The basic argument I want to develop in this article is that the new post-2015 global agenda is a unique opportunity for boosting international cooperation and making progress towards inclusive and environmentally sustainable development. For this purpose, it is necessary to (a) overcome the conceptual, political and institutional barriers in integrating human development and environmental sustainability and (b) improve coordination and coherence between domestic policies and external relations.

I. Introduction: From MDGs to a Universal Set of Transformative Goals

In September 2013, the UN adopted a decision to work towards a new post-2015 development agenda that should “reinforce the international community’s commitment to poverty eradication and sustainable development” and that “integrates in a balanced manner the three dimensions of sustainable development. This coherent approach involves working towards a single framework and set of goals, universal in nature and applicable to all countries, while taking account of differing national circumstances and respecting national policies and priorities”.[①] This wording echoes the outcome document of the Rio 20 summit in 2012 which had mentioned universal Sustainable Development Goals that should “address and incorporate in a balanced way all three dimensions of sustainable development and their interlinkages” and should “be coherent with and integrated into the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015”.[②]

This decision is interpreted to mean that the new global agenda for sustainable development will build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) but will have one key feature distinguishing it from the MDGs: the new set of goals will be universal in nature, providing guidance for related domestic policies of all UN member states.

This is an important departure from the MDGs, which set quantified and time-bound policy goals for developing countries, and included industrialised nations in a supporting role through development assistance. The new vision – with the potential to reduce barriers both among countries and among sectors – is a logical and needed step. Yet there are at least two ambitious changes required to ensure an integrated set of goals:
(i) a change of perspective by negotiators, who must bridge the gap between conventional approaches to economic development and poverty reduction on the one hand, and to environmental sustainability on the other;
(ii) and a whole-of-government approach, instead of being the exclusive remit of ministries of environment and/or development cooperation, which implies a stronger integration between domestic and foreign policies.

In this sense, the new post-2015 agenda offers the opportunity to renew our perspectives on and expectations from international cooperation. The MDGs were defined by an expert  group from the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, and acceptance of developing countries depended on official development assistance (ODA) provided by bilateral and multilateral donors.[③] This will not be possible for the post-2015 agenda as it will have to reflect both the power shifts in the global economy and in global politics and the new global challenges which require universal policy adjustments. This sense goes beyond the political elites of the rising powers and the middle-income countries that have benefited from economic globalization and also influences thinking in poorer countries. As Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stated at the European Development Days in November 2013: “We will only sign up to this Agenda if it is meaningful for our policies and objectives”.

In May 2013, representatives of a panel consisting of high-ranking politicians and academics from all over the world handed the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) a proposal for a new global development agenda which he himself had commissioned. The panel included personalities such as Germany’s former President Horst Köhler, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Indonesia’s President Susilo Yudhoyono and Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. China was represented by Wang Yingfan, a former Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations and Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress from 2003 to 2008; Brazil by its Environment Minister, Izabella Teixeira, Mexico by its former Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa, and India by Abhijit Banerjee, an internationally renowned researcher on poverty reduction.

This report makes a strong statement for a universal set of goals that provides guidance for the domestic and foreign policies of all countries, including the rich. If combating extreme poverty was the sole objective of the post-2015 agenda, that would not be necessary – but the agenda is to be far more comprehensive in content than its predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals. The panel clearly links the eradication of extreme poverty by 2030 with the protection of the climate and the environment, if social and economic improvements are not to endanger future prosperity. Nor does the Panel beat about the bush when it comes to governance, saying that good governance, rule of law, freedom from violence and effective institutions are vital for human and sustainable development. It also states that global goals need to be specified, quantified and connected with timelines at national levels, thus taking into account the diverse conditions and capacities in a heterogeneous world as ours.

These three characteristics – universality, integration, and flexibility – make the report an important contribution to the post-2015 process and turn it into a recommended read.

II. Integrated Vision on Human and Environmentally Sustainable Development

The idea of sustainable development as something that should include both socio-economic and environmental concerns is not new. The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment focused global attention on this interdependency, noting that “…man’s capability to transform his surroundings, if used wisely, can bring to all peoples the benefits of development... Wrongly or heedlessly applied, the same power can do incalculable harm to human beings and the human environment.” The first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 brought this into the mainstream. Even though environmental issues have gained more prominence since, “the environment” has often been seen by policy makers as an ancillary goal to other more important concerns. Our development aims have been decidedly focused on economic growth; goals for environmental sustainability have often been construed as safeguards external to or constraining economic performance, rather than something integral to it.

