BSc (Hons) Public Management and Business

United Nations Human Development Report

The report divides its main analysis into two sections – firstly identifying the key drivers of the rise of the south and secondly, raising future issues that need to be addressed to maintain this process. Both contain factors that will impact on sustainabililty. The three key factors driving the growth of the south are:

1. A proactive developmental state;
2. The tapping of global markets;
3. Determined social policy innovation.

All three of these ‘key drivers’, emphasise an interventionist and active regulatory role for the state rather than merely leaving key choices in the hands of the free market. Indeed the report explicitly notes that the best-performing southern economies ‘diverge from the unfettered liberalization espoused by the Washington Consensus’. Thus, discussing the ‘tapping of global markets’

The Report has five main conclusions for the future:

1. Rising economic strength in the south must be matched by a full commitment to human development – a commitment that is as much to do with economic necessity as the moral case for human potential.
2. Less developed countries can learn and benefit from the success of emerging economies in the south – it cites recent Chinese and Indian joint ventures and start-up manufacturing investments in Africa as an example of this.
3. New and stronger institutions are needed to promote trade and investment and accelerate experience sharing across the south.
4. Greater representation for the south can accelerate progress on major global challenges – the report cites the emergence of the G20 as an example of this process but points out that India – a nuclear power, an economic giant and soon to be the most populous country in the world still has no permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
5. The rise of the south presents new opportunities for generating a greater supply of public goods – the report cites climate change as an example of the kind of issue that the south’s new power may help to solve.

Sustainable Development Goals Surfing to Saftey or Suffer the Final Wipeout

I'm running through the thought piece in Nature on what the SDG's will look like. Must say that I’m struggling to see this new paradigm. The three pillars approach was always seen as a starting point for broader exploration and expansions. The economy, society, and earths life support System is also far from new and is in fact part of the existing paradigm.   Of course I understand the need to translate a hugely contested, ambiguous concept into a meaningful policy grounded form, but there is also a need to maintain an appreciation of this complexity.  I worry about this articulation and its transmission to the six proposed SD goals.  I will elaborate on this at a later point. For now I draw on the imagery used in the article and obviously this is going to stand out in light of my research into sustainable development and Surfing.  A sweeter synergy I could not have asked for.

 

 

 

 

 

Not only a  wave, the most terrifying of waves, the Tsunami well at least an artist’s impression,  as this wave does seem to have a shoulder and a very workable face, can’t make out if it’s a left or a right though. There is a flimsy boat about to be pounded  by said wave.  Four figures at the helm and one looking back at the stern, life rings are seen thrown asunder, not needed now, the image would suggest, as it is too late.   In the background a volcano billowing smoke, undoubtedly about to erupt and cover everything in the vicinity with red hot magma.  Is this how the authors imagine the Anthropocene?  This too is something I will explore in more detail at a later date.  For now I simply ‘note with interest’ the use of the wave and the multiple ways this iconography is employed. We must ask ourselves with SDG’s that now put the economy front and centre, well in the middle anyway. What is it selling now, a car, a T-shirt, in this instance it is an ideology, a political imperative that none can escape from. A global community bound to and responsible for (to very varying degrees) the disintegration of the global life support system.  The image leaves one wondering.  Does the life boat mange to surf the wave to the saftey of the shore (though im worried about the volcano) or does it suffer the final wipout.

Proposed Sustainable Development Goals

More thoughts on this when I have time to think !




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Goal one: Thriving lives and livelihoods.

End poverty and improve wellbeing through access to education, employment and information, better health and housing. It should include targets on clean air that build on World Health Organisation guidelines for pollutants such as black carbon.

 Goal two: Sustainable food security.

The MDG hunger target should be extended and targets added to limit nitrogen and phosphorus use in agriculture; phosphorus flow to the oceans should not exceed 10m tonnes a year; and phosphorus runoff to lakes and rivers should halve by 2030.

Goal three: Sustainable water security.

Achieve universal access to clean water and basic sanitation. This would contribute to MDG health targets, restrict global water runoff to less than 4,000 cubic kilometres a year and limit volumes withdrawn from river basins to no more than 50-80% of mean annual flow.

Goal four: Universal clean energy.

Improve affordable access to clean energy that minimises local pollutionand health impacts and mitigates global warming. This contributes to the UN commitment to sustainable energy for all, and addresses MDG targets on education, gender equity and health.

Goal five: Healthy and productive ecosystems.

Sustain biodiversity and ecosystem services through better management, valuation, measurement, conservation and restoration. Extinctions should not exceed 10 times the natural background rate. At least 70% of species in any ecosystem and 70% of forests should be retained.

 

Goal six: Governance for sustainable societies.

Transform governance and institutions at all levels to address the other five sustainable development goals. This would build on MDG partnerships and incorporate environmental and social targets into global trade, investment and finance. Subsidies on fossil fuels and policies that support unsustainable agricultural and fisheries practices should be eliminated by 2020.

Sustainable Development: Revisiting the basics

Over a number of blogs I have tried to elaborate on a number of  perspectives on sustainable development.  It is important, at times to remind ourselves of some of the basics.  Whilst not flawless (what is) the following are very useful.


 

 

Sustainability in the Surfing World

Excellent work  from Kevin Whilden and  Michael Stewart, founders of  Sustainable Surf, one of the principle partners of the Plymouth Sustainability and Surfing Research Group (PSSRG), as they get their second write up in Forbes (Woody 2012).  The article focuses on  SustainableSurfs  Eco-Board programme which aims to transform surfboards from their existing toxic form based on polyurethane to a less harmful and recyclable product known as expanded polystyrene or EPS. 

This was highlighted at their recent Eco Board launch event in San Fransisco where an eco board was glassed in the middle of the party.  Technology has advanced to a stage now where eco boards can match their more toxic cousins in performance and aesthetics which is pivotal in getting them in the hands of the average surfer.  During the course of my own research and having spoken to retailers, initial findings suggest that the time is right and eco boards can compete in practically all areas with traditional boards.  One retailer indicated that given a choice the consumer would opt for the Eco Board even if it was marginally more expensive.

However,  the  Forbes article goes on to highlight the fact that  making an environmentally  friendly surf board is only part of the story for promoting a consumer demand for this product. This supports a great deal of research on the way that consumers respond to ‘ethical purchasing’ and behavioural change more broadly for positive environmental change.   The issues are complex and multifaceted.  As the Forbes article illustrates it is now important to put these ecoboards in the hands of some of the surfing worlds most iconic surfers, Kelly slater and Rob Machardo for example to lead the way  and create a positive reinforcement of the  message.

The transition to sustainability in the surfing world needs to be addressed on a number of fronts. The Center for Surf Research at San Diego State University are making huge strides in promoting sustainable surf tourism for example.  The PSSRG aims to draw together on  an international basis people that are passionate about surfing and making a positive change from both an academic and a practitioner perspective.  The latest project from the research group in collaboration with the Center for Surf Research's director Dr Jess Ponting is a book  that is able to explore multiple areas and perspectives of the transition to  sustainability in the surfing world from surfings leading minds.

 

 

 

Sustainable Development Dipomacy

The idea of diplomacy and sustainable development has interested me in for quite some time, what happens  at the international level through different processes of globalisation inevitably impact at the local level in so many different  ways.    I have tried to address these to a certain degree in my own work that looks at sustainable development governance from both a global and local perspective (Borne 2010).  From a diplomacy perspective the closest I’ve got to this is exploring how sustainable development is understood within the United Nations.

 

But,  there remains relatively little consistent and rigorous work that is capable of adequately exploring  what sustainable development means in this context.  So it is really interesting to read Mihaela Papa and Nancy Gleason’s contribution to the journal Global Environmental Change.   I have previously argued that scholars steer clear of this sort of research because of the definitional ambiguity of sustainable development which makes operationalising research in this area  challenging to say the least.  But the authors do a very good job defining their terms and creating an effective narrative. Beyond definitions, the other problem is that once you have managed to define your terms how to you go about collecting data, what sources do you use that are informative and rigorous?  I used a combination of sources under the banner of ethnographic research.  This included relevant text, speeches, policy documents, anything I could get my hands on during my secondment to the United Nations Environment Programme.  Combined with this,  interviews with UN officers, negotiators and observations of debates and resolutions as they were happening.  Papa and Gleason have used  communication documents between the coalition partners, joint statements of  the BRIC and BASIC countries.

 

 

 

 

The authors work focuses on the role of emerging power on the international stage.  Particularly, Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) and Brazil South Africa, Russia and China (Basic). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The authors start off by asking the questions:

Can these countries emerge as a new coalition or negotiation bloc in this field traditionally organised around the North –South Divide.

And if so do they have the potential to exercise leadership and address the stalled performance of the sustainable development agenda?

This is the first time that I have heard the term sustainable development diplomacy used in this context.  A more common term for some of the areas described in the article is sustainable development governance which does admittedly encompass a broader literature and field of study.   However there is still a hairs breadth between the two. Here SDD is described as;

‘a process of global policy making with the aim ‘to produce a guiding framework for a range of policy instruments, financing mechanisms, organisation’s, rules, procedures negotiations and norms that regulate the process of sustainable development’ (2)

 Take a look at the similarity in the definition with sustainable development governance .

‘The sum of the many ways that individuals and institutions, public and private manage their common affairs, a continuing process through which conflicting and diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action be taken’ (Shridath and Carlsson 1998)

The authors go on to highlight the idea of SDD through the  established conferences and conventions which I’m not going to elaborate on here  and also discuss the potential for Rio+20. The essence of the paper though is to examine the role, strengths and capacity of the aforementioned coalitions.  They frame the discussion from a theoretical perspective by exploring the idea of policy based leadership and then underneath that, structural and instrumental leadership. 

Policy based leadership is seen as the ability to frame problems, promote particular policy solutions and then implement them. Structural leadership relates to the issue of power embedded within an actor/state on the political stage. And  instrumental leadership is the more subtle realm of negotiation and political engineering.  Of course in reality and taking a somewhat constructivist stance policy, structural and instrumental leadership as defined here are very difficult to actually separate. Regarding the implementation of sustainable development the authors argues that the  BRICS countries lack coherent visions of sustainable development even in general terms and this is a barrier to taking the agenda forward.  More broadly, this is symptomatic of the term sustainable development as a whole with definitional ambiguity being up there as one of its most significant problems, and this is evident at all levels and in all sectors.  With that said the authors identify two important trends within the BRICS nations that form a collective identify and ownership of the concept.

1. Linking environment and development with issues relating to energy and particularly development of nuclear energy. 
2. Cooperation on climate issues and the proliferation of renewable energy sources. 

The authors then go on explore the relationship between the BASIC and BRICS countries explaining that the BASIC coalition has a narrower mandate that BRICS focusing specifically on climate change instead of broader issues of sustainable development.  It is argued that  while the BRICS’ policy agenda has not moved away much from rhetorical support for sustainable development, BASIC has been consistently pursuing the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.  This recognition is a consistent them throughout North / South analysis as the South looks to draw out, at its most reductionist level, the inequitable exploitation of resources by the north and subsequent resultant negative externalities, however they manifest, that impact on a global and local scale. The paper acknowledged that these emerging countries ability to impact the politics of global environmental change is curtailed by the inevitable domestic and internal pressures that exist within state boundaries growing inequalities in income and wealth and consolidating complex domestic agendas may constrain these countries’ joint external influence in responding to global environmental change.

In sum the paper is a very important addition to the literature on sustainable development governance and should encourage more research into the  discourses of sustainable development.

 

References

Borne, G., (2010) A Framework for Sustainable Global Development and Effective Governance of Risk, New York, Edwin Mellen Press

Papa, M., Gleason, N., (2012)  Major Emerging Powers in Sutainable Development Diplomacy Assessing their Leadership Potential,     Global Environmental Change 22:915-924