The 2019 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) report concludes that “no country is on track to meeting all the goals” of the 15- year project to end poverty. Indeed, the report acknowledges actual retreat in environmental areas, notably the threatened extinction of a million species and that “we are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.” In this short essay, I can only outline the SDG project, summarize the overall findings for sub-Saharan Africa, those specifically for Kenya, and express my fundamental reservations about the way the annual reports are structured and the findings publicized.
The Sustainable Development Goals project is a massive undertaking of the United National acting on behalf of its 193 members to achieve 17 key development goals by 2030. It is a successor, expansion, and enlargement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) initiative in place from 2000 to 2015. The 17 goals include ending poverty and hunger and achieving good health, education, clean water, sanitation, affordable and clean energy, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, “responsible” consumption and production, climate action (including aquatics and land use), peace, justice, strong institutions, and partnerships to pursue all these ends.
Progress in meeting the goals is measured by empirical indicators for each goal totalling 230 indicators. Responsibility for action rests with each country individually supported developed country and private funding. Each highly detailed annual report is prepared under the auspices of teams of experts known as the SDG Network. The annual reports track each country’s progress on all goals and on all 230 indicators, including whether trends lines on each goal and indicator are positive, steady state or negative. Countries are ranked on their overall progress.
It is unsurprising that less than halfway from 2015 to 2030 progress toward the SDGs is uneven, mixed, and in some cases negative and trending downward. Starting from the premise that market forces alone will not result in achieving the SDGs, the Report identifies six “transformations” that are necessary to, “leave no one behind” in reaching the 17 goals: governmental intervention in education (including gender equality), interventions in health and well-being, investments in energy decarbonization and sustainable industry, interventions in sustainable food, land, water and oceans, investments in sustainable cities and communities, and harnessing the digital revolution for sustainable development. Troubling to me in these requisite interventions and investments is the absence of guidelines strategies, resources and support for mobilizing and implementing them.
For each world region the Report places each country each country in one of four categories on each SDG objective: making significant progress toward the 2030 goal, or experiencing challenges, significant challenges, or major challenges standing in the way of reaching the target by 2030. For sub-Saharan Africa the findings are generally discouraging. On eleven of the SDGs, almost all countries are seen as still encountering major challenges: on poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, water and sanitation, clean energy, employment and economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequality, sustainable cities and communities. Only Seychelles achieved satisfactory progress on affordable and clean energy. These judgments cast in more sober and considered perspective a prominent tendency to equate the continent’s strong GDP growth rates in this century with sustainable, multisectoral and inclusive development.
On the four environmental SDGs, sustainable production and consumption, water quality, land use and climate action the report acknowledges noteworthy efforts and some progress against significant or even major challenges. Fifteen countries are seen as making significant progress on sustainable production and consumption including Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Sudan. Another handful are cited on climate action, including, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Only Burkina Faso is cited on land management and none on water. All are adjudged to be confronting major challenges on peace, justice and on institutions on which other observers express more measured judgments.
Kenya ranks 125th out of 162 countries overall on SDG progress just ahead of Rwanda and Tanzania. It is seen has having made some progress only on sustainable production and consumption, and against significant challenges, and facing major challenges on all the other SDGs.
Although it is a given that patterns of progress or lack of on each SDG influence those on other SDGs to varying extents, presentation of the progress on the four environmental SDGs only as separate challenges does not acknowledge the extent to which they bear crucially on all the others. As one U.S. state governor put it recently, if significant, transformative progress is not made on these environmental challenges, nothing else matters. Progress on each SDG should include specific estimates of environmental mitigation and adaptation bearing upon it.
Moreover, insufficient priority has been given to environmental awareness and education so that government, civil society, and private sector coordination can effectively address the interfaces between environmental mitigation on truly sustainable development can occur. (
— Writer is professor of Political Science Emeritus, and a professorial lecturer for the African Studies Program at the John Hopkins University
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