Hijacking Our Compassion For the World:
By: Nadarajah, Nat
Tags: Compassion, Neoliberalism, Unsdgs

Hijacking Our Compassion For the World:

Preliminary Examination of the Foundations of UN SDGs

Business-as-Usual and Business-as-Always

On a lighter side, I like to agree with the comment of a development expert that the UN SDGs seem like “a high school wish-list for how to save the world.” In earnest, I am increasingly convinced of what the UN SDGs are — to stabilise the capital accumulation process with another fillip to save global capitalism from being trans-formed. Ironically, it is supposedly a global ‘trans-formation’ programme to remain on the same track! It will undoubtedly be not just business-as-usual, but it will be business-as-always.

As I come to make sense of the ‘true character’ of the 17 goals and 169 targets, I am concerned for the people who are animated by the genuine desire to trans-form the world for the better. The disturbing part is how the SDGs have mobilised and garnered all our legitimate concerns and compassion for a safer and just society. We have some of the most committed persons, national communities, universities, and foundations, from around the world, backing it to the core in their programmes, almost with a religious fervour.

We all so much want a better world. A supposedly non-partisan political international body, the UN, has finally given us a blueprint for our complete collective wellbeing and sustainable future. It draws a sigh of relief. The UN seems to have taken on the role of a non-violent revolutionary vanguard aiming at transforming the world. But is it authentically promoting transformation through the SDGs? Will it nurture a social formation that is genuinely inclusive, and, as we progress, ‘no one is left behind’?

There is certainly a small but growing voice critical of SDGs. Public intellectuals and concerned students working on indigenous people and their cultures, feminism, post-colonialism, neo-colonialism and post-development are raising systematic criticisms. Despite these criticisms, where are we today? Unfortunately, most have been seduced by ‘goals and targets’ promoted through beautifully designed flyers, posters and websites. We organise national and global events. We fund and manage research on the goals and targets. We offer courses based on SDGs to nurture generations of young minds. We set SDGs as the framework for organisational work and bottom lines. We have no time for all the growing criticisms. We dismiss or demonise or silence them (the experience of this writer). We are indeed ready to defend the SDGs at any cost. It is so well-written, focused, convenient and easy to report. The SDGs seem to be so seductively comprehensive.

I sincerely hope that we (individuals, institutions and nations) will purposely pause for a while. We need to reflect on the SDGs in totality and ‘excavate’ the ground from which the goals and targets have been developed and unfold. We need to take some time to evaluate what we are really committed to supporting and nurturing the SDGs. We should ask what hegemonic or meta-stories govern the UN SDGs? Are they innocent, apolitical, objective, technical, and do not articulate partisan, vested interests? We need to think again.

Let me share some critical analyses and observation at some length. In the Jacobin, a voice of the American Left, an article appeared in 2015 entitled The Problem with Saving the World.[1]

Yet despite this growing realisation, the core of the SDG program for development and poverty reduction relies precisely on the old model of industrial growth — ever-increasing levels of extraction, production, and consumption. And not just a little bit of growth: they want at least 7 per cent annual GDP growth in the least developed countries and higher levels of economic productivity across the board. In fact, an entire goal, Goal 8, is devoted to growth, specifically export-oriented growth, in keeping with existing neoliberal models.

What does this really mean?

The SDGs’ contradictory relationship to growth extends to its approach to global poverty. The Zero Draft promotes growth as the main solution to poverty, but this relationship is highly tenuous. Of all the income generated by global GDP growth between 1999 and 2008, the poorest 60 per cent of humanity received only 5 per cent of it. Given the existing ratio between GDP growth and the income growth of the poorest, it will take 207 years to eliminate poverty with this strategy and to get there, we will have to grow the global economy by 175 times its present size. This is terrifying to contemplate. (Emphasis mine.)

Consider this with the following comment)[2] :

The SDGs are a paean to consumption-driven economic growth. Everything they claim to be able to eradicate — from poverty to violence — can be addressed by GDP growth, they tell us. They want at least 7% GDP growth per year in the least developed countries and higher levels of economic productivity across the board. In fact, an entire goal, number eight, is devoted to this. It’s bizarre: we’re all acutely aware of the need to dethrone GDP growth as the measure of human progress, but the SDGs carry on as though this isn’t even an issue. (Emphasis mine.)

In another article, ‘Politics of Leaving No One Behind’ — Contesting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals’,[3] revealing observations and arguments are made on the framework that guides the UN SDGs.

The SDGs are indeed highly significant but not because they may appear at first glance as an inclusive, empowering and ecologically sustainable agenda. Rather, based on a close examination of the SDGs, I draw the following conclusion: If implemented in its current form, the SDGs will most likely result in further impoverishment and inequality. Rather than committing to guarantee universal entitlements necessary to live dignified lives, the agenda aims to entrench highly contested neoliberal policies.

