The UN’s “Sustainable Development Agenda” is Basically a Giant Corporatist Fraud
This Agenda is a
plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to
strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognize that
eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme
poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable
requirement for sustainable development. All countries and all
stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this
plan. We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty
and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take
the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the
world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this
collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind. The 17
Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing
today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda.
They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what
these did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and
to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.
They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of
sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.
– From the Preamble to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
UN
records reveal that the intergovernmental body has already marginalised
the very groups it claims to be rescuing from poverty, hunger and
climate disaster.
Records from the
SDG process reveal that insiders at the heart of the UN’s
intergovernment engagement negotiations have criticised the
international body for pandering to the interests of big business and
ignoring recommendations from grassroots stakeholders representing the
world’s poor.
Formal statements
issued earlier this year as part of the UN’s Post-2015 Intergovernmental
Negotiations on the SDGs, and published by the UN Sustainable
Development Division, show that UN ‘Major Groups’ representing
indigenous people, civil society, workers, young people and women remain
deeply concerned by the general direction of the SDG process — whereas
corporate interests from the rich, industrialised world have viewed the
process favourably.
This allegation is
borne out by UN records, which show that its own Major Groups
representing the very people the global institution professes to be
empowering — poor people in developing countries — are increasingly
sceptical of the SDG agenda.
– From Nafeez Ahmed’s recent article: UN Plan to Save Earth is “Fig Leaf” for Big Business
On September 25th, Pope
Francis will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York
City. To much fanfare, the Pope will celebrate the unveiling of the UN’s
Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.
A key plank of this agenda
relates to the UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals,” or SGDs. While this
sounds all warm and fuzzy, several well meaning participants have
become horrified by the extent to which multi-national corporations have
influenced the entire process. So much so, that insiders are claiming
the UN is actually marginalizing the very people it claims to be saving.
The poor, the weak, and the voiceless.
In an invaluable piece of investigative reporting, Nafeez Ahmed writes the following:
But all we know what has gotten better…a lot better. Corporate profits.UN records reveal that the intergovernmental body has already marginalized the very groups it claims to be rescuing from poverty, hunger and climate disaster.At the end of this month, the UN will launch its new 2030 Sustainable Development agenda for “people, planet and prosperity” in New York, where it will be formally adopted by over 150 world leaders.The culmination of years of consultations between governments, communities and businesses all over the world, there is no doubt that the agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer an unprecedented vision of the interdependence of global social, economic and environmental issues.But records from the SDG process reveal that insiders at the heart of the UN’s intergovernment engagement negotiations have criticised the international body for pandering to the interests of big business and ignoring recommendations from grassroots stakeholders representing the world’s poor.Formal statements issued earlier this year as part of the UN’s Post-2015 Intergovernmental Negotiations on the SDGs, and published by the UN Sustainable Development Division, show that UN ‘Major Groups’ representing indigenous people, civil society, workers, young people and women remain deeply concerned by the general direction of the SDG process — whereas corporate interests from the rich, industrialised world have viewed the process favorably.Among the ‘Major Groups’ engaged in the UN’s SDG process is ‘Business and Industry.’ Members of this group include fossil fuel companies like Statoil USA and Tullow Oil, multinational auto parts manufacturer Bridgestone Corporation, global power management firm Eaton Corporation, agribusiness conglomerate Monsanto, insurance giant Thamesbank, financial services major Bank of America, and hundreds of others from Coca Cola to Walt Disney to Dow Chemical.Despite claims that the UN’s previous Millennium Development Goals (MDG) have succeeded in halving global poverty since the 1990s, there is good reason to question this narrative.Today, 4.3 billion people live on less than $5 a day. Although higher than the World Bank poverty measure at $1.25 a day, the development charity ActionAid showed in a 2013 report that a more realistic poverty measure would be under $10 a day.Yet far from decreasing, since 1990 the number of people living under $10 a day has increased by 25%. Global poverty has not reduced — it’s got worse.
I asked Hickel why, despite so much internal criticism from UN stakeholders within the SDG process itself, these concerns had not impacted on the text of the SDG ‘Zero Draft.’ “In an early version of the Zero Draft, there was a commitment to replace GDP with an alternative measure of economic well-being. But somehow that disappeared from the final text,” said Hickel. “I don’t know what happened behind the scenes.”
This allegation is borne out by UN records, which show that its own Major Groups representing the very people the global institution professes to be empowering — poor people in developing countries — are increasingly skeptical of the SDG agenda.The civil society statement also points to parallel efforts by Western governments to forge new ‘free-trade’ agreements, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) along with proposed Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses.
Yep, sounds exactly like the “free trade fraud” being
perpetrated on the global populace at the moment. The current status
quo strategy is to put a “nice spin” on what are essentially corporatist
takeovers. See:
These new trade and investment frameworks are being negotiated by governments in secret without public accountability. The UN’s civil society group notes that the ISDS clauses “empower corporations to sue governments for reducing the value of investments through regulations that promote human rights, the environment, and labor standards.”Yet the SDGs offer little to protect vulnerable communities in the face of such corporate encroachment.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This whole thing is just corporatist PR.
On 25th March, the Indigenous Peoples Working Group told a Major Group dialogue hosted by the Trusteeship Council Chamber at UN headquarters that the SDG process “is in jeopardy of excluding Indigenous Peoples from the agenda.”The SDGs make no clear reference to the human right to water, for example, effectively providing “an open door for turning water into a commodity.”The UN workers group particularly opposes the emphasis on public-private partnerships, which it describes as “an expensive and inefficient way of financing infrastructure and services, since they conceal public borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies.”
As I have maintained for years, the moment you hear
“public-private partnership” run for the hills. You are being screwed
over in unimaginable ways. See:
In fact, despite overwhelming support
from UN member states for a more robust and transformative approach, the
report reveals that “a vocal minority, including the Vatican and Saudi
Arabia, has once again blocked consensus.”
The failure of the SDG process to
incorporate such criticisms from the UN’s own Major Groups representing
marginalized communities, is a direct result of entrenched power
disparities within the UN itself.
According to an expert report circulated
to UN officials, a detailed analysis of SDG documents reveals that the
entire process has been “fundamentally compromised” by corporations with
a vested interest in continuing business-as-usual.
In addition to mis-framing the structural origins of poverty, the report shows that the
very concept of “development” deployed within the UN’s SDG documents
derives from a “specifically neoliberal and corporatist conception of
how the world does and should work.”
Despite acknowledging “deep problems
and contradictions when relying on GDP growth to tackle poverty”, the
SDG agenda still leaves “undifferentiated, perpetual growth” as the
prime basis of development.
Hidden between the lines of the SDG
vision, then, is a great delusion — the unflinching blind faith of the
rich industrialised elite in the unquestionable perfection and
immortality of neoliberal capitalism as a ‘way of life.’
According to Brewer, by removing all
discussions about power from the SDG process, “the increasingly
unpopular neoliberal agenda remains fully in place.”
The total omission of corporate
and banking power from SDG texts, despite their unprecedented
prevalence in the UN process, “is very telling in its own right,” he
told me. “We know that multinational corporations are the most powerful
political actors, and that they are profoundly concentrated vehicles for
wealth consolidation.”
This is why, Alnoor Ladha explained, TheRules.org did not engage in the formal UN civil society SDG process.
“The process is a sham,” he said.
“They will co-opt our engagement and say they have consulted us. All of
the civil society groups that have tried to reform the SDGs have been
co-opted by the UN, including the more critical voices.”
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