Development
Sustainable Development Goals, Ukraine, January 2014
Credit: UN Ukraine, 2015 / CC BY ND
Summary
Sustainable development goals (SDGs) have placed development at the center of the global agenda. Different meanings have been given to this term over time: once a synonym of growth, it has now come to mean sustainable and/or human development. Some actors and academics have proposed alternatives to the word “development” itself, regarding it as the product of a discourse of domination.
In his inaugural address of January 1949, US President Harry S. Truman proposed a new interpretation of the world. At a time of deepening Cold War, when many countries under colonial rule were demanding their independence, he presented a new approach to development based on “the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.”
A key issue on the global agenda
The notion of development was brought onto the international agenda through the founding over time of various institutions (International Development Association within the World Bank, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD], United Nations Development Program [UNDP], regional development banks, Development Assistance Committee of the OECD), which were then used by actors. Following structural adjustment programs, development was sidelined during the 1980s and later reduced to the fight against poverty, which became a slogan for international financial institutions (IFI) in the 1990s. But though death of development was proclaimed by some, it returned to the forefront of global debates with the Millennium Declaration and the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 2000, followed by the (SDGs) of 2015. At the same time, the proliferation of development aid actors (new donors, emerging countries, private foundations, banks, investment funds) and the existence of an alternative discourse underpinning South-South cooperation (presented as a horizontal partnership) brought new perspectives to development cooperation, with a series of conferences, summits, forums and debates (Monterrey (2002), Paris (2005), Accra and Doha (2008), Addis-Ababa (2015)) on the funding and effectiveness of aid, its harmonization, appropriation by local actors and governance.
Growth and sustainable human development
This brief historical overview does not consider the different meanings of development in different times and places. It was initially considered in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), an indicator first developed in the 1940s for national accounting purposes, and seen as almost synonymous with growth. The work of W. W. Rostow, academic and advisor to US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, led to an evolutionist, ethnocentric and nationalist understanding of development, in which societies were thought to modernize through five stages of economic growth. This strictly economic, linear model was overturned during the 1970s, notably due to the emergence of environmental concerns. Ecodevelopment, an idea that emerged at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, 1972) and seemed too subversive to some, was replaced by the notion of sustainable development, proposed by the report of the Brundtland (1987), which was sufficiently ambiguous to find widespread favor.
Human Development Index, Gender Development Index, Ecological Footprint
Comment: The HDI considers life expectancy, education, and income. It is lowest in sub-Saharan Africa (especially in the center) and highest in Europe (particular Northern Europe). The indicator applied to gender inequalities (women/men) shows a similar geographical distribution with the exception of the Middle East and Southern Asia, where the situation is bad. The ecological footprint indicates sustainable consumption in Africa (North and South excepted) and in Southern Asia, but extreme exhaustion of resources in the Gulf and in North America.
After this, development became linked to other issues, while the notion itself also evolved. The UNDP created the human development index (HDI), which looks at individual development as well as that of states (a few years later the UNDP similarly introduced an index of human security). The limitations of this more in-depth view of development and its extension to other issues were revealed by the announcement of the 17 SDGs, 169 associated targets and some 300 indicators, leading to a fragmentary vision. The recognition that development is complex seems to have shattered the concept. In addition, despite a drive for greater sophistication, the link to growth still dominates the way development is understood by many actors.
Main development indicators (or used as such)
Comment: This timeline is a reminder of when the main development indicators of international organizations appeared, and they should be replaced in their historical and institutional contexts. The World Bank traditionally calculates monetary indexes, then the UNDP proposes rankings that are more oriented towards individuals (so-called human development) and, again, the UN, with its “Millennium” and later “sustainable development” goals, tries to assess progress.
The difficulty of interpreting the indicators (due to their complexity and/or a geography that is ultimately fairly similar to that of GDP) and the spread of the idea of human and/or sustainable development to actors as diverse as militant ecologists, financial actors and international organizations has led to a shift in thinking. During the 1980s, a current among academics and actors, sometimes called postdevelopment, argued that development was an idea rooted in the domination of the North – a Western belief. By rejecting the development paradigm and encouraging different ways of thinking, this current went further than the dependency theory of the 1970s, which had criticized “the development of underdevelopment ”. Meanwhile, tangentially and less radically, the proliferation of ideas relating to well-being, happiness, living better and “buen vivir,” also led to the creation of indicators, which, despite their limitations, sometimes provided new kinds of data (for example the opinions of individuals in the World Happiness Report and the importance of ecology in the Happy Planet Index).
Examples of alternative indicators: well-being, happiness
Comment: These are alternative development indicators produced by non-governmental actors. The first, the Happy Planet Index, includes the ecological dimension and shows a favorable situation in Latin American and in some European and South East Asian countries. The second is the Happiness Score, which compiles the results of opinion polls carried out with populations and covering numerous subjects. In this case, well-being is perceived to be high on the American continent, in Western Europe, and in Oceania, but low in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Cold War
- Period of ideological, geopolitical, economic and cultural confrontation between the United States and the USSR from the late 1940s through the end of the 1980s. Vigorous debate is still ongoing among historians regarding the precise dates of its beginning (the 1917 Russian Revolution? 1944? 1947?) and end (the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the collapse of the USSR in 1991?). These two superpowers formed two blocs of varying degrees of cohesion around them. This bipolarization of the world to some extent masked other political, economic and social dynamics.
- institutions > Institutions
- The term institution refers to social structures (rules, standards, practices, actions, roles) that are long-lasting, organized in a stable and depersonalized way, and play a part in regulating social relationships. An institution can be formalized within organizations (international or otherwise). In political science, institutionalism tackles the objects of political analysis by studying their structural basis and their organizational model rather than thinking about how they relate to society.
- poverty > Poverty
- Initially referring to a lack of economic resources, the notion of poverty has broadened in recent decades to include its different components, such as appalling sanitary conditions, a low level of education, social and gender inequalities, human rights violations, environmental damage, and increased vulnerability to so-called “natural” disasters. The Human Development Index (HDI) developed by the United Nations Development Program in the mid-1990s (and its gendered variant, Gender Development Index or GDI) and the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) devised by researchers at the University of Oxford in 2010, use Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities to identify the deprivation suffered by the poor in terms of health, education, and living standards.
- international financial institutions > International financial institutions
- Arising from the international Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944, which proposed the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, these institutions were shaped by a liberal agenda, working to ensure monetary stability via a system of exchange rates and to support the post-war reconstruction process. The United States and the industrialized nations are a dominant force within the IMF – which took on an increasingly important role following the debt crisis of 1982 onward, promoting structural adjustment policies in Africa and Latin America and then (post-1989) in the former communist countries. Economic and/or financial crises (in the 1990s and 2000s) forced countries to evolve (into stable states, free of corruption, able to pursue policies to combat poverty, and including civil society organizations).
- MDGs > Millennium Development Goals
- In 2000, UN member states adopted eight MDGs for the eradication of extreme poverty and in response to other major humanitarian issues (hunger, access to education and health, sexual equality, etc.) in the countries of the South by 2015. These goals were very unevenly met and widely criticized on different grounds, including the lack of human rights goals, the lack of civil society involvement in negotiating the goals, and the fact that they related solely to the countries of the South. The SDGs that replaced the MDGs in 2015 have in part answered these criticisms. They comprise 17 goals and 169 targets to be met by all countries by 2030, and relate to a range of sectors, including poverty, hunger, health, education, sexual equality, social justice, infrastructure, environment, climate, etc.
- SDGs > Millennium Development Goals
- In 2000, UN member states adopted eight MDGs for the eradication of extreme poverty and in response to other major humanitarian issues (hunger, access to education and health, sexual equality, etc.) in the countries of the South by 2015. These goals were very unevenly met and widely criticized on different grounds, including the lack of human rights goals, the lack of civil society involvement in negotiating the goals, and the fact that they related solely to the countries of the South. The SDGs that replaced the MDGs in 2015 have in part answered these criticisms. They comprise 17 goals and 169 targets to be met by all countries by 2030, and relate to a range of sectors, including poverty, hunger, health, education, sexual equality, social justice, infrastructure, environment, climate, etc.
- development aid > Official development assistance
- Gifts and loans granted by developed countries (bilateral aid) and international institutions (multilateral aid) to developing and less developed countries: food aid, technical assistance, military assistance, debt relief, and so on. Bilateral aid (2/3 of world aid) leads to dependency (obligation to buy goods and services from the donor’s companies). Introduced during the Cold War era and the time of decolonization, it was used by the United States and the USSR to create or maintain links with their respective blocs, as well as between former metropoles and their former empires. The target of spending 0.7% of developed countries’ GDP for ODA, which was set by the UN in 1970, has only rarely been reached. The European Union is the primary world provider of aid. Multilateral aid is conditional upon respecting economic and political “good governance” criteria.
- emerging countries > Emerging Country
- This term arose in the 1980s among economic and financial actors, who used the adjective “emerging” to describe markets where investment was risky but profitable. With its emphasis on growth and suggestion of rising movement, it reflects a linear, Western-centered understanding of development. As adopted and challenged by political actors, the label refers to the international, economic, political and/or diplomatic integration of some countries. It invites us to interrogate the way it is used both by actors who adopt it and those who reject it.
- governance > Governance
- Inspired by management and entrepreneurship, the expression global governance refers to the formal and informal institutions, mechanisms and processes through which international relations between states, citizens, markets and international and non-governmental organizations are established and structured. The global governance system aims to articulate collective interests, to establish rights and duties, to arbitrate disputes and to determine the appropriate regulatory mechanisms for the issues and actors in question. Governance takes various forms: global multilateral governance, club-based governance (restricted to members, e.g. G7/8/20), polycentric governance (juxtaposition of regulatory and management mechanisms operating at various levels), and so on.
- gross domestic product > Gross Domestic Product
- An economic indicator measuring a country’s wealth as generated by investment and expenditure on consumption by households, businesses and the state (not to be confused with gross national income, which measures total wealth created exclusively by national economic actors). Much used by economists (notably per capita GDP), it is biased in a number of ways: it considers only commercial activities, does not include negative externalities (such as environmental destruction), avoids the issue of social and geographical inequalities and (wrongly) postulates the existence of a correlation between wealth and degree of development. Other statistical tools have been developed to counteract these shortcomings (Human Development Index, Gini Index, etc.).
- ethnocentric > Ethnicity
- Ethnicity is a descriptive category that appeared at the end of the 19th century, constructed by anthropologists and disseminated by colonial administrations. Unlike “race” it does not reference biological criteria but designates a group of individuals with the same origin, the same cultural tradition, whose unity is based on language, history, territory, beliefs and the awareness of belonging to an ethnic group. Ethnicity, which some have claimed to be a natural phenomenon, is in fact a social construct, externally imposed or claimed, at once arbitrary and evolving. Proposed as an exclusive identity, it becomes all the more powerful as an instrument of political mobilization when the state is in difficulty. Ethnocentrism consists in understanding the world exclusively through the lens of one’s own culture and seeking to impose this interpretation.
- nationalist > Nationalism
- Attitude or political doctrine in which a social group asserts the primacy of national interests and the right of forming a sovereign nation. Nationalism can take the form of a struggle for independence and for “the right of peoples to self-determination” which can be irredentist (annexation of territories sharing the same culture and/or language), separatist (constitution of a new state on the margin of an existing one) or anti-imperialist (struggle against a colonizing power). It can also become hegemonic when based on an ambition to extend the influence and interests of a nation and its state(s) beyond existing borders (reunification, quest for security and/or power, xenophobia, etc.). Nationalist movements are diverse in nature: they can be identified across the political spectrum, evolving in accordance with specific historical contexts. When tinged with populism, nationalism produces a “national populism” combining the primacy of the national interest with a call for people to contest existing elites.
- Environment
- In broad terms, the environment is understood as the biosphere in which living species cohabit, while ecology studies the relations between these organisms and their environment. The environment encompasses very diverse natural areas from undisturbed virgin forests to artificialized environments planned and exploited by humans. In a more limited definition of the term, “environmental” issues are those relating to natural resources (their management, use and degradation) and biological biodiversity (fauna and flora). As a cross-cutting public concern, the environment encompasses issues of societal organization (production models, transport, infrastructure, etc.) and their impacts on the health of humans and ecosystems.
- sustainable development > Sustainable development
- Sustainable development is a form of development which fulfils present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs. The concept is defined in the UN Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, which recognizes the compatibility between a market economy and environmental protection; as such, it has been criticized in some quarters. Based on three foundations (economic, social, and environmental), sustainable development seeks simultaneously to attain economic growth, greater social equity in order to limit global inequality, and respect for the ecological balance.
- human development index > Human Development Index
- Concept inspired by Amartya Sen, the Indian economist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. In 1990, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) introduced an annual report on human development using this new development analysis tool. HDI is a composite indicator comprising three components: GDP per capita (at PPP – purchasing power parity), life expectancy at birth and education level. The value calculated indicates the development and social well-being of a country’s population, expressed in a number between 0 and 1, from low levels of development at the lower end of the scale to very high development at the other extreme. The Gender Development Index (GDI), introduced in 1995, reflects disparities between men and women in the HDI calculation.
- individual > Individual
- The individual, as a basic social actor, is playing an increasingly important role in the processes of globalization for multiple reasons, including the ever-faster circulation of ideas, values and information; the ability to build networks for sharing and solidarity without physical proximity; the networking of international expertise; and human rights movements and demands for democracy.
- states > State
- The state is a political system that is centralized (unlike the feudal system), differentiated (from civil society, public/private space), institutionalized (institutions are depersonalized), territorialized (a territory whose borders mark the absolute limit of its jurisdiction), that claims sovereignty (holding ultimate power) and that bears responsibility for ensuring its population’s security. In public international law, the state is defined as a population living on a territory defined by borders subject to a political authority (the national territorial state).
- human security > Human Security
- Developed over the course of the 1990s, the concept of human security is based on an expanded vision of security, going beyond state security and military threats. The United Nations Human Development Report (HDR) of 1994 sets out seven categories (food security, health security, environmental security, political security, economic security, personal security and community security) and defines security as follows: “It means, first, safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life – whether in homes, in jobs or in communities.” Criticized as lacking operationality, it remains a key notion in contemporary international relations.
- geography > Geography
- Geography: social science devoted to studying the production and organization of space. This space, which is differentiated and organized, serves social reproduction. Political geography: study of the spatial dimension of political organization, generally within states. Geohistory: geographic study of historical processes (diachronic).
- international organizations > International Organization
- In the words of Clive Archer, an IO is “a formal, continuous structure established by agreement between members (governmental and/or non-governmental) from two or more sovereign states with the aim of pursuing the common interest of the membership.” Marie-Claude Smouts identifies three characteristics of IOs: they arise out of a “founding act” (treaty, charter, statute), have a material existence (headquarters, finance, staff), and form a “coordination mechanism.