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.
No comments:
Post a Comment