Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I do not have anything like the background or expertise in this matter that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) clearly has, or indeed that of some other speakers. My take on his comments is that he in no way intended to be party political but was simply pointing out that while it is correct and laudable and we should celebrate the fact that the UK is now contributing 0.7% of GNI in international aid, it is vital that we ensure that that aid is used to help the poorest people in the poorest countries on the planet and not for other purposes that the Government may believe to be valid but are certainly not a proper use of international aid funding I can understand why the Government are concerned that 17 draft development goals might be too many, because managing a programme of that size and complexity, keeping an eye on 17 targets all the time, is a difficult task. Having looked at all 17, I would not have liked to have decided which ones to leave out, because it is very difficult to identify any one that we could afford to leave behind—clearly anything that is not listed among the sustainable development goals will not get a lot of attention from the international community in future. I like the way that Ban Ki-moon has suggested we look at them: to put them under six different categories such as "people" and "dignity" Perhaps the aspect that is most seriously missing is solidarity: the feeling that, as somebody once said, we are all in this together. The whole SDG process can almost be summed up by one statement and one injunction. The statement is, "We didn’t inherit this planet from our parents; we have borrowed it from our children—it is their planet." The injunction is, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I cannot believe that if any of us were in the position of a subsistence farmer in the Ganges delta who is in danger of losing everything if the sea rises by another few feet, we would be happy if it was going to take the wealthy, influential, powerful countries of the world 25 years to come up with a solution to a problem that might wipe out our family in 10 years’ time If we compare what has happened in Bangladesh and in India over the past 30 to 40 years, we will see that, although economic development will be part of the solution, it is not the whole solution. Economists tell us that India is a much wealthier country than Bangladesh—wealth per person in India is almost twice that in Bangladesh—but life expectancy is higher in Bangladesh than it is in India. Bangladesh has done more to improve the wellbeing of its people than almost any other country on the planet. It has certainly done more and moved more quickly than any of its immediate neighbours, despite the fact that its wealth, as measured by economists, has not increased at the same rate We have to keep our eyes on that. We cannot afford to let success be measured simply by economic wealth in the traditional sense. We certainly cannot afford it to be measured by what happens to the average, because the whole point of solidarity on a global scale is that we measure our success not by how well the wealthiest or the average are doing, but by how badly the poorest are doing. By that measure we are failing very seriously indeed Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world, excluding unusual examples such as city states. With a population of more than 160 million, it is by far the most densely populated of the larger countries in the world. If we do not deal with climate change very soon, anything up to 50 million of those Bangladeshis will be displaced within the next 10 to 20 years. The wealthiest continent on the planet does not know how to cope with 2 million or 3 million refugees from north Africa. How on earth can we expect the Indian subcontinent to cope with the prospect of tens of millions—possibly 50 million—who have no choice but to leave their land because it is underwater On a humanitarian scale and a security footing, we cannot allow the SDGs to fail. I think we are past the point where we can allow them to be delayed or held up any longer. Some say it is too late to prevent climate change from seriously impacting on all of us, but it is not too late to prevent it completely Finally, I want this to succeed not because it is in our interests, but because it is not acceptable to me, in all conscience, to be part of a planet where thousands of my fellow human beings will die of starvation every day while at the same time, as we discussed earlier this week, we are trying to stop supermarkets throwing away massive amounts of food every day. That cannot be allowed to continue. We should be doing this not because it is in our or America’s interests, but because it is in the interests of the planet. We are all in this together. The solidarity of the human race has never been more important.