Localizing sustainable development goals

BANTAY GOBYERNO

Ike Señeres

The newly launched 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) starts this year, 2015 and the deadline is the year 2030. That seems too far away, but we have to bear in mind that we had 15 years to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from the year 2000 to 2015, and yet we practically failed to meet 7 of the MDGs, having succeeded only in establishing “global partnerships for development” (Goal 8).

Our relative failure to meet most of the MDGs is no laughing matter, because we formally committed to meet these goals as a regular member of the UN, not to mention that we are one of the original founding members of that global organization. There is no sense in crying over spilled milk however, because this time around, we should just make a firm resolve to meet all of the 17 SDGs, by hook or by crook.

As the 15th President of the Philippines, Benigno Simeon Aquino III will serve until 2016. The 16th President, whoever he or she is going to be, will serve until 2022. The 17th President will serve until 2028 and the 18th President will serve until 2034.

What that means is that the 15th President only has less than a year to jumpstart the SDGs, while the 18th President has about two years to cap it off. As it usually happens, each new President comes out with his or her own Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP). As it should always happen however, the MTPDPs should be aligned with the sustainable development goals of the UN. Had this been the case, the current MTPDP should have been aligned with the MDGs from 2011 to 2015, and its tail end should have been aligned with the SDGs from 2015 to 2016.

As provided for in the Local Government Code (LGC), each region is supposed to have its own Regional Development Council (RDC). According to the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), the RDCs are the highest planning and policy making bodies in the regions, and they are in fact the de facto counterparts of the NEDA at the sub-national level.

As I understand it however, the NEDA prepares the MTPDP at the national level, while the RDCs are supposed to make their own Regional Development Plans (RDPs) at their level. Since that is supposed to be the case, we therefore have the reason to expect that the RDCs should have set their own MDG targets from 2000 to 2015 and following the same logic, the RDCs should now set their own SDG targets from 2015 to 2030.

As it is supposed to be, the national statistics about the Philippine MDG achievements should have been consolidated from the regional statistics that were submitted to the NEDA by the RDCs, following the logic that the aggregate data should be a sum of its parts.

As far as I know however, the RDCs were not even required to set their own MDG targets and even if they were required, they apparently did not submit the data. I know that the NEDA collects project monitoring data from the RDCs, but it seems that these are not specifically prepared to gather the statistics about the MDG targets. Without any specific MDG data coming from below, it would seem that the NEDA simply estimated the MDG statistics at the national level. Looking forward at what should happen in the case of the SDGs now and in the future, we should now make sure that the data should be collected from below and aggregated at the top.

Based on the logic that the RDCs are de facto counterparts of the NEDA at the sub-national level, the RDCs should now also function as the concurrent counterparts of the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) at that level, considering that the NEDA is the Secretariat of the PCSD. There could be some difficulties in adopting this interpretation because the RDCs were created by a Republic Act (RA 7160), while the PCSD was created by an Executive Order (EO 15, 1992) only.

Moreover, there could be some overlaps in the roles of the NEDA and the Department of Interior & Local Government (DILG), because another Executive Order (EO 370, 1996) has mandated the DILG to coordinate and monitor sustainable development localization at the local government unit (LGU) level. However, there is an upside to that, because the provincial officials that attend the RDCs are under the guidance of the DILG. As it is now however, the DILG is not a principal member of the PCSD.

One of the functions of the PCSD is to “catalyze the formation and institutionalization of the Local Councils for Sustainable Development (LCSDs), in coordination with local authorities”. I would imagine that this function would be difficult for the PCSD to do, considering that the DILG is not part of it. It is perhaps the reason why not a single LCSD has been formed at the RDC level, and only five LCSDs have been formed at the provincial level, namely Ilocos Sur, Aurora, Camarines Norte, Siquijor and Leyte. It is understandable why the Department of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR) is a principal member of the PCSD but not the DILG, because originally, the PCSD was formed to review and ensure our commitments in the light of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), and to act as the coordinating mechanism with the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD). Now that the UN has elevated sustainable development at a higher level, it is time to review the functions and membership of the PCSD.

Since all of the top 4 SDGs are quantifiable, all these could be reported numerically every year by the RDCs, and even quarterly if their resources would allow it. The top four goals are (1) no poverty, (2) zero hunger, (3) good health and wellbeing and (4) quality education. Roughly translated, these 4 goals could be measured in terms of (1) the poverty rate, (2) the hunger rate, (3) the longevity rate and (4) the literacy rate.

Even now, these four statistics are already available at the regional level and the logical thing to do is to identify what should be used as the benchmark data for the starting year of the SDGs which is 2015. As it is now, the measurement of the hunger rate is inexact, because it is simply based on perceived hunger, but never mind that, because that is as good as any data that we could gather.

For practical reasons, the RDCs should really just be tasked to also function as the concurrent counterparts of the PCSD at the regional level, instead of forming separate LCSDs at that level. That should not be a problem at all, because after all, not a single LCSD has been formed yet at the regional level.

One advantage of this idea is that the Regional Directors of both the DENR and the DILG are already members of the RDCs; therefore they could immediately start coordinating at that level. For good measure however, the scope of the PCSD should be broadened not only to cover the environment in general and Agenda 21 in particular, but all of the 17 SDGs. Aside from that, the DILG should become a principal member, along with all other agencies that have anything to do with Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), directly or indirectly.

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