Institute of Development Studies

After 2015: What happens after the MDGs?

Andy Sumner - 24 September 2008

The MDGs have played a major role in focusing policy since the 1990s. Some bilateral agencies, notably DFID, judge the value of all their activities on the contribution to achieving the MDGs. What happens when we no longer have the MDGs - what will guide policy after 2015?

The accelerating pace of global change is creating both challenges and opportunities. There are some major global and regional transformative processes and emerging issues. The character of these processes and issues is marked by increased inter-dependence between the North and South (or East and West). Commentators have also noted the tendency to destabilise existing livelihoods, unravel social fabrics, create conflict and exclusion as well as disrupt international markets.

These processes are reinforcing the diversity in what was once the ‘Third World'. On one hand there is a group of accelerated developers in the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the BRICETS (add Eastern Europe and Turkey), and the Goldmans Sachs N11 emerging economies (the ‘next 11' countries expected to experience fast growth in economic indicators). At the other end of the spectrum there are the LICUS (Low Income Country Under Stress) or 50-60 countries that might be classified as ‘fragile states'.

The New Actors, Contexts and Narratives

The net outcome of all the above is a lot of change - of lifestyles and livelihoods. Larger migratory movements nationally as well as internationally are likely as is an increased potential for conflict over resources as a result of people on the move. One might then be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed in thinking about policy planning amid so many changes. Even development policy itself is reconfiguring. We have, for instance, the following:
• new actors - China and other new donors, and the new large private foundations such as the Gates Foundation;
• new contexts and institutions - a new aid architecture, decentralisation, terrorism legislation; and
• newly emerging policy narratives - the resurgence of economic growth as key to development, and the more nuanced agendas of citizenship participation.

Three Options for post-MDG Policy

So, how can we promote pro-poor policy after the MDGs and amid all these complex changes, some of which mediate in favour of the poor and many of which may not? Here are three options:

1. We could carry forward the same MDGs without a timeline. This would overcome the distorting effects of such targets that have been noted (for example, children in school but few books, teachers and sometimes few buildings) although the timeline has worked as a rallying call and added a sense of urgency and accountability of governments and donors.

2. We could take the same MDG targets but with a new timeline. Jeffery Sachs has argued for 2025 and others for 2020. However would another five to ten years be enough to make progress? One estimate for Sub-Saharan Africa to meet MDG 1 was 2150.

3. We could have new or different kinds of targets with/without a timeline. These could be process rather than outcome targets such as genuinely nationally ‘owned' development strategies and targets (especially given adaptation to climate change and other major global shifts) and/or new or different kinds of targets that go beyond the ‘traditional' lens of material consumption/deprivation and disrupt the inter-generational transmission of poverty via changing values, norms and behaviours for example on feeding and schooling of girls.

In short, international development policy post-2015 is certain to be more global as we all become more connected by global markets, climate change, migration and information technology. It is likely to be more complex and less predictable because of all these global changes - and the speed at which they are happening. Much greater national as well as international migration and conflict over resources is a very real possibility.

In response, development policy is likely to evolve. Further support for society-owned strategies and goals for adaptation to changing circumstances are needed. Reflecting on the patterns of these global flows and adaptations and how they reproduce or disrupt the inter-generational transmission of poverty in both North and South will provide opportunities for public policy to think beyond material deprivation, taking into account values, norms and behaviour.

Andy Sumner is an IDS Research Fellow in the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team at the Institute of Development Studies. ‘After 2015: International Development Policy at a Crossroads' by Andy Sumner and Meera Tiwari will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in early 2009.