International Development CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Dr. Liam Clegg, Department of Politics, University of York
A PROPOSAL FOR THE FORMATION OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS: SUBMISSION TO COMMITTEE ON POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT GOALSi
Executive Summary
1. Through this written evidence I present a call to draw on the opportunity provided by the Rio +20 Declaration to engage all members of the international community around a shared, and universally applicable, conceptualisation of sustainable development. The proposed Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) draw heavily on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI). By reforming data-collection processes to allow for a new environmental module and a greater focus on distributional issues to be incorporated into the index, the SDIs will lock ecological and equity-based concerns into the way in which sustainable development is seen by the international community in the post-2015 era.
Data Collection and Development
2. Data collection matters in the field of international development. This is most obviously true in an immediate sense; indicators serve to focus collective efforts such that what gets measured, gets done. But this is also true in a broader sense, as quantitative measures of social phenomena provide the skeleton around which our understanding a given policy issue is built up. Throughout the past decade, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have remained a high-profile feature of the international aid agenda, shaping the operations of bilateral and multilateral agencies and attaining the status of a “common sense” measure of developmental success for low- and middle-income countries. In this submission, I make the case for using the launch of Sustainable Development Indicators as an opportunity to engage all members of the international community around a shared, and universally applicable, conceptualisation of sustainable development.
3. The proposed SDIs integrate a focus on ecological and distributional issues into the well-established HDI metric. In order to allow for disaggregated data on health, education, environmental impact, and income to be generated, an associated SDI Household Survey Programme would be required. This would allow for the most comprehensive picture to date of global socio-demographic trends to be captured, and for Sustainable Development Goals to be set—and effectively monitored—that target interventions toward the lowest-performing groups in each module.
4. By taking account of existing multilateral data-collection processes when designing the SDIs, the initiative can be used to bring together activities undertaken by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Macro International, the UNDP, and the World Bank. By so doing, the likelihood of a radical package of indicators and goals being generated rapidly, and an effective regime to monitor performance being successfully embedded, will be maximised. In addition, by engaging these key users and producers of global development data in the design of the SDIs, the “public good” value of the Indicators will be secured.
Contextualising Sustainable Development
5. Historically, “development” has remained a concept with a limited domain of application. Whether focusing on the “Third World”, the “Global South”, “Less Developed Countries”, or “Low Income Countries”, the theory and practice of development has—from the perspective of the advanced economies—remained an externally directed activity. Significant achievements have been realised following this conceptualisation; as the MDGs have served to demonstrate, there is widespread consensus that vulnerable groups in low-capacity states require particular forms of assistance. Such targeting of aid must remain a feature of bilateral and multilateral efforts; however, to reflect the growing awareness of our ecological and economic interconnectedness, the time has come for sustainable development to be seen as a truly universal concern.
6. The question of how best to measure economic and social progress has been of significant interest to policymakers and academics for many decades. The advanced economies have, however, by and large remained on the sidelines of these debates, with monetised measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) functioning as their unquestioned “gold standard” measure of success. However, as was made clear with the publication in September 2009 of the Sarkozy Commission Report,ii dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of the GDP indicator is reaching a tipping point. Crucially, the failure of GDP figures to capture environmental externalities, distributional inequality within a population, or non-monetary indicators of wellbeing have prompted calls for the production of more holistic measures.
7. The HDI provides a ready-made and well-respected foundation from which to build an alternative measure of sustainable development. The HDI provides near universal coverage; in its most recent iteration, the HDI included data covering 187 countries and territories. By collating data on life expectancy at birth, years of schooling, and GDP per capita, the HDI provides a composite measure of human wellbeing.iii However, as is readily acknowledged by the UNDP, the HDI is a measure with room for improvement.iv In particular, the burgeoning efforts through the HDI to present information on the domestic distribution of development endowments need to be supported by improved data-collection processes, and measures of the environmental impact of human activity need to be incorporated into the index.
The Sustainable Development Indicators
8. The proposed SDIs consist of four modules, measured through a range of proxy-indicators (in brackets):
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
9. At present, nationally administered Living Standard Measurement Surveys are used to periodically gather data on income, expenditure, educational attainment, and school enrolment, while Demographic and Health Surveys gather data on mortality rates and health. A range of bilateral and multilateral donors provide assistance with the former; Macro International (on behalf of the United States Agency of International Development) are the lead agency on the latter. By rolling these functions together and catalysing additional resources, the SDI Household Survey Programme will provide a major boost to global data-collection activities. In addition, by gathering data on all modules through one survey process, the extent of “overlapping inequality” will for the first time be comprehensively grasped.v The SDI Household Survey Programme will largely seek to improve on existing processes. However, by incorporating questions on itemised expenditure, information gained will allow for calculations of per capita annual carbon emissions to form the basis of a new “green” module.
10. The precise indicators to be used and appropriate weightings between indicators and modules are matters for discussion amongst global policymakers. However, by including an inequality multiplier into the calculation of each selected figure, the SDIs can be used to comprehensively capture distributional concerns. Through this approach, policymakers will be encouraged to systematically reduce distributional inequality in each module.
11. In order to maximise the utility of the SDIs, input from the following groups should be sought: the International Monetary Fund Working Group on Jobs and Inclusive Growth; Macro International, the UNDP Human Development Report Office, and the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study Team. In addition to the High-Level Panel and Committee processes already initiated UN Secretary General and General Assembly respectively, the forums provided by the IMF, United Nations, and World Bank should be used to allow a wide range of stakeholders an input into the process. This will maximise the extent to which the SDIs are seen to embody a globally legitimate agenda for the 21st Century. By mandating ends rather than means, any Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) negotiated through this process will allow national authorities autonomy in designing individual policy programmes. Through the incorporation of periodic review processes into the initiative, national authorities can be given support in refining “best practice” approaches in each of the four modules of the SDI.
12. The SDIs should be used to challenge the “conventional wisdom” over how we measure human progress. In order to successfully foreground ecology and equity within policymaking frameworks, attention needs first and foremost to be placed on reforming the data collection processes that shape how we “see” sustainable development.
23 July 2012
References
i This submission draws on research on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (PTA-026-27-2807).
ii Stiglitz, J, A Sen and J P Fitoussi (2009). The Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.
iii See UNDP Official Website. Accessed 20th July, 2012.
iv Grimm, M, K Harttgen, S Klasen, and M Misselhorn (2006). A Human Development Index by Income Groups; UNDP (2011) Human Development Report 2011.
v Overlapping inequality exists if individuals and groups suffer disadvantage across multiple modules. Present data-collection processes, which gather data relating to different modules from different households, do not fully capture these dynamics.