The post-2015 agenda is now only two months away to be finalised. With Pakistani representatives absent from the third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, it reflects the GOP's lukewarm interest in the ambitious agenda. Given their dismal performance in MDGs, GOP is slowly resigning to the fact that even if the final post-2015 is toned down their anticipated actual performance will not be very different from the MDG period.
Even before I start discussing the challenges, a very basic question to answer is that should the GOP policy makers adopt a pro-active or reactive approach to the agenda? Unfortunately propagating that Vision 2025 amply demonstrates GOP pro-active commitment to the Agenda is not enough. Both the approaches have merits and demerits. A reactive approach will save on time resources as goals, targets and indicators have yet to be finalised. There is a feeling among a section of relevant circles that 17 goals and 168 targets are one too many. An alternate suggestion is to limit the goals to 12. Moreover, after finalization of the contours of the agenda, nations would have until December 2015 to submit their own version of SDGs framework. The September 2015 consensus may also decide, on 'core' targets (common to all countries) to be adopted and monitored by the international body and 'second-tier' targets to be the prerogative of individual countries. A pro-active approach has the advantage that it gives sufficient time and thought to carefully do the spadework, that was missing at the time of committing to MDGs and which ultimately led to the MDG fiasco. Moreover, the final print of post-2015 may not be radically different from what is being proposed currently. Also, ascompared to MDGs the scope of spadework or homework is likely to be more time consuming, complex, technical and consensus demanding even if the goals, targets and indicators are reduced. A priori, a pro-active approach would be beneficial instead of reacting to a short deadline for committing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The policy makers would have to confront the following challenges (institutional, design and implementation) whether they follow a reactive or a pro-active approach.
The 18th constitutional amendment in 2010 is the single most important step after the initiation of MDGs in 2001 that has changed the institutional and administrative landscape of the country. The first challenge for the 2015 agenda is to clearly and with consensus identify the responsibilities of the federating units towards each of the goals. Based on UN Open Working Group (OWG) proposal, 5 goals overwhelmingly fall in the administrative realm of provinces ie, SDGs 3 (health), 4 (education), 6 (water and sanitation), 11 (cities), and 14 (marine). Macro level, legal policy and national goals should be the responsibility of the federal government. These include SDGs 10 (inequality), 13 (climate change), 16 (inclusive societies) and 17 (means of implementation). A third set of goals entails joint responsibilities of the provinces and the centre. These are SDGs 1 (poverty), 2 (food security and agriculture), 5 (gender equality), 7 (energy), 8 (inclusive growth and employment) 9 (inclusive industrialisation), 12 (sustainable consumption) and 15 (ecosystems). Provincialization and ideally localization of goals at an early stage would prevent the lack of ownership observed in the MDG era. The first set of deliberations should step-wise be on a) fine-tuning the above 3 tentative groups of goals for the provinces and federal govt, b) based on the third set of goals, the distribution of targets between the center and the provinces within each selected goal and c) the final selection of targets in all three groups based on multiple criteria of financial, technical, administrative and statistical capacities of the provinces. While there may be a tendency of GOP to commit to all goals and as many targets to exploit it as a vehicle for attracting foreign flows, this strategy can backfire and rests on weak wicket given our own experience of MDGs and performance of development partners under MDG. Formulating a prioritisation matrix of targets based on a mix of anticipated domestic and foreign financing, would further identify gaps in financing, cushion the achievement of targets against any unforeseen reduction of foreign flows and make a strong case for foreign funding in selected targets. This type of 'finance-based' prioritisation of SDG targets among the federating units will give a clear road map for negotiating and cementing a well aligned forward looking consensus based 8th NFC Award. A second round of iteration of the above exercise can be undertaken in minimum time given the above pro-active approach after a clear picture of the goals, targets and indicators emerge in September 2015.
Given the above Provincialization of goals, a second challenge to post-2015 is the institutional set-up to operationalize, implement, monitor and finance the goals. Should a separate ministry be set-up at the federal level and departments at the provincial level as the task is likely to be huge, if taken in earnest? One may not even think in these terms if the higher ups regard the ten targets of Vision 2025 as sufficient commitment to the post-2015 agenda, although it is naïve to assume that Vision 2025 operationalizes even the reduced form of Post-2015 Agenda. Even the number of 'core' targets as a minimal commitment for signing on Agenda 2015 will be two or three times the ten targets of Vision 2025. An alternative is to establish a separate full fledge department within the Planning Commission and cells within the provincial departments. A third alternative is to house it under the member, social sector of the planning. Whatever alternative is chosen, its institutional support level will send signals to the donors about the extent and nature of commitment of GOP towards the agenda.
At the centre, the institutional set-up should act as a think-tank, inter-provincial co-ordinating body, technical resource center, monitoring and evaluation watchdog and mid-course correction advisory body for all the four provinces and three regions. At the province level the relevant institutional set will require inter-departmental co-ordinators with the advisory capacity and powers to enhance the management and implementation capacity of individual departments with respect to targets, identifying and removing various kinds of frequent bottlenecks in implementation and a team of impartial monitoring personnel.
A third challenge is how far to align the goals, targets and indicators of the Post-2015 agenda with the plethora of policies, programmes and projects as reflected in documents for example such as Vision 2025, climate change policy 2012, eleventh 5-year plan and anticipated education policy. There are also a host of sectoral policies, plans and provincial development strategies that provinces would like to align with the post-2015 agenda. Being blunt, at an operational level, visions, policies and plans do not have much clout or teeth when it comes to implementation via budgetary allocations, which are mostly adhoc and incorporate political expediencies. Given that many of the policies and plans have theoretically been formulated, alignment with SDGs would require an operational version (or a revised version if a version already exist) of these documents. Thus a sub-set of SDG targets and indicators, consistent with pillars (eg, Vision 2025) or objectives and targets (eg, climate policy or plans) be selected from the master set of 169 targets as time bound targets to finance, implement and monitor the progress of national/provincial and sectoral development frameworks. This would also sharpen the effectiveness of the planning process. Financing and implementing these national frameworks automatically would mean implementing and monitoring Post-2015 agenda.
The final challenge is how best to embed the Post-2015 framework with aspirations of the nation in order to gain wider public ownership at every level. UNDP organized national consultations in Pakistan during 2012-13 in which around 22,000 people participated. In terms of priority they highlighted a) localization of the Post-2015 agenda at the provincial level (SDG 16). This aspiration is also at the forefront in dialogues in other countries. Thus in Pakistan strong governance oriented provincial-cum-local governments are an explicit aspiration of vast majority of people, b) Peace and Security (SDG 16), c) Good Governance (SDG 16), d) Inclusive Economic Growth (SDG 8), e) Rule of Law (SDG 16), f) Inclusive Social Development (SDG 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6), g) Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (SDG 5), h) Sustainable and Low Cost Energy (SDG 7) and i) Disaster Preparedness and Response (SDG 13). Any Post-2015 framework of GOP that does not incorporate and prioritize the above aspirations and its related 10 goals along with a minimum set of time bound targets and indicators runs the risk of weak ownership and ultimately will end up with an SDG fiasco.
Comments
Comments are closed.