Longlist of goals

There are many more goals this time round; do you think that is a good or a bad thing?

Abhijit Banerjee: It’s a terrible thing. Think of the bureaucratic capacity it takes to achieve these things. How are countries are going to keep track? At some point they will say the goals distract them from their every day job of governing. They have their own policies and targets. It is just too much. Too much.

Erik Solheim: We only need one second to agree that it is far too much. However, the beauty of the new goals is that they will be agreed by the international community. They will apply to Germany as well as Malawi as well as Nepal. Of course nobody except a couple of bureaucrats at the UN will remember all the goals, but the world at large will understand we have agreed to eradicate poverty and take care of the planet we share, and that we need a more peaceful and fair world.

How do you think these goals compare to the Millennium Development Goals?

Abhijit Banerjee: The brilliance of the original goals was that they could all, with effort, be reached. Some were reached, some were not, but they were not unreasonable, and you could say to people 'look, this is a totally reasonable goal, don't tell us it is not achievable. Just try.'

Erik Solheim: The MDGs were basically brought through the UN system by Kofi Annan in some kind of coup, and then all of a sudden they were there. They worked very well and it was a fantastic effort by Kofi Annan, but there was no process or global agreement. The beauty of the SDGs is that they have to be agreed upon by the world.

Abhijit Banerjee: This exercise was democratic in a symbolic sense, but not the kind of democracy that runs governments and makes hard choices. I would say it was inclusive, but without any of the other compulsions that democracies have. Nobody felt compelled to make choices. If the UN Secretary General had said we cannot have more than 20 targets, there is no reason why a democracy could not have decided on that.

How much will it cost to reach the stated goals, and will the money be put forward?

Erik Solheim: It is a substantial amount, but still a very small percentage of the money we spend in the world. The main issue is to get better tax systems so governments can use the money for health and education. So we need a lot more help to support those nations that are very weak on tax, and to mobilize private investment. Aid can bring us some way to reaching the goals, but the main vehicles will be tax and private investment.

Abhijit Banerjee: We are going to give 0.7 percent of GDP, and that is only if we are feeling generous. If the Republicans win the US elections, that will be even further away.

How many of these 169 targets do you realistically think could be reached in the next 15 years?

Erik Solheim: It’s definitely possible to eradicate absolute poverty. If there is sufficient political will we will also be able to reach nearly all the environmental targets. We will not be there in 2030. The world will not be a nirvana by then, but it will be a better place than it is today. And the world today is a much better place than ever before.

Abhijit Banerjee: I don’t know. My fear is that this is going to become entirely irrelevant and people are going to say ‘whatever’. And if so, it is hard to see why they would make any progress, they will just pick their own targets. I think it was a wasted opportunity. We need to go back to the drawing board. It was a good discussion, so maybe there is some value to that, in the sense that people have thought about what they want, but I don’t think the outcome is doing its best to be relevant.

Erik Solheim: We tend to look back to history and believe it was a peaceful and nice place. On the contrary. Until the 20^th century, almost all human beings were extremely poor. They were affected by hunger, had no education and war and violence were a much bigger parts of their lives than it is for most people on the planet today. We are the luckiest generation in the luckiest point in human history, we need to do even better by 2030.

The interviews were condensed and edited for clarity.

Abhijit Banerjee is professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and a research affiliate with the Innovations for Poverty Action NGO. He also co-wrote Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.

Erik Solheim has served both as Norway's Environment Minister and International Development Minister. He has been Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) since 2013. He holds several awards for his work on climate, including the UNEP's “Champion of the Earth”.