What is WTO doing in UN SDGs?

There are some goals, which determine the processes through which others are to be realised. For example, in the UN resolution on the SDGs, the section on the ‘means of implementation’ identifies the centrality of SDG 17 and emphasises the importance of implementing the rules and regulations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). To frame a development agenda through the WTO is to work from the premise that a ‘free market’ — more explicitly a neoliberal variant of capitalist development — is the solution to inequality, poverty and ecological crisis. (Emphasis is mine.)

SDG 17? SDG 10? (Are there no alternative frameworks in the world of almost 8 billion people?)

The significance of SDG 17 for the overall agenda cannot be over-emphasised. Goal 17 has been written to include specific references on the need to ensure that member states commit fully to the WTO agreements. In addition, some indicators intended to measure progress on realising the goals (some of which are also country/region-specific), are explicitly based on, or linked to countries’ membership of and entrenchment in rule-based frameworks such as the WTO. For example, the commitments anticipated under SDG 10, encompass obligations to maintain membership of key multilateral development organisations (such as the World Bank, IMF, WTO, Regional Development Banks) specifically for those countries categorised as ‘developing’, singled out here by comparison to those identified as ‘high income’ countries. The SDG agenda, therefore, is highly significant but also contested because for critics it presents causes of deprivation as the (ostensible) solution. (Emphasis mine.)

So, honestly, are we really part of an in-depth trans-formation process? What seems to me is that most of us are just an active part of the neoliberal reform agenda. It looks like a call for a new round of capital accumulation and development. ‘Late capitalism’ is metamorphosing but riding on our concern for ‘sustainability’. It is getting all our brain, muscle and organisational powers to reinvent itself.

The UN declaration on the SDGs explicitly refers to the goals and their associated targets as ‘aspirational’ (UN 2015: 13 — point 55), and to the fact that realising the agenda is contingent upon the commitment of member states. However, as we have seen, not all goals are equally ‘aspirational’ or contingent, given that those referring to the ‘means of implementation’ comprise concrete commitments to neoliberal policy prescriptions. Particularly the ‘means-of-implementation’-goals are linked to a wider policy environment in which developing (and developed!) countries have already been under pressure to accede to the entrenchment of neoliberal reforms.

So for the individual or collective, the meta-story we live by is the same old one: “Liquidate Earth” (but ‘pretend’ that we are working very hard for the greater common good). I simply see a façade of ‘clean’ targets and objective technical processes. They, however, carefully hide ‘the driver’ behind the 17 goals and 169 targets. It is ‘same old driver’ who drove us into the mess we are now in, in the first place. It is the same driver who led us into a broken world that a virus (SARS-CoV-2) revealed to us. Now ‘he’ pretends to be able to take us forth to a sustainable utopia of clean, safe and endless growth. We have mindlessly become his cheerleaders.

Why We Need To Go Beyond UN SDGs?

Explicitly or implicitly, the SDGs, growing out from a ‘hidden meta-framework’ which has a global agenda, can be deployed as an ingenious device to harness the world’s genuine concerns for a better future. It is undoubtedly a way to mobilise local and global labour-power to further the cause of capitalist development by drawing every nook and cranny into a worldwide process. A hegemonic ‘language of care’ serves this cause. ‘No one will be left behind’ generates a powerful emotional response and a carefully crafted apolitical image of the future that all kind-hearted beings desire. We will all ‘buy’ the UN SDGs, no questions asked. This is a classic case of the cultural hegemony of one class over the rest, mobilising us for sustained capitalist development.

We genuinely believe that SDGs are going to deliver that inclusive world we prefer. The only thing is that we are not positively going that way. In 2030 (or much before that), if we survive the climate crisis or another pandemic, we will have UN SDGs Version 2 (or some other name). It will start with pervasive criticism of UN SDGs Version 1. We will follow the same routine as to how UN MDGs were critically evaluated. Very confidently, we will just dance to the repetition script. We will have meetings, conferences, research projects, technological innovations, roundtable meetings, quarrels, case studies, regional forums, policy papers, experts gathering, commissions, national gatherings, etc. We will spend trillions of dollars doing all that. That’s ok. It is all good for the economy anyway with a positive impact on GDP, eventually. Capitalism needs problems to solve, so that it can record meaningless, and at time dangerous, growth. Of course, somewhere along the way, at least some of us would start sensing a déjà vu feeling.