The idea that environmental concerns can be subordinated to economic goals disregards the fact that our society and economy are bound by a natural biophysical system. Natural resources and ecosystems are the bases not only of all material wealth, but a precondition for our very existence. We draw on nature to fuel our economic growth, and depend on its proper functioning to provide vital resources and to maintain conditions suitable for our success – and indeed our survival. Yet our approach to environmental sustainability has thus far been one of establishing safeguards to mitigate harmful impacts or of offsetting such impacts through measures judged to be sufficiently compensatory to maintain the state of the environment at acceptable levels. This presumes that we possess adequate knowledge and certainty to define “safe limits” of environmental disturbance and degradation; while arguably our only certainty is that we do not. A safeguarding approach sets the environment not as a criterion for successful development, but as an appendix to the principal goal of socio-economic growth. This approach is expressed in noble actions such as environmental impact assessments, establishment of set-asides and biodiversity offsets, but is fundamentally flawed in that it relegates the environment to a secondary concern. This approach is mirrored in the institutional arrangements for achieving sustainable development. Instead of pursuing a whole-of-government approach, Ministers of Environment – often the least-influential members of cabinet – are in the lead, seconded by development agencies in the case of OECD countries. Similarly, within the UN, the environment holds an inferior institutional position.

Given the effective decoupling of environment from development, it is not surprising that conventional approaches to sustainable growth have failed to account for and address the systemic and increasingly complex environmental challenges we face. Nor is it contested that widespread environmental degradation will continue under business as usual. Human activities have put regional- and planetary-scale systems at a risk of crossing physical thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change.[④] Meanwhile, a growing – and ever wealthier – population will greatly increase global demands for energy, food and water, exacerbating sustainability challenges. We must question the wisdom of the conventional approaches that have led us to transgressing these planetary boundaries. Recent evidence of the rapid decline of ecosystems vital to our survival, as well as uncertainty concerning “safe limits” to Earth system change, suggest that environmental integrity should be at the core of our development agenda.

If policies and institutions neglect the relationship between environment and development, they will fail to meet the needs of a growing world economy.[⑤] For instance, efforts to reduce carbon emissions by switching from petrol to biofuels have diverted food crops for use as fuel, placing additional pressures on global grain markets. Integrating environment and development agendas is not only challenged by path-dependent production systems and technologies, longstanding institutional divides, and interest groups, but also by incompatible decision horizons. Poverty alleviation carries an appropriate sense of urgency: solutions to human suffering are required now, even if we need to incur environmental costs to meet them. The environmental sustainability agenda operates on a different basis: the welfare of people today is important, but the welfare of future generations matters too; future fates depend on present decisions. There are thus two good reasons why merging the development and environment agendas is not only possible but essential as well.

First, the environment is a foundation for development NOW. Deteriorating ecosystem services and degrading natural resources limit our ability to reduce poverty and secure economic development. Natural ecosystems such as oceans, forests, lakes and rivers provide food, raw materials and livelihoods for billions of people, and loss of these ecosystems in recent years is already costing billions to communities and economies.[⑥] Moreover, the degradation of natural ecosystems hits the poorest the hardest. For example, it has been estimated that ecosystem services account for at least half of the “GDP of the Poor” – a huge share of the sources of livelihood of poor households worldwide.[⑦] Preserving the health and resilience of the environment is thus fundamental to meaningful progress toward any human development goals.

Second, the environmental consequences of improving development outcomes today affect our ability to do so in the FUTURE. Depending on how we pursue development goals, we can either threaten or enhance natural resources and ecosystem services and similarly determine long-term potential for improving and sustaining human livelihoods. For example, improving access to electricity in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa is widely seen as a desirable development outcome. But achieving such a goal by extracting and burning coal contributes to global warming that will ultimately put people in those very places at risk of catastrophic extremes in climate, environmental risks and natural resource scarcities.

Setting development goals that do not take into account such consequences merely postpones difficult decisions, threatening the very premise of sustainable development. Deferring the environmental consequences of our development decisions to a later date (the “grow now, clean later” maxim) is dangerous, for two reasons: First, because delay might be prohibitively expensive: proactive measures now are often more cost-effective than emergency responses later. Second, because the consequences of environmental degradation could be irreversible and undermine the well-being and security of future generations. Conversely, the purpose of integrating development and environment goals is to take the vicious cycle of environmental degradation and impaired development and make it virtuous, leading to both greater short-term efficiency and long-term sustainability in improving human well-being. For sustainable development to succeed on any time horizon, sound integration of the environment in development efforts must thus be our guiding principle.

