Sustainable Development Goals: The End of Theory?
Author: Professor Mariana Prado, University of Toronto
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their predecessors, the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), are a series of goals associated with specific targets that countries should strive to achieve by 2030. While celebrated in development circles for their ambition and innovative nature, these goals are not accompanied by strategies, policy prescriptions, sequencing recommendations, or prioritizing schemes. In short, they are goals without any theories explaining how we are to actually achieve them. Instead, they come with concrete and measurable targets, such as reduction in mortality rates or in total number of people living below the poverty line. How is a country, a government, or an NGO supposed to pursue these lofty goals and achieve the targets associated with them? It is not fully clear. Considering these characteristics of the SDGs, what is (or should be) the role of academia (universities and independent scholars) in the development process? Traditional development thinking, focused on economic growth, put scholars and universities front and centre in development thinking. In Economic Development: The History of an Idea, Heinz Arndt shows that theories of development have informed policymaking and influenced governments around the world, but their origin was often the ivory towers of the academy.[1]
What changes with the SDGs? Provocatively, I’ve suggested in the title of this piece that there is no space for academia here because the SDGs’ design does not create room for theorizing. But is this indeed the case? Let’s take a closer look at some of the changes promoted by the SDGs.
First, there was a shift of focus from the “how” question to the “what” question. Since World War II, the prevalent concept of development in policy circles was associated with economic growth, especially at the aggregate (or national) level. Except for a few dissenting voices, there was very little interest in asking “what” development should be. Rather, for decades, the primary concern was “how” to promote economic growth. Recently, however, there has been a growing academic interest in the “what” question. Nobel prize winner in economics Amartya Sen was perhaps one of the most prominent voices in challenging the focus on economic growth, by arguing that accumulating wealth (i.e., development) is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a means that enables us to live “the lives we have a reason to value.”[2] Therefore, development should be focused on increasing, among other things, individual freedom, and while wealth is part of that package, it is not the only item in it.
Second, the SDGs abandon a single goal for development, replacing economic growth with many potentially incommensurable goals. In such a context, where SDG targets might pose cross-cutting processes, theorizing and proving causality becomes more complicated and economists (and other researchers) have a harder time portraying themselves as reliable sources of recommendations for policymakers. There is, of course, room to analyze causality, but such analyses become more fragmented. Again, this seems very much in line with recent academic thinking.
Similarly to Sen, another set of Nobel prize winners in economics, Esther Duflo and Abjit Banerjee, have challenged the traditional discourse in development circles. While Sen focused on the normative question (what we should be promoting), Duflo and Banerjee turned to a descriptive question: what questions are we able to answer as social scientists? In Poor Economics, they argue that we are unable to answer big “D” development questions (e.g., how to promote economic growth).[3] Instead, they argue that we should focus on small “d” development questions: should malaria bed nets be sold or given for free in African villages? The fact that 17 SDGs are not linked in any way by an overarching concept of development seems aligned with this effort to look closer at concrete outcomes, especially when one considers the targets associated with them.
“While celebrated in development circles for their ambition and innovative nature, these goals are not accompanied by strategies, policy prescriptions, sequencing recommendations, or prioritizing schemes. In short, they are goals without any theories explaining how we are to actually achieve them.”
The SDGs are not only aligned with influential economic thinking but also endorsed by strong political support across the globe. Setting the SDGs goals, and their predecessors the MDGs, was an unprecedented effort led by the United Nations. Countries had to engage in a lengthy and laborious process to come up with a consensual answer to the “what” question.
Despite these alignments, it is worth returning to the question I articulated at the outset. What is the role of academia in development thinking in the context of SDGs? It seems that we are moving away from top-down theorizing (e.g., large economic models). Is there a different kind of theorizing that could emerge (or has emerged) from the attempts to promote the SDGs? If so, what would be its premises and its assumptions? For instance, the SDGs are concerned with targets, which allow for contextualized solutions that may not be replicable elsewhere. In this fragmented context, what type of scholarly work could be classified as theorizing? Is identifying the essential elements to formulate contextualized solutions a form of theorizing, or will such efforts ultimately frustrate efforts to generalize beyond distinctive cases? Is the process to implement development policies (community involvement, co-creation, etc.) a form of theorizing? Is one single theoretical framework even compatible with the SDGs?
Inquiring into these questions will help us understand what role scholars and researchers can and should play in a development context informed by the SDGs. Although there may not be consensus at the end of this inquiry, much can be gained by engaging with it and the many questions I’ve posed in this provocation.
About the Faculty Mentor Paper Series
This paper marks the beginning of the faculty reflection series that prompted a range of compelling responses and launched our global initiative, Reimagining the Future of Sustainable Development. Featuring contributions from leading scholars across the Reach Alliance global academic consortium, the series opens a timely dialogue on the evolving role of universities in shaping the future of sustainable development theory and practice. Developed as part of Reach’s commitment to advancing research-to-impact and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, these reflections aim to engage higher education professionals in shaping the future of the Sustainable Development Goals.
References
[1] H.W. Arndt, Economic Development: The History of an Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
[2] Amartya Sen, Development As Freedom (New York: Vintage, 1999).
[3] Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York, Public Affairs, 2011).