BJORN LOMBORG: World needs to get realistic about UN development goals

The world faces many challenges, from inflation and high interest rates to the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical conflicts such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Amid all this, 2023 marks the halftime point for the achievement of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) — the sprawling list of 169 ambitions in which all global leaders have promised everything to everyone.

Governments worldwide, including SA, have promised to end hunger, poverty and disease, stop climate change, corruption and war, while ensuring quality education and every other good thing you could imagine, including organic apples and community gardens for everyone. Not surprisingly, the world is failing on almost every single promise. We’re at halftime, but nowhere near halfway. We need to do better.

First, we need a better conversation on priorities. My think-tank is working with governments across the world, from Uganda to Tonga and Uzbekistan, to help the national spending decisions by researching which policies deliver the biggest benefits for each rand spent. If there is political interest we have the resources to do this for SA too. The starting point is a national conversation on top priorities.

Second, we need to rescue the global goals and end the global dithering. As resources are scarce everywhere, we need to prioritise the best things first. Unfortunately, many world leaders still believe the way forward is to come to the UN later in 2023 and make lofty speeches about how important it is to achieve every one of the 169 promises, and then to suggest that only by aiming for the stars will we get anywhere.

But wishful saying won’t change the fact there is no way we will deliver on all these promises in time. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres is now implausibly calling for a $500bn annual SDG stimulus package. That’s several times what rich countries are already spending on foreign aid. It’s just not going to happen.

Even if taxpayers globally could be convinced to pay the requested half-a-trillion dollars, this would still be at 20-times too little. It is estimated that achieving all the promises will cost about $15-trillion to $20-trillion a year. Now, less than a quarter is funded and most of that spending is in rich countries, not the poor countries where development is needed the most. This leaves an annual shortfall of $10-trillion to 15-trillion, which is equivalent to the entire tax intake of $13-trillion from every government in the world. That’s a fiscal gap that simply cannot be closed.

We need a shift from empty rhetoric and trillion-dollar promises to real and efficient billion-dollar action. It is time to focus our attention where it matters most. The truth is that across the SDGs some promises do not have cost-effective, powerful solutions. Other promises have investments that are incredibly effective and can deliver amazing progress for a few billion dollars a year.

Take the crucial SDG promise of improving education. Research has consistently shown cheap and efficient ways to increase learning. Tablets with educational software used just one hour a day over a year cost only $20 per pupil and result in learning that normally would take three years.

Semi-structured teaching plans can make teachers teach more efficiently, doubling learning outcomes each year for just $10 per student. We could dramatically improve education for almost half-a-billion primary school students in the world’s poorer half for less than $10bn annually. This investment would generate long-term productivity increases worth $65 for each dollar spent.

Or consider the SDG promise of reducing hunger. We need a second Green Revolution. In the 1960s breakthroughs created more efficient seeds that allowed farmers to produce more food at lower cost. Now, agricultural R&D is needed desperately for the world’s poorer half. This spending would cut malnutrition, help farmers become more productive, and drive down food costs. Spending $5.5bn annually could deliver an incredible return of long-term benefits worth $184bn.

Simple measures to improve the conditions around childbirth could save the lives of 166,000 mothers and 1.2-million newborns each year, for less than $5bn annually.

Economists working with the Copenhagen Consensus think-tank have identified 12 powerful policies that would deliver enormous benefits across the SDGs at relatively low costs. You can read more about these in my new book, Best Things First. For a total of $35bn annually we could do everything listed above plus we could avoid 1-million deaths from tuberculosis each year by 2030, improve land ownership records, boost trade, reduce malaria, enable more movement of skilled workers to reduce inequality, improve immunisation levels, make major inroads into child nutrition, and save 1.5-million lives from chronic diseases such as hypertension.

In total, these policies can save 4.2-million lives each year and make the poorer world $1.1-trillion more prosperous every year. Put in economic terms, every dollar spent will deliver an amazing $52 of social benefits. Pursuing these 12 phenomenal investments is likely the best thing the world can do this decade.

We should begin a national conversation on priorities in SA too. And we should ensure the world has a similar conversation on its many promises. Let’s rescue the SDG agenda and make the most of the remaining seven years. Let’s prioritise what would deliver the most incredible benefits for the world.

• Dr Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. This article is the final part of a series on what the world needs to do to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.