III. Domestic and Foreign Policies

In the former section I argued that an integrated policy design is needed if we want to promote human development within the limits of the Earth’s environmental carrying capacity.[⑧] In a globalized economy, such a change of domestic policies can have beneficial effects elsewhere as it reduces exports of toxic waste or of greenhouse gas emissions. But it may also have negative economic effects in the short term as it may reduce imports of feedstock for intensive cattle-breeding (due to reduced intake of meat). Biofuels illustrate the manifold consequences of a switch to green domestic policies without reflecting their international impacts sufficiently: on the one hand, demand for biofuels leads to increasing conversion of forests and rangelands into agricultural area and displaces peasants from their land or restricts their access to forests. On the other hand, a reduction of biofuel imports may lead to foreign exchange losses in developing countries and to income losses of farmers.

To maximize external benefits and minimize negative impacts, such a policy reset towards environmental and social sustainability needs to consider the international dimension from the start. This will require impact research beyond national borders, international dialogue processes and a proper policy design which aspires to achieve more coherence between domestic policies and their external impacts. Thus, the transformation process towards inclusive and green development will require a different approach to international relations, foreign policies and global governance and cooperation.

These reflections make clear that in rich countries, the new global development agenda is not something that can be entrusted only to development and international environment policies, as has been the case with the MDGs and the Rio 20 conference. In Germany, the federal government adopted a decision in August 2013 supporting an integrated agenda with universal goals. The decision also states that this may have financial implications beyond cooperation in the field of development and environment, as potentially many departments will have to make contributions. But still, the decision does not yet spell out specifically how Germany intends to connect domestic policies with the post-2015 agenda.

The most challenging and important task for all countries will be to translate the adopted universal goals into quantified and time-bound domestic goals at the national level. Rich countries will have to manage a two-fold task: first, they will have to define clear targets for change in their domestic policies, and second, they will have to engage in international cooperation towards the global goals. This includes support to developing countries in implementing their domestic policies. Due to their increased economic and political weight, similar expectations exist with regards to a voluntary engagement of rising powers in international cooperation, too.

If Germany intends to play an active part in shaping the global debate that is now emerging, fresh thought must be given not only to improving the blending of inward- and outward-oriented policies and involving international cooperation, but also to the overriding objectives to which competing policies (such as climate and energy) must be subordinated. Both nationally and internationally, Germany can make a very important contribution to this post-2015 global development agenda: with its Energiewende, its transition towards renewable energy technologies and decarbonisation. But it is important for the Energiewende also to be seen as an innovative policy capable of sending out a strong call for global economic structural change and global cooperation, rather than a disadvantage in an economic contest in which the participants are striving to achieve yesterday’s goals.

Conclusion

An agenda geared to sustainability and the blending of global and national policies will require far more investment in global cooperation than we have seen in recent years, despite or because of the financial crisis.

First, it will be very difficult to agree on joint target corridors; and it is an open question whether it makes sense to agree on quantified global targets in all areas. In some cases, the numbers for defining ambitious and significant national policies are known: the IPCC defined already by how much and by when countries need to decarbonise their energy systems, and this provides orientation for national low-carbon strategies. In other areas, we do not know enough yet about such promising scenarios as managing low-carbon agriculture to nurture 9 billion people without threatening biodiversity under conditions of global warming. For there to be effective cooperation with other actors in society, it is therefore necessary to agree on clear, long-term objectives and parameters in each policy field so as to guide search and innovation processes as much as changes in action.

Second, the large, dynamic emerging economies must take responsibility for the sustainable transformation of economic structures today, and not wait for the industrialised countries to show them the way. Otherwise, they run the risk of getting locked into energy- and emission-intensive infrastructure.

Third, inherent in voluntary national targets is the risk of free-riding: everyone hopes that someone else will take the lead. On the other hand, it will not be possible to negotiate formulae for burden-sharing in all areas of activity. This is, however, important at least with regard to those threats to the Earth system which will require rapid and purposeful action by the major polluters if such irreversible damage as climate change and ocean acidification is to be avoided. There is an urgent need for a more precise definition of the cases in which this is necessary and of how the burdens are to be shared.

Source of documents： Global Review