It really does not have to be this way. We have other ways to nurture a better, safe, just and sustainable future(s). But we have to genuinely trans-form the way we live or shape the world. A neoliberal worldview frames the assumption on which UN SDGs are based. They are based on and guided by a strong capitalist market-centric and endless growth meta-story. These stories have real consequences.

We are now going through the 4th industrial revolution, with the 5th round the corner. The SDGs seem to be poised to open the markets for a full-blown growth of a cybernetic world with ‘smart cities’, ‘smart villages’ and ‘smart’ everything, as long as the cyber-technology is deployed. It is the world Capital wants to have the complete control of. We are getting a taste of it today as we respond to COVID19 and mindlessly going online…moving from convenience to compulsion.

Critically challenging the UN SDGs, and the expert knowledge produced around them is also living an anti-neocolonial moment. Whole bodies of alternative knowledge and practices have been avoided. There was no critical engagement with sustainable indigenous knowledge or cultures. There has been no engagement with heterodox or

radical economics traditions, and many initiatives derived from them. There was no exploration of many viable alternative global solutions. Nothing. There is a menacing danger in all these. What is the UN SDGs teaching our children? One very elementary lesson: ’there are no other, alternative ways or stories to live by’. Just mindlessly follow the 17 goals and 169 targets. The recipe of SDGs is to socialise our children into believing in TINA, “there is no alternative”. It has become the true “opium of the elites and masses”.

We just have to move our spotlight, attention and action elsewhere. I, for instance, would see the encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, as far more authentic and honest to the agenda of global trans-formation to a better, safer, just and spiritually engaged sustainable world. It is a far more genuine voice calling us ‘to leave no one behind”. In spirit, it certainly is far more radical.

The pope, on the other hand, tackles the irrationality of endless GDP growth and consumption head-on, and he does so from the understanding — absent among economists — that the economy and the environment are part of the same system; that endless extraction from one to feed endless growth of the other is not just a physical impossibility but ultimately self-defeating and immoral. Fixes like carbon trading and renewable energy aren’t going to cut it. We have to confront the core of the problem, which is an economic model that relies on ever-increasing consumption.[4]

The UN SDGs are NOT going to get us to the world we desire for our children (tomorrow) and us (today). It is just going to delay disasters, the seeds of which we had already planted a long time ago. Our children will face the broken world and mess we have created, quite recklessly. They are waking up to our pretensions and recognising our bluff. Small, delicate fingers are pointed at us. Innocence just woke up to our gross negligence. We ought to be ashamed.

The concerns of ordinary people for others in distress and pain i.e. our compassion for the world is in grave danger: It is being mobilised and hijacked to be misused. Will we wake up? Can we stop and turn back? Can we look at the basics? Can we let go? Can we re-write the stories we live by? Can we re-look? Can we re-imagine/re-orient?

We look at causes, not just symptoms. We look at being, not just having. We look at the maximum wage, not just the minimum wage. We look at affluence, not just poverty. We look at people, not just the profit. We look at culture, not just the economy. We look at service/volunteerism, not just “what’s-in-it-for-me”. We look at sustainable livelihood, not just careers. We look at the culture of sustainability, not just the culture of economic growth. We look at minimalism, not just material possessiveness. We look at health and wellbeing, not just the medico-pharmaceutical industry. We look at wholesome nourishment, not just the food industry. We look at agroecology, not just the agrochemical industry. We look at mobility, not just the transportation industry. We look at learning and being, not just the education industry. We look at labour, not just capital. We look at our compassionate foundations, not our competitive spirit. We look at peace, and not profit from wars. We look at indigenous peoples, not just the professional experts. We look at spirituality, not just religion. We look out for all, not just our kind.[5]

Another Future is Possible

We have to address and break down our mindless taken-for-granted ways. Being alert to the dangers of the present normality, routines, comfort zones and hegemonic stories we live by forms a vital component to building a better future. They are otherwise disastrous to all life. It has given us a world that does not work for all. It has given us a broken world. There is a lot to give up or let go.

We need a profound non-violent revolutionary agenda of transforming the present. New methodologies, theories and practices need to inform our search for a better future. There is a need to do a comprehensive ecological footprint of UN SDGs, which is on a neocolonial expansionist journey. Universities and institutes educating generations of young people trained in the UN SDGs have to stop and reassess their curricula. Only disruptively humane and inclusive futures can save the generations to come. To mindfully tread gently and lightly on Mother/Sister Earth, we need to rethink and create far more authentic stories of transformation. For starters, minimal rethinking and resistance to what is so dramatically presented as a solution, the SDGs, to our present predicament would undoubtedly set the tone and direction.

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Dr M Nadarajah is a sociologist by training. Works on cultural, sustainability and spirituality issues. Can be contacted at amanibana@gmail.com.

