By Stephan Klasen, professor of development economics and empirical economic research at the University of Göttingen

A proposal for internationally coordinated national poverty measurement

“With the High-Level Panel due to report soon on the post-2015 development framework, the debate about goals, targets and indicators will surely intensify. One of the key issues will be how poverty should be considered  in a world following the millennium development goals (MDGs). I will argue here that there is much value in retaining an income-based poverty measure as a target (and indicator), but that we should move away from the $1.25 a day measure, towards a process of global income poverty measurement based on internationally coordinated national poverty measurement.

Why a separate income poverty target?

It is widely agreed by now that poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon that is imperfectly captured by incomes. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI) also now offers a measure of multidimensional poverty available for over 100 developing countries that is roughly comparable and has considerable merit. So why not make poverty reduction the central goal and use the MPI to monitor it?

In my view, one of the great successes of the current MDGs is that they reflect a multidimensional view of poverty in a disaggregated, dashboard approach. The overall goal of the MDGs was sustainable poverty reduction, but there was a dashboard of goals to capture the various dimensions of poverty separately. This not only made the goals very easy to understand, monitor and communicate; it also largely avoided an essentially fruitless discussion about which of these goals should be more important (they are all important) and the acceptable marginal rates of substitution between goals.

Just imagine the MDGs had planned ‘to increase the Human Development Index (HDI) by 30%’. We would have spent years arguing over the precise formulation of the HDI while most of the public would have been left wondering what this was all about. The same would apply if we made the MPI the main indicator for poverty reduction. It would divert attention from doing something about the individual components (health, education and important aspects of living standards) and instead lead to discussions about indicators, cut-offs, weights and aggregation rules. “

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At the event, which took place on May 16 at UN Headquarters, Osorio also said that: a more structural, inclusive and systemic approach was needed to address current and emerging post-2015 challenges; the UN’s ability to mobilise political will and policy-coordination internationally made it a central player in global economic governance; and efforts are needed to make the UN system more coherent, effective and accountable.

Osario also suggested that the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF), put together bi-annually by ECOSOC, and which gathers relevant stakeholders to review development cooperation trends, should expand its role as a driver of greater national and global accountability and coherence. He further highlight the need for an effective sustainable development financing strategy.

Click here to read the full press statement.

“‘Who Will Be Accountable? Human Rights and the Post-2015 Development Agenda’ explains that embedding accountability into the very DNA of the post-2015 sustainable development architecture will be critical to ensure the new plan ensures political commitments made at the international level actually result in policy changes on the ground. The publication examines accountability gaps that have impeded realization of global and national development goals thus far. It highlights shortcomings in the accountability of actors within, above and beyond the state, including the responsibilities of wealthier states, international institutions and the private sector to ensure their policies and practices do not undermine human development and the fulfillment of human rights. It also explains how these shortcomings can be overcome in the design of a new set of post-2015 goals by aligning these more closely with international human rights standards.”

Read the full report here.

“We need a new approach to risk and poverty reduction. Major external risks, such as climate change and food price volatility, are increasing faster than attempts to reduce them. Many risks are dumped on poor people, and women face an overwhelming burden. In many places of recurrent crises, the response of governments and the international aid sector is not good enough. A new focus on building resilience offers real promise to allow the poorest women and men to thrive despite shocks, stresses, and uncertainty – but only if risk is more equally shared globally and across societies. This will require a major shift in development work, which for too long has avoided dealing with risk. More fundamentally, it will require challenging the inequality that exposes poor people to far more risk than the rich.”

Click here to read the full paper. 

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have played an important role in placing key issues on the development agenda that might have otherwise been neglected. Importantly, the MDGs have resulted in the generation and collection of more targeted data, which have been used to influence national and international development policies and measures. Nevertheless, the MDGs, while welcomed by the international development community, were met with skepticism by many who questioned the wisdom of framing as political commitments matters already codified as legal obligations under international human rights law.

One key shortcoming of the MDG framework was its failure to fully reflect the promise of the Millennium Declaration in which countries resolved to strive for the full protection and promotion of all human rights. Indeed, more than a decade after the adoption of the Millennium Declaration, experience has shown that issues left out of a universally-agreed agenda are not effectively monitored and reported on, and easily become blind spots when priorities are set, policies defined or budgets allocated.

Human rights norms and standards provide concrete guidance as to how goals and targets for the post-2015 development agenda should be framed. Governments have already committed to uphold human rights in numerous international treaties. Grounding development priorities in human rights is not only a legal and moral imperative, but can also enhance effectiveness and accountability.

As independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council, we have been mandated by States to make recommendations for the promotion of human rights at national, regional and international levels. In this statement, we make the following recommendations concerning key priorities for the post-2015 development agenda that are common to our mandates.

Recommendation 1:The post-2015 agenda should incorporate equality as a stand-alone and cross-cutting goal, aiming to progressively eliminate disparities within and between the most marginalized groups and the general population as well as between countries in order to achieve more inclusive forms of development.

Recommendation 2: The post-2015 agenda should include a goal on the provision of social protection floors, explicitly referencing the right to social security and a human rights-based approach to social protection.

Recommendation 3: Accountability must be at the core of the post-2015 development framework. We propose the establishment of a double accountability mechanism, whereby accountability mechanisms are developed at both national and international levels.

As independent human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council, we make the following recommendations concerning key priorities for the post-2015 development agenda that are common to our mandates.”

Click here to read the full statement.

“While the theme of the third meeting of the High-Level Panel on Post-2015 in Bali was on global partnerships, the meeting’s communiqué set up the handover from the high-level panel to the intergovernmental Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (OWG). The communiqué calls for “a single and coherent post-2015 development agenda that integrates economic growth, social inclusion and environmental sustainability”, and with good reason since the two development frameworks for post-2015—poverty alleviation and sustainable development—are not separate. Rather, they are interlinked challenges that need to inform each other and ultimately must be addressed together in one framework.

Moreover, the role of education and equitable learning in achieving sustainable development needs to figure prominently in these discussions. Sustainable development cannot be attained without education that provides learners with 21st century skills that equip them for healthy, safe, and productive lives, while also safeguarding the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

During the first three OWG meetings in March and April, participants shared their initial views on the relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the key lessons from the MDGs. While it is still unclear how the OWG process relates to the post-MDG process, Co-Chair Macharia Kamau, the permanent representative of Kenya, did in fact say that the two processes are linked. According to Kamau, “The MDGs are the point of departure, while the SDGs are the destination.” It is critical that OWG members connect these two processes together, not only to avoid fragmentation of efforts at national and global levels, but also because long-term sustained poverty eradication is only possible in the context of sustainable development. […]”

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G7+ ministers, representatives from developed countries, international institutions, civil society and the private sector took part in the meeting, held in Washington DC on April 19^th.

The importance of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, especially in the context of the post-2015 agenda, was stressed. Adopted in Busan in 2011, the New Deal considers peace and statebuilding to form the basis for transitions from fragile to resilient states, and offers guidance on how to engage with such states.

The Communiqué underlines how fragility is a “barrier to social cohesion, economic growth, sustainable development, and political stability.” It adds: “We underline the value of a post-2015 development agenda that recognises the universal importance of peacebuilding and statebuilding, and that the post 2015 agenda reflects the results and lessons of the New Deal.” Further, it emphasises the message of the Dili Consensus, adopted during the International Conference on Development for All in February 2013, which states that “national ownership of the development agenda is imperative”.

The g7+ is a country-owned and country-led global mechanism monitoring and reporting the challenges faced by fragile states. It seeks to stop conflict, engage in nation-building and poverty eradication through innovative approaches to development based on principles of peace and state building.  Its member countries are: Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Haiti, Liberia, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor-Leste (Chair) and Togo

Read the full communiqué here.

“Finance is one of the most frequently cited barriers to the implementation of sustainable development, and the need for significant mobilisation of resources to support countries in their efforts to promote sustainable development, including the achievement of SDGs, was acknowledged in the Rio+20 Outcome Document (para. 254).

This sentiment was reiterated at a high-level meeting convened at the end of last month by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), where governments and other stakeholders exchanged views on financing sustainable development in the context of the outcomes ofRio+20, and ECOSOC President Néstor Osorio highlighted the need for an effective strategy for raising finance from a variety of sources in the follow-up to the conference.

In recognition of this need, Member States at Rio+20 agreed to establish an intergovernmental committee of experts to evaluate and propose options for effective financing for sustainable development.

The Permanent Representatives of Kazakhstan and Norway have been appointed to facilitate the process of establishing the Expert Committee on a Sustainable Development Financing Strategy, which will comprise of 30 experts nominated by regional groups (with equitable geographical representation), and will assess financing needs, consider the effectiveness, consistency and synergies of existing instruments and frameworks, and evaluate additional initiatives, before proposing options to facilitate the mobilisation of resources and their effective use in 2014.

The committee has a huge task ahead of it. Estimates of the additional investment needed to fund sustainable development in developing countries are as high as $1 trillion per year for the coming decades; and then there are the politics to consider, of course.”

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“A quarter of a century ago, scientists could justifiably take some sense of satisfaction from their ability to set in motion policy shifts towards protecting the global environment.

They had become increasingly worried by the emergence of holes in the ozone layer, which allowed harmful ultraviolet rays to pass through the Earth’s atmosphere — and, in 1987, the Montreal Protocol began the process of banning CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) because of their damaging effect on this layer.

In that same year, ‘Our Common Future’ — known as the Brundtland report after Gro Harlem Brundtland, chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development that produced it — highlighted several other environmental concerns, leading to some of the key themes to be picked up at the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

That conference had some important outcomes, including the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Again, the scientists justifiably deserved a pat on the back.

But one unintended consequence of the success of the 1992 summit was to reinforce the emerging breakdown of the links between ‘environment’ and ‘international development’ issues, with different international organisations, governments and specialists pursuing different agendas.

Brundtland herself had recognised the dangers of this happening and, in her foreword to ‘Our Common Future’, said: “The ‘environment’ is where we all live; and ‘development’ is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable.”[1]

She was, of course, quite right. And there is an opportunity over the next two-and-a-half years to bring these agendas back together again as the development community looks beyond the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have an end date of 2015. “

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