Sustainable development is today’s human story. It’s no less compelling than emergencies and disasters whose images always convey urgency and galvanize action.
Focusing on integration
As I reflect on my two decades in UN service, I realize that the main thread of my work has been on integration – tackling the interlinkages of social, economic and environmental issues central to human well-being today and across generations.
In the 18 years that I was with the UN Environment Programme, I coordinated both regional and global environmental assessment and reporting work; supported the General Assembly’s Second Committee consultations on sustainable development issues; and directed its regional presence work, supporting the integrated implementation of the 2030 Agenda and SDGs through its regional offices.
Working on four global and about 10 regional environmental assessments, I was exposed to diverse views and interests. I got to understand and acknowledge that science and policy are interdependent; and that science can be negotiated when it comes to policy decisions and action. Climate change and policy making are a good example.
Consensus evolves, and can be frustratingly glacial until competing interests are accommodated or not at all. For example, it took almost three decades for sustainable development to be universally embraced. With its roots in environmental discourse, sustainable development was often perceived as an environmental agenda to limit economic development. The world has since accepted that integrating the three dimensions of sustainable development – social, economic and environmental – is central to transformation, leaving no one behind.
Lesson from the field
Hard data and information tell a story, but cannot beat a human story. And people like stories to which they can relate.
In January 2020, for example, I visited the community in Fabidji in Niger, which is involved in strengthening social cohesion among farmers and herders in the Dosso and Maradi regions. The women, participating in this Peacebuilding Fund-supported project being implemented by UN Women and FAO, were excited to talk about their experience and how they were resolving tensions and conflicts.
The project helped train women as conflict mediators; and created 346 Dimitra clubs (men and women dialogue groups), providing for the effective participation of women, including Fulani women, in village assemblies (such participation is not culturally tolerated). The role of 600 women mediators in conflict prevention and management, and in land commissions is now increasingly accepted. Women’s inheritance rights are also increasingly recognized in communities.
During the January 2020 field visit, some of the women conflict mediators excitedly spoke to us about their success, the positive impacts among communities, and the need for ongoing UN support. Their focus was on successful delivery and impact on their lives. They never spoke about quality planning and project documents. These are internal workings of the UN system, and of no interest in their lives.
I believe that their expectation is for the UN to deliver and to get them to their destination – a better life.
Reflections on the work ahead
Beyond the health and socio-economic responses to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on lives and livelihoods, I believe that it’s important not to lose the pandemic’s lessons – that we are in one world; that we are all in this together; and that neighbour now not only means next door and shared national boundaries, but also manifests across regions.
The whole-of-UN-system response to the COVID-19 pandemic in support of countries and people across Africa is an opportunity to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and SDGs.
The COVID-19 response has been about now, controlling the spread of the virus, saving lives and livelihoods, repurposing resources for the now, and ensuring that countries get on track to recover better, pulling up all who fell behind and those left even further behind.
While the COVID-19 response was turbo-charged, sustainable development generally seems to be on a two-stroke engine, giving the impression that we have time: We don’t!
The 2030 Agenda and Africa’s Agenda 2063 are action documents. It’s important that they are not perceived as more long-term rather than urgent. They should not be a source of delayed action or inaction.
Sustainable development is today’s human story. It’s no less compelling than emergencies and disasters whose images always convey urgency and galvanize action.
I believe that a compelling human story about sustainable development should always convey urgency and galvanize action, including massive financing, which is currently limited.
Telling that compelling story is one of the major challenges that we face in our collective efforts to deliver on the 2030 Agenda and SDGs.
The SDGs have to be delivered daily in order to achieve transformation.
People want their daily bread today – not tomorrow, not next year, and certainly not in 2030 or 2063!
