In January 2016, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were launched globally with much hope and ambition. In February 2016, Pakistan became one of the first countries of the world whose parliament unanimously approved SDGs as national development agenda. Yet three years on, it is increasingly becoming evident that Pakistan is going to miss the goals spelled out in the SDG agenda. What has been achieved so far, and, more importantly, what needs to be done to drive progress on the SDG front is a question that the development community is grappling with.
That the question of Pakistan’s slow progress towards the SDGs is being led by the UNDP these days, when in fact it should be the government’s own organisations, and the politicians at large who should be pursuing these goals, is symptomatic of the underlying reasons behind Pakistan’s slow progress. But that requires a separate discussion.
In Islamabad last week, the UNDP invited a host of representatives from economics and development community to muse on the way forward. It highlighted that over the last three years it has worked with both federal and provincial institutions to localize and integrate the SDGs in national policies and systems. It has helped SDG task forces including a National SDG Secretariat in the country’s national assembly on the theory of change that “unless SDGs are integrated in the public systems, political and bureaucratic ownerships are built and sector wide integration happens, significant progress towards SDGs may not be possible.”
Be that as it may. Pakistan’s progress has been slow. Which is why two of the broader questions that UNDP posed to participants of the consultative moot was how to mainstream SDG and is there a need to revisit the theory of the change that so far rests on SDGs’ integration with government machinery and political leadership.
This theory of change, however, assumes that politicians’ rise to top offices in Pakistan comes on the back of their pursuit of politics of poverty. The politics of poverty and inequality reduction exists when the elite is forced to make strategic alliances with the poor and address citizens’ demand in order to gain seats in federal and provincial assemblies.
Do such circumstances currently exist in Pakistan, or are they on the verge of emerging? What incentives do the top 10-15 percent currently have to reset the game in the favour of bottom 30-40 percent? There are no clear-cut answers to these, albeit most would maintain that politics of poverty does not really exist in the country beyond lip servicing.
Perhaps one way to explore the angle of citizen demand is through an inclusive participatory-based monitoring system of the SDGs. This may also help address the issue of lack of official data to monitor the progress on SDGs, which was one of the most talked about issue at UNDP’s consultative moot this week.
Globally, it is increasingly becoming evident that traditional data sources are not sufficient for measuring SDGs. In some cases, data is not available at all or is incomplete because national and provincial statistical organisations are not up to the mark, as is the case of Pakistan. In other cases, gathering data is inherently problematic, such those that have environmental dimensions.
In recognition of these realities, a few countries - Argentina, Nepal, and East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) - have started experimenting with citizen-generated datasets; some of these experiments might be successful, some perhaps not. But citizen generated datasets has a better potential to help both mainstream SDG and also provide evidence to reconsider the theory of change, as against fixing the state’s statistics bodies, which may take a much longer time. The wave of cheaper and growing access to technology and growing youth population already favours the move towards citizen generated datasets.
An even better strategy to compliment the drive towards micro-level, citizen generated, locally-relevant data is a public awareness campaign. It has been nine years since the devolution. Yet Pakistanis still generally look up to federal government to provide for quality health, education, sanitation. Save for limited focus on Lahore, and Karachi, neither the media nor the civil society is focussed on creating a bridge between the citizens and the second/third tiers of government.
While work towards development agenda like SDGs should ideally be locally imagined and locally funded, but in its absence the UNDP, therefore, would do well to work towards district/city level SDG awareness campaign, and later compare the SDG performance of those districts where these campaigns were held as against those where it was not.
The awareness campaign should also inform citizens about the various responsibilities of federal, provincial and local governments in relation to the SDGs, and how perhaps citizens can partner with these tiers of government to bring about change. This will also test the theory of change - in terms of whether the supply of SDGs through integration works better or the demand for self-monitored SDGs is a better approach. It won’t be a surprise if demand creates its own supply!
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