Schlagwort: Covid-19

  • The 2030 Agenda: It’s Governance

    The 2030 Agenda: It’s Governance

    Photo: Cubes of some sustainable development goals with people in the background, Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development - Day 3
    © SDG Action Campaign on Flickr

    In the last couple of years, the reassessment of the Sustainable Development Agenda has become more relevant. As the world enters a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, characterised by lower numbers of infections and deaths, the apparition of new variants of the virus, and considerable economic and social challenges, several issues have become more urgent. These include the adaptation capabilities and resilience that are required of societies in the face of social isolation and economic conversion policies; the realisation that mental health is as important as physical health; the wider inequalities affecting the young and women regarding poverty, lack of decent work, and the burden of childcare; the difficulties of ensuring access to technology; and the impact of these matters in our (changed) expectations on the State. These factors have emphasised that the Sustainable Development Agenda is ultimately a governance agenda, in the sense that they overcome the usual governability concerns with a focus that identifies interdependencies with non-governmental actors.

    The post pandemic evaluation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has produced a continuum of positions, ranging from the reiteration of the Goals as the blueprint and “compass” for “building forward better” , to the call for their substitution by a “post 2030 utopia”. As it is always the case with complex problems, the solution lies somewhere in the middle, developing sophisticated approaches that allow making the necessary adjustments without compromising the improvements already made.

    Between two harmful extremes

    The “middle approach” is typical of governance dynamics. By this I do not mean that SDGs are a good governance agenda – that is, one that focuses on voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, governmental effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and the control of corruption, as the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators propose. Rather governance in the sense that Sustainable Development requires the cooperation of governments, civil society, and private companies to deal with complex or wicked problems. In its most fundamental, governance is formed by the co-definition of shared goals and the inter-organisational and inter-sectoral processes to achieve them. It requires effective governments, but it goes beyond them, incorporating non-governmental actors that behave as stakeholders in the solution of common problems. It usually implies flexible arrangements, typically networks; but includes wider socio-political, institutional, and civic-culture frameworks that enable a common understanding of the problem, processes of co-construction of solutions, and rules of the game that maintain conflict at manageable levels.

    Governance theories have been criticised for not being consolidated enough to offer effective analytical tools to actually solve problems; being one of the most important how to ensure cooperation among actors and coherence among objectives. The do-it-by-yourself definition of the national indicators for SDGs assumes, too easily, that all the actions conducted by public, social, and private actors will virtuously contribute to the solution of the problems behind the indicators.  Advancement in one SDG, however, does not necessarily ensure advancement in the rest of them, despite the argument posed by the United Nations regarding “the interlinkages and integrated nature of the Sustainable Development Goals”.Governance is not only “technical”; it requires a new style of leadership that recognises the political dimension of cooperation and policy coherence. The tensions between traditional rule of law solutions (mostly hierarchical, based on the implementation of conventionality control measures), on the one hand, and the more selective approach of SDGs (mostly horizontal, based on inter-organisational cooperation), on the other, offer a good example of the political nature of governance. Generating a more or less common approach to Sustainable Development requires a combination of traditional and new solutions, in a mix that varies according to context.

    Towards the post-2030 Agenda

    The governance approach to Sustainable Development recognises that, in spite of the possible measures and indicators that can be reached and adjusted with time, it remains a horizon that can never be completely fulfilled. In that sense, at least in a very fundamental dimension, SDGs will remain a project of multi-level governance with different co-existing conditions and speeds. By implication, Sustainable Development as governance entails the acknowledgement of the partial usefulness of governance literature to deal with complex problems, addressing the challenges of steering, the re-definition of new priorities among the SDGs in the post-pandemic world, the assignation of funds to those new priorities, and the discussion – again – on how to adjust the right indicators to empower public, social, and private actors as the different SDGs develop in space and time.

    The future of a post-pandemic 2030 Agenda might require a reclassification of priorities, the effective increase in coordination capabilities, and fostering cooperation in the lines described here. This, in turn, calls for the rethinking of the integrated nature of SDGs that assumes that the 17 Goals are equally important, in all places, all the time.

  • Elusive vaccine solidarity – A long shadow over globalisation

    Photo: Lady Justice with scales, Image to picture global vaccination justice

    If there ever was a litmus test on whether the world would cooperate in solidarity in the midst of the greatest global challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic provided such a test given its transferability across borders and the need for a rapid global response. In this blog post I argue that the onset and response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a watershed event that has significantly – or perhaps irreversibly – ushered the world where cooperation will be more challenging than ever before.

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  • Europe shouldn’t underestimate the global appeal of China’s vaccine diplomacy

    Photo: COVID-19-Vaccine in front of the Chinese Flag
    By: Marco Verch, Quelle: https://ccnull.de/foto/china-help-world-fight-coronavirus-with-new-vaccine/1018901

    Western media coverage tends to downplay the success of China’s vaccine development and vaccine diplomacy, but Europe should not underestimate the appeal of Beijing’s offer. The failure of rich countries to address equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines and the West’s absence from the vaccine diplomacy game has provided China with a reputational win.

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  • Beyond vested interests: Reforming international co-operation post COVID-19

    World with a FFP2 Mask
    By cromaconceptovisual on pixabay

     

    The world is now in the eighth month of the COVID-19 pandemic. When this was written, the highest daily infection rates were recorded in India, the US and Brazil, while the highest death rates (per 100,000 inhabitants) were registered in Europe and the Americas. Africa so far has not turned into a hotspot of the disease – good news that is attributed to effective public health workers and Africa’s young population. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare weaknesses and blind spots in societies, economies and policies worldwide. Notably that public services the world over take too long to understand their new responsibilities under changed circumstances and as a result act too slowly, at the expense of the most vulnerable. For example, infection and death rates are high in OECD countries despite good health care systems. And insufficient digital infrastructure and access in public administrations, schools and households, exacerbated by social inequalities, affect access to education in Germany or in Latin American countries alike. (mehr …)

  • Fair trade and covid-19: Resisting resilience?

    Photo: Plant through a hole in a boat, By Kim Thomas on Pixabay

    New buzzword – why so popular?

    Resilience has become increasingly popular in all dimensions of our lives and also in different academic disciplines ranging from ecology to psychology and social sciences. The resilience turn has also reached the EU: first in EU development and humanitarian aid policy in 2012, then European neighbourhood policy in 2015, after which it became the centerpiece of the EU’s Global Strategy of 2016.

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