How Synergistic Barriers are Affecting Progress on SDGs

Why in News?

• Focusing the lack of progress on various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including biodiversity protection and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, world leaders met at the SDG Summit in New York on September 18 and 19, 2023.
• The summit once again reaffirmed their shared commitment to eradicate poverty and end hunger.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• The SDGs/Global Goals were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.
• The SDGs framework sets targets for 231 unique indicators across 17 SDG goals related to economic development, social welfare, and environmental sustainability, to be met by 2030.
• The 17 SDGs are integrated; they recognise that action in one area will affect outcomes in others, and that development must balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
• Countries have committed to prioritise progress for those who are the farthest behind.
• The creativity, technology, and financial resources from all of society are necessary to achieve the SDGs in every context.

Progress on Sustainable Development Goals Across the Globe

• The SDG summit in New York recognised that the world was on track to meet only 15% of its 169 targets that make up the 17 goals, with quite a few going in reverse gear.
  • To address the concern the leaders committed to an SDG stimulus of $500 billion annually as well as to define an effective debt-relief mechanism for the economically poorest countries.
  • While this political declaration needs to be welcomed as a renewed commitment to Agenda 2030, there is little to inspire confidence that there will be greater progress in the second half of the commitment period.
• A 2023 report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimated the investment gap in SDGs in developing countries to be greater than $4 trillion, which is 70% higher than estimates arrived at in 2014.
• Of this, nearly $2 trillion needs to be directed towards the energy transition alone!
• These figures, representing the estimated sum of investment required by specialised agencies responsible for tracking each SDG seem unachievable, thus rendering the SDGs seemingly unachievable as well.

Identified Dis-Synergies Working as Barriers

• A fundamental statement in the Agenda 2030 document detailing the SDGs recognises the indivisible and integrated nature of the 17 SDGs and their contribution to the three pillars of sustainable development.
• A lot of the academic literature has also focussed on the ‘synergies’ and ‘trade-offs’ that exist in the pursuit of specific SDGs.
• A paper published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified five types of (dis)synergies that can be estimated along the value chain of an SDG intervention:
  • Those arising from resource allocations;
  • Creation of enabling environments;
  • Co-benefits;
  • Cost-effectiveness;
  • And saturation limits.
• The paper was based on pilot studies in 2018 in three countries – Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Malawi that quantified the savings estimates by taking a limited synergistic approach.
• A recently launched U.N. Expert Group Report, entitled ‘Synergy Solutions for a World in Crisis: Tackling Climate and SDG Action Together’, also focuses on the lack of synergistic action in the face of significant evidence.
  • It classifies key barriers to such an approach into knowledge, political and institutional barriers, and economic issues.

Synergistic Barriers Affecting India’s Progress Towards Meeting SDGs

• Ambitious Targets Act as Barriers for Small-Scale Applications
  • Policymaking processes are generally robust, with a clear view on synergistic outcomes, especially when multi-stakeholder approaches to policymaking are practiced.
  • For example, in India, the push for renewable energy started with both energy security and air pollution in focus, and received a push with climate commitments.
  • However, it hasn’t been able to leverage the health benefits arising from lower air pollution to strengthen arguments for greater incentives for renewables.
  • The ambitious renewable energy targets themselves became a barrier for small scale applications due to a mis-alignment of deliverables.
  • While the energy departments had targets in gigawatts, primary health centres had needs in kilowatts
  • And it led to their neglect in energisation, even though the health outcomes could have been very significant.
• Other than that, isolated operations, inadequate cross-departmental data collection and analysis, and an inability to attribute co-benefits to specific actions are all barriers for meeting greater targets.

Suggestions for India to Speed-Up the Process of Achieving SDGs

• Analysis of Institutional Barriers
  • Simply recognising interlinks without a robust analysis and understanding of institutional barriers will not yield the outcomes India desires.
  • There is merit in both assessing as well as addressing barriers identified in the U.N. report in our national context. 
• Synergised Operations Across Departments
  • India must strengthen the environment for synergistic action, and make transparent both the opportunities and limits to synergies arising from SDG interventions.
  • India has made significant progress on both its climate and sustainable development goals.
  • But it still has an uphill task ahead before it can meet all the SDG targets by 2030 as well as its promise to be net-zero by 2070.
• Full Cost Estimation
  • With a deadline less than 50 years away to transform India’s economy, every new investment India initiates today leading to a high-carbon outcome will likely lead to higher dis-synergies or trade-offs in our ability to achieve our energy and climate-justice goals.
  • Establishing the domestic energy resources to enhance resilience to shocks is a worthwhile goal.
  • But at the same time, exploiting those resources without a full cost estimation and synergetic approach including weighing India’s own vulnerability to climate-change impacts is detrimental to both national and global efforts.
  • For example, investing in clean energy options for urban transport could have a significant synergistic impact on air pollution and human health.

Conclusion

• India can require all its resources engaged in SDG reporting to start identifying and developing reporting frameworks on the value created from specific SDG interventions.
• Existing documents and reports on the subject if modified to reflect Indian contexts could provide a useful starting point for this work.

Q1) What are the 5 P's of Sustainable Development Goals?

The 17 SDGs are structured around the five pillars of the 2030 Agenda: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnerships. These 5 Ps highlight how the SDGs are an intertwined framework instead of a group of solo goals.

Q2) What are India’s initiatives towards meeting SDGs?

India follows a holistic approach for achieving the SDGs by implementing a comprehensive array of schemes. Current flagship policies and programmes of Government of India such as Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) have substantially contributed to India’s progress in this regard.

Source: The Hindu