U.N. SDGs and the Caribbean
BY Elizabeth Morgan
AS a reminder, the UN Agenda 2030 and its 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) form the global development plan to which Jamaica’s National Development Plan, Vision 2030, is now aligned.
The UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development first met in 2014, replacing the existing committee on sustainable development. The HLPF meets annually and now has primary responsibility for the follow-up and review of the UN 2030 Agenda and its SDGs.
The 2018 HLPF was held in New York from July 9-18 with the ministerial session held July 16-18 under the theme: ‘Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies’. Jamaica’s delegation to the Ministerial session was led by the minister of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Pearnel Charles Jr. Jamaica and the Bahamas were among the 46 countries presenting voluntary national reviews of the implementation of the SDGs.
The HLPF focused on implementation of six of the 17 SDGs. Goal 17, addressing the critical means of implementation, development finance and international trade, is permanently on the agenda.
The ministerial declaration adopted at the conclusion of the forum acknowledged that while some progress has been made to implement the goals, it has been uneven across countries and regions, and needs to be accelerated. The ministers also recognised that the most vulnerable countries, including small-island developing states (SIDS), need special attention and that many middle-income countries (MICs) also have serious challenges. Jamaica and other Caricom countries are SIDS and MICs.
On Goal 17, means of implementation, and specifically on international trade, the ministers committed to taking concrete and immediate action to create the necessary enabling environment at all levels to achieve the SDGs by 2030. The ministers indicated their intention to continue promoting a universal, rules-based, open, transparent, predictable, inclusive, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as meaningful trade liberalisation. This sounds quite optimistic and ambitious.
During the ministerial session, however, the reference to the WTO became problematic as the USA objected to it. The US was of the view that the WTO was not a UN body and thus mention of it was inappropriate and did not respect its independence. As a result, the US was one of only two countries to vote against the ministerial declaration. There was more to this than just a matter of the independence of the WTO. It reflected the Trump Administration’s lukewarm, if not antagonistic, stance on multilateral trade.
The WTO has just announced that its 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) will be held in Kazakhstan in 2020. If the Trump Administration has its way, the agenda will be heavily influenced by the USA and will be limited in coverage. The USA, with others, has actively sought to sideline the Doha Round since the 2015 MC10 in Nairobi.
At present, it is not clear what the international trade agenda holds for countries in Caricom.
Like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which they succeeded, it is very possible that the SDGs could be derailed by a lack of meaningful progress in global trade.
The next HLPF is scheduled to be held in 2019 under the theme ‘Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness”. It will be interesting to see how the international trade agenda unfolds as work resumes in the major world centres in September.
Elizabeth Morgan is a specialist in international trade and politics