MDGs 2.0: What Goals, Targets, and Timeframe?

Andy Sumner, Jonathan Karver and I have just added to the growing stack of papers and reports on post-2015 with MDGs 2.0: What Goals, Targets and Timeframe?

This paper is a companion to our review of the evidence to date on the impact of the first set of MDGs.  The bottom line of that exercise was ‘not bad for a non-binding declaration of global aspirations, but some design flaws and gaps.’  This paper tries to imagine how to improve the design and reduce the gaps.

The paper suggests the great strength of the original MDGs are their universally agreed time-bound, numerical, simple targets (halve global poverty by 2015 and so on).  We think that this strength should be carried through to any next set –but that does suggest some limits to the goal areas that can be included.  Can you imagine 187 heads of state agreeing to a numerical target on democratic governance, for example?

With that in mind, we come up with an indicative list of areas that might attract widespread consensus and where numerical indicators are available or could be developed.  They cover poverty ($1, $2 and malnutrition), health (life expectancy and child mortality), education (literacy and secondary education), gender (disparity at age five), sustainable development (forest area, alternative energy, GHG emissions, species extinction), peace (military expenditure), infrastructure (mobile signal, improved energy) and development support (duty free quota free trade, 0.7%).

A significant problem with the original MDGs is that global goal language was rapidly applied at the country level.  This set up many countries for failure.  We implement a process of developing country-level forecasts based on past progress to suggest where countries would be under business as usual in 2030, and using those aggregated forecasts to produce ‘stretch goals’ for global progress in 2030.  Our hope is that by transparently building up global goals from country forecasts, the temptation to set ‘one size fits all’ country goals is reduced –and the plausibility of global goals as achievable stretch targets is enhanced.

For all we work through the exercise to the point of suggesting some draft language for a 2015 declaration, the real purpose of the paper is to suggest some ways to think about the goal and target setting process itself.  We hope it is useful and would, of course, love feedback.

Written by Charles Kenny, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development.