A lesson should be learnt from the failures of the MDGs as Pakistan
LAHORE: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), officially known as Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, are an intergovernmental set of aspiration goals with 169 targets. Spearheaded by the United Nations, the Goals are contained in paragraph 54 of the United Nations Resolution A/RES/70/1 of September 25, 2015. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in the aftermath of the Millennium Development Goals is, indeed, a step in the right direction — in other words, sustainability. The seriousness of this is quite evident from the fact that the Punjab government has established and inaugurated a fully dedicated support unit for the implementation of the SDGs at the grass-roots level. It is quite pertinent to note that it is the Punjab province only that has shown maturity and candidness towards its adoption and implementation and this must be appreciated as well. The point here is not to undermine the efforts of the Punjab government in its comparative performance relative to its counterparts, but the efforts must go ahead from building units and delivering at the lowest levels.
A lesson should be learnt from the failures of the MDGs as Pakistan, as a whole, was unable to achieve only two or three goals altogether, which included education and infant mortality. This time, it’s a new beginning and the world is working hard to bring about financial, social and environmental sustainability for the sake of its future generations. Half of our time is wasted in planning to build units and centres for its facilitation, and the rest of the time is spent thinking to streamline those newly built centres and institutions to align them with the main objective to serve its rationale. Therefore, the government must learn from its mistakes from the past. The SDGs require participatory effort from all sectors of civil society, including the general public, for whom this agenda has been framed. To achieve objectives like no hunger and no poverty, the government cannot work on its own. It will have to build synergy from all state institutions and civil society, or else the path towards sustainability will not be more than just utilisation of funds on paper. This time, it’s all about sustainability of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Muhammad Fahad Anwer
Published in The Express Tribune, September 25th, 2016.
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