Global governance needs reshaping if we’re to achieve the SDGs

The challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) puts the way in which we govern ourselves to the test. If we wanted to achieve the SDGs by 2030 by just using the governance structures of the pre-2015 world, we would end up in that world again, or even worse. For several years, our domestic political systems and the global governance architecture have been struggling to respond effectively to people’s changing needs and aspirations, as well as to present and future threats to our societies. The COVID-19 pandemic has further laid bare the deficiencies of how our societies, as well as humanity as a whole, deal with common and collective problems.

Why governance is ineffective

In many countries, politics and society are characterized by institutional, political, and ideological path dependencies, where practices continue based on historic preference. The nature of entrenched vested interests and power elites also renders it difficult to adequately address challenges like the pandemic, climate change, or the fracturing of societies. Where political systems fail to respond to grievances, bring forward responsible leadership, or integrate heterogeneous values and norms among societal groups, populist movements and leaders can more easily exploit frustration, often exacerbating the underlying root causes. On the other hand, we observe societal movements like Fridays For Future and Black Lives Matter, and democracy and human rights activism in all continents that call for solutions to these problems. In some places, they are increasingly met with the authoritarian arm of political systems, particularly in the wake of the pandemic.

Similarly, many features of the present global governance architecture hail from a time when our world looked different from today. Over the past decades we have seen major global shifts in demography, economics, and politics. These shifts, as well as today’s urgent needs for collective action to safeguard the future of humanity, are not adequately mirrored in our global institutions. It was a rare and historic achievement when in 2015 world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. However, the first five years of the implementation of both did not meet expectations. On the contrary, the rise of populist and nationalist counter-transformations, as well as the increase of geopolitical tensions, let multilateral, solution-oriented cooperation grind almost to a halt. The patchy international reaction to the pandemic has sadly been further proof of this.

The need for integrated, all-society, and all-humanity approaches to the great challenges of our times is at odds with two main features of today’s domestic and global governance. First is the separation and division of labor between policy fields at both the national and international level. This goes beyond ministries or international organizations and extends to business, academia, and society. The underlying rational of effective policymaking assumes that the sum of rational actions in each field yields the best societal or global impact.

Second is the narrow understanding of the role of the state and of the interaction between nation states. Here, the focus lies on regulating competition or balancing interests in the domestic and global markets as well as between nation states. Only at the nation-state level is this accompanied by public finance in the order of 30% to 50% of gross domestic product for investment in infrastructure and redistribution. Again, the misguided assumption is that such an approach alone can best serve the interests of the individual economic actors or nation states, and therefore of society and humanity at large.

You may read the entire article following this link.