Revised Article.

Initially published in Aliran Monthly (January 2019). Aliran Monthly is the voice of Aliran, which is a non-partisan national reform movement in Malaysia. Also, a part of this article was presented at the International Conference on Environmental Science and Sustainable Development, 23–24th October 2019, Jakarta, Indonesia. The argument in the paper was later developed in an article ‘Living’ in a Violent, Broken World: The Urgent Need for New Humanities and Compassion Studies. The article is work-in-progress.

Based on M. Nadarajah, https://aliran.com/thinking-allowed-online/the-common-good-and-new-malaysia/ Nov 2018. Revised and updated.

Endnotes

[1] Jason Hicket, ‘The Problem with Saving the World,”, Jacobin. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/global-poverty-climate-change-sdgs/. November 2028. “The UN new sustainable goals aim to change the world without transforming it.”

[2] Jason Hickel, “The Pope V the UN: Who will Save the World First?,” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jun/23/the-pope-united-nations-encyclical-sdgs. July 2020

[3]https://medium.com/fridays-with-munplanet/politics-of-leaving-no-one-behind-contesting-the-2030-sustainable-development-goals-49522d1a5ede. July 2020. See also the article of Heloise Weber here “Politics of ‘Leaving No One Behind’: Contesting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Agenda”, Globalizations, Vol 14(3), 2017, pp. 399–414.

[4] Jason Hickel, ‘The Pope V the UN: Who will Save the World First? “ The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jun/23/the-pope-united-nations-encyclical-sdgs. Nov. 2018

Some Additional References

> Andrea M. Vasquez-Fernandez and Cash Ahenakew, “Resurgence of Relationality: Reflections on Decolonizing and Indigenizing ‘Sustainable Development,” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2020, Vol. 43, pp. 65–70.

> Barbara Crossette, “Big Holes in the UN Development Goals are Exposed By New Studies,” Pass Blue, March 18, 2019 (https://www.passblue.com/2019/03/18/big-holes-in-the-un-development-goals-are-exposed-by-new-studies/)

> Christine Struckmann, “A Post-colonial Feminist Critique of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: A South African Application,” Agenda, Vo. 32 (1), 2018, pp. 12 -24. The volume is on: The Gender Discourse of Sustainable Development Goals and other instruments for gender equality: Advancing feminist agenda in Africa? [Based on the thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in International Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University, South Africa (https://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/10019.1/100863/2/struckmann_postcolonial_2017.pdf)]

> David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Vintage Books, 2011)

> Deborah S. Peterson, “A Missing Piece in the Sustainability Movement: The Human Spirit,” Sustainability: The Journal of Record, Vol. 7 (2) , April 2014, pp. 74–77.

> Dzulkifly Abdul Razak, Nasha Rodziadi Khaw, Zulkifly Baharom, Abdul Mutalib, and Hood Mohd. Salleh, Decolonising the Paradigm of Sustainable Development through the Traditional Concept of Sejahtera”, in Zinaida Fadeeva, Laima Galkute and Kiran Chhokar (eds.), Academia and Communities: Engaging for Change (Tokyo: UNU, 2018), pp. 210–219.

> Malcolm Langford, “Lost in Transformation? The Politics of the Sustainable Development Goals,” Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 30 (2), 2016, pp. 167 -176.

> Mark Langon, “The UN Sustainable Development Goals and Neo-colonialism” in Mark Langon (ed.), Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of ‘Development’ in Africa (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 177–205.

> Nadarajah, Living Pathways: Meditations on Sustainable Cultures and Cosmologies in Asia (Penang: Areca Books, 2013).

> Oliver Albert Matikainen, “Sustaining the One-Dimensional: An Ideology Critique of Agenda 2030 and the SDGs,” Department of Earth Sciences. Uppsala University, 2019. (https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1326645/FULLTEXT01.pdf).

> Pope Francis, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home (Singapore: Catholic Bishops Conference, 2015).

> Regina Scheyvens, “The Private Sector and the SDGs: The Need to Move Beyond ‘Business as Usual’, ”Sustainable Development, Sust. Dev. (March 2016), https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.1623 (Published online in Wiley Online Library).

> Rosa Freedman, “The UN’s 15-year Goals Ignore LGBT Rights Yet Again,” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/the-uns-15-year-goals-ignore-lgbt-rights-yet-again-42067. May 20, 2015.

> Thich Nhat Hanh, Love Letters to the Earth (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2013).

> The University of Queensland, “Latest UN Sustainability Goals Pose More Harm than Good for Environment, Scientists Warn,” (July 6, 2020), https://phys.org/news/2020-07-latest-sustainability-goals-pose-good.html. July 2020.