG education goal was mainly about increasing enrolment in schools, he says the SDG goal also provides a focus on other kinds of learning such as early childhood and vocational learning and places a higher emphasis on the practical outcomes from education.
“So I think there’s some improvements in the goals…” he says. “And some of the goals that were just minor targets – (for example) that goal around improving lives for slum dwellers which was just a target in Goal 7 – that’s now elevated to a goal of its own, Goal 11, and some of the issues around environmental sustainability that were also just sub-targets in Goal 7 now have goals – Goal 14 and 15, Goal 12…
“I think a really positive thing as well is the division of poverty and hunger – which were all together in Goal 1 of the MDGs…is a real step forward as well, in clarity and focus.”
Mr Thurley says that having goals has been a useful way of keeping the world’s focus on issues like poverty and has provided a means for civil society to hold governments accountable. “It gives an accountability mechanism, a focusing mechanism and a sort of platform for collaboration and sharing,” he says. “I think that’s the main strength (of having goals).”
He adds that while of the new SDG targets are “pretty specific and time-bound and measurable”, others appear more visionary or aspirational. “The risk there is that the ones that can be measured get focused on and the ones that are more aspiration just get quietly dropped off the agenda.”
Mr Thurley believes the SDGs are achieveable and says the first target of Goal 1 – to eradicate extreme poverty, for example, is the “absolute bare minimum” the world should be doing to address poverty.
“I’ve seen people saying zero poverty by 2030 but what the SDGs are committing to is roughly nobody living below that $US1.25 a day poverty line. That’s not really a poverty line; that’s an absolute…destitution line so that really ought to be the absolute bare minimum of our ambition.”
He also notes that while the goals are achieveable, “they are not achieveable on a business as usual trajectory”. “If we just continue with assuming that certain kinds of economic activity with a little bit of aid around the edges are going to lead to a reduction of poverty, then we won’t see it. We actually need really substantial new efforts and I think those can be generated. I think the Sustainable Development Goals give us some focus and an all-encompassing vision for a better world, a world that is more sustainable for everybody. If we grab hold of that, I think that can lead us towards making those additional investments and changes…”
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PRAYER VIGILS TO BE PART OF THIS YEAR’S VOICES FOR JUSTICE Micah is holding its annual Voices for Justice in Canberra this weekend which will once again see hundreds of Christians gather from around the nation to speak with and lobby politicians. This year, for the first time, the event will include a night-time prayer vigil on the lawns outside Parliament House as well as a series of prayer vigils being held at churches and other locations around the country at the same time. “(W)hen we want to speak out, the first person that we cry out to for justice for the poor is to God, the God of justice and grace,” explains Micah’s national coordinator Ben Thurley. “And so incorporating prayer…into what we do together in the nation’s capital just seemed like fundamentally bringing together faith and action and the heart of our conviction that God is concerned about these issues and God longs for…hungry people to be filled, for poor people to have their rights protected and so on. So bringing that together just seemed really, really important…” He says the night-time prayer vigil – which will be held on 12th October – also captures the symbolism “light in darkness”. “The opportunity that we have as a church and then as a nation to shed a little bit of light, to be a little bit of a force for good in the world…And we just want to invite politicians – who we think have a really high calling to protect the common good, to protect the rights of poor and the needy – we want to call them back to their highest calling and say ‘We want to pray for you, we want to stand with you, it’s a really tricky, challenging job that you have but we want to draw your vision higher than just your electorate, the next election and so on; we want to draw your vision to the highest calling that you have’…” ~ www.micahchallenge.org.au/vigils – DAVID ADAMS |
“But…the obligation is on churches, civil society organisations, governments and other institutions to maintain the focus and to remind people, not just of specific individual goals, but what is the picture that we’re working towards overall.”
Mr Thurley says this can mean reminding people of the individual choices they can make, both in giving and in consuming.
“If we purchase products that are more ethically and environmentally sustainably produced, we’re actually making a contribution to those goals…” he says.
“And, of course, we all have that power of our voice – where those opportunities come up for Australia as a country or Australian corporations…to make a contribution to tackling these issues. We have an opportunity to raise our voice in a way that can influence that process as well. So I think there are a lots of opportunities (and) we do need to break them down into ‘What’s the thing that I can do that makes a contribution to this part of the puzzle?’ that is itself making a contribution to the bigger picture.”
In addition, Mr Thurley notes that for Christians the goals of the MDGs and the SDGs reflect the hope of their faith.
“Christians already have this vision of an abundant life of hope and dignity for all people that we long for and we know God longs for and so, bringing the plans of nations a little bit in line with what God hopes for the world that He created, I think, is a wonderful opportunity for Christians to be at the forefront of speaking our in support of these kinds of actions.”
Mr Thurley says the past 10 years of the Micah Challenge campaign have seen a lot more Australian churches and individual Christians “really catching hold of this vision of…using their voice to speak up for the rights of the poor and the needy and influencing our nation in order to influence the world”. “We obviously want to see that continue.”
He adds that while Australia’s aid program – which has suffered large cuts in recent years – remains an important focus of the Micah campaign, over the 10 years there’s also been a growing understanding of the role issues such as conflict, multi-national corporations’ tax dodging or environmental degradation play in causing or ensuring poverty.
“We don’t just want to speak out on aid – we’ll continue to do that – but we also want to speak out on all of those contributors to poverty,” he says. “And as much as possible we want to get to those root causes and find the opportunities that we have to make a difference.”
~ www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
