PHM-Exch> To journalists above all ? SDGs shortfalls point to core contradictions
Alison Katz
katz.alison at gmail.com
Fri Apr 12 00:35:09 PDT 2019
For me, this PHM comment is a tour de force. Big thanks to the author,
presumably David.
I quote one para in particular because I feel that this point MUST be
transmitted (by us) to journalists, above all. Also, if we can, we must
all try and spread this message through articles in our local or
national media.
*"The**SDGs provide an inspiring vision of ‘the world we want’. However,
they also serve to distract attention from the economic and political
forces which are preventing the realisation of this vision. In effect
they are helping to maintain an appearance of good faith and commitment
on the part of those who are in effect working to prevent the
achievement of the goals. This is the legitimation function of the SDGs."
*
We need to identify explicitly who "those" are (those who are working to
prevent the achievement of those goals). Briefly, the rich and powerful
countries and their TNCs. How do they do this? Through multistakeholder
partnerships, mostly.
I think that these mechanisms are not understood at all, even on the
left. (For example, Le Monde Diplomatique partners with the Global Fund
and publishes articles from them, seemingly uncritically.) *
*
WHO today will claim, as it usually does, that the role of the current
economic order is beyond its mandate. This to me is the other key point
to debate publicly now. As part of its advocacy role, and as a knowledge
organization, the question is well within WHO's mandate. And I am sure
we can find articles/sentences in the constitution and in the Alma Ata
Declaration (which has not been repudiated) and of course in General
Comment 14 on the Right to Health, that illustrate that point.
Anyway, big thanks again and I hope these critical points get wide
airing. alison
PS when is GHW5 coming out?
Le 08.04.19 à 10:22, Claudio Schuftan a écrit :
>
>
> PHM Comment
>
>
> SDG shortfalls point to core contradiction
>
>
> Notes for discussion at WHA72, WHO, end May 2019
>
> (The links refer to documents in the WHO website)
>
> Your feedback welcome; to be sent to David Legge
> <dlegge at phmovement.org <mailto:dlegge at phmovement.org>>
>
> Part I of A72/11
> <http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA72/A72_11-en.pdf>is a
> burning indictment of the health consequences of the prevailing global
> governance regime. Likewise the more detailed figures provided in
> WHS18
> <https://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/2018/en/>and
> the actual 2030 targets here.
>
> Part I of A72/11
> <http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA72/A72_11-en.pdf>needs to
> be read far more widely than just within WHO. Health science students
> and practitioners should read this and ask why. Journalists should
> read and ask why. Parliamentarians should read and ask why.
>
> Unfortunately A72/11
> <http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA72/A72_11-en.pdf>does not
> seek to explain the looming shortfalls in the SDG targets.
>
> Various reports including the SDG Index and Dashboard
> <http://sdgindex.org/>report show that no country is on track to
> achieve the SDGