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Global Goals, Part 1

Entry 2184, on 2021-11-17 at 17:48:30 (Rating 3, Politics)

I recently noticed a series of posters which appeared to advocate for goals for the future of the planet, known as "Global Goals", and wondered about their origins. After a bit of investigation it turns out they were set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and are intended to be achieved by the year 2030, and appear to be more formally known as "Sustainable Development Goals".

Most people think sustainable development is a good idea - after all, who wants untenable development or sustainable deterioration or even untenable deterioration? I'm being a bit sarcastic here, because this is stating the obvious. Of course we want development, who wouldn't? And being sustainable is clearly a better option than being unsustainable, all other things being equal.

So these goals are really there to achieve an objective which practically every sensible person would agree with, but what about the details? There are 17 ways the greater goal is supposed to be achieved, so let's look at these now...

1 No poverty

The goal is to eradicate "extreme poverty", which is defined as living on less than $1.25 a day. Obviously this is both an arbitrary number (why not $1 or $1.50 or even $2), and the actual figure might vary widely depending on where in the world you are living, but some sort of definition is required, and this one seems reasonable. Further, the goal is to "by 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere."

Who wouldn't want to achieve this goal? Poverty has been broadly trending downwards for many years, but eliminating it completely by 2030 seems unlikely. Poverty is caused by many things, and some can be fixed relatively easily, with foreign aid for example, where others are more difficult. For example, a significant cause is unstable and violent governments. Richer countries have a poor record in intervention in these situations, so what can really be done? Not a lot, I suspect.

2 Zero hunger

This is possibly a more worth and necessary goal than 1, even though the two are clearly related. Not surprisingly, exactly the same comments apply here: this ahs been trending down but it is unlikely to be fixed completely by 2030 because of complex political issues.

How often do hunger relief efforts get shut down by incompetent and corrupt governments in the countries which are suffering? For example, how often do UN food convoys get intercepted by violent extremists resulting in them being fed while the rest of the country starves? Note, these are genuine questions, because I couldn't find any credible stats on how common this is.

3 Good health and well-being

This is another factor linked to the others I have already mentioned. Good health could be achieved in a similar way to zero poverty, but again the political issues get in the way.

4 Quality education

Education has been shown to be a great accelerator of other positive factors, so there is a clear need for this. Standards have increased greatly in recent history (by that I mean the last one or two hundred years) so there is good reason to be optimistic. But tere are setbacks, such as the situation in Afghanistan where religious-political extremism is taking education standards back by decades.

5 Gender equality

This is a real political issue, and not just in the developing world. The key thing here is the word equality rather than equity. I fully support equal opportunities for everyone, irrespective of their gender or any other attribute, but I am suspicious of efforts at forcing equity through artificial means.

6 Clean water and sanitation

This is an obvious requirement for having a reasonable life and links with many other factors in the list. And again, the same barriers exist: it should be possible in most cases to provide these services, but political instability makes it difficult. Also, climate change is making provision of water much more difficult in some areas.

7 Affordable and clean energy

This might be a bit like choose one: affordable or clean. Clean energy is a great goal, but it's not quite as simple as many people would like it to be. Wind and solar generation are expensive and unreliable. Even in countries where these are widely used, there is generally a lot of fossil fuel generation to act as a backup. In some countries nuclear is widely used, but political pressure has made this option less viable.

8 Decent work and economic growth

There's a couple of problems here: first, what is decent; and second, economic growth is often criticised by activists as being impossible over the long term, and the cause of many of the world's problems today.

The goals include providing "decent" work for everyone and ensuring equal pay for equal work. They also include ending slavery and child labour. It seems unlikely that many people would object to these, but how to achieve them is an ongoing problem.

So that is the first half of the goals. Because this post is getting quite long, I will leave the second half until next time. But I might make some closing observations about the issues mentioned so far...

Many people like to blame the Western world for several reasons: it is largely responsible for climate change which causes severe weather events; it was responsible for colonialism, which is claimed to be a source of a lot of current day problems; it is the source of capitalism, which is accused of stealing resources and causing inequality; and it initiated a lot of military interventions which are often the apparent cause of political disorder.

No doubt, some of this is true, but I don't think any of these are the main cause of the problems in most cases. So I'm going to blame the "victim". The real problem is corrupt governments, irrational religions, and ignorant populations. In many ways the countries suffering most - which are almost entirely in Africa and Southern Asia - have themselves to blame. They need to fix that themselves (because Western intervention is the "cause", not the solution, right?).

The UN can make as many of these crazy goals as they want, but this is not going to be fixed by 2030. it will take much longer than that, and even then, only if the people in poor countries make the effort to change.

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