Kapok | Aiming higher

Eric Sautedé

Reference documents and generic resolutions adopted by the United Nations are usually dismissed by critics as either too broad, too generous or too normative, and sometimes the three together. Then they are often simultaneously considered rather weak when it comes to binding effects and even weaker when considering enforcement. Of course, there are exceptions, especially when peace, security, trade and sometimes international justice are concerned, but more often than not timing and whether or not powerful states get involved remain crucial and can prove either incapacitating or, on the contrary, expediting.

Yet, when it comes to global concerns — in particular the protection of the environment, but not only! — there are no better institutions than UN agencies to come up with eloquent and insightful perspectives. Such is the case with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that succeeded the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. MDGs were broader and less numerous — 8 goals with 21 targets, whereas SDGs comprise 17 goals to be achieved by 2030 — but marked a turning point in the UN drive to be more results-oriented and multi-dimensional as well as inter-related in its approach to development — the United Nations Development Programme stresses that “often the key to success on one will involve tackling issues more commonly associated with another.”

Reviewing whether or not the claim that MDGs had been the “most successful anti-poverty movement in history”, analysts concluded in 2015 that even though it was quite an overstretch to proclaim “mission accomplished”, crucial progresses had indeed been made: the number of people living on less than $1.25 had been more than halved even though the same ambition for people suffering from hunger was not fully realized; net enrolment rate in primary school had reached 91% (not fully universal, but pretty close); two-thirds of developing countries had achieved gender parity in primary education; child mortality rate as well as global maternal mortality had dropped by about 50% but had failed to drop by two-thirds; number of new HIV carriers had fallen by 40%, even though the spread had not been reversed as promised; but then halving the proportion of people without access to clean water had been achieved five years in advance and overseas development aid to developing countries had increased drastically by about two-thirds over the period.

There is thus hope for the SDGs, and reading reports from numerous Non-Governmental Organizations and International Organizations on a regular basis, I can testify to the fact that the renewed and more ambitious goals for the next decade have permeated all kinds of institutions, and help create a new consensus on what needs to be done.

Labor conditions and employment — a subject dear to my heart — are now covered by the standalone Goal No. 8 in the SDGs whereas they use to be minimalistically embedded and split inside the goals to eradicate poverty and achieve gender parity under the MDGs. The full name of the new goal actually resonates like a program in itself as the ambition is to “promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.” Under one goal stand some 10 targets, to which are appended 17 indicators that will allow policy-makers and citizens to assess the progress made towards the goal. And besides the usual GDP growth or unemployment rate, one finds the latest concerns related to the worrying spread of urban informal employment, all forms of discrimination affecting hourly earnings, fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries with a breakdown by gender and place of origin (migrants), and even the level of national compliance with labor rights (freedom of association and collective bargaining) based on the International Labor Organization conventions.

Quite interestingly, this goal also comprises a recommendation to “devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products,” an objective that the Macao Government Tourism Office could easily make a requirement — why not even for the renewal of casino licenses — in order to make the ambition to become a “World Centre of Tourism and Leisure” slightly more meaningful for the good people of our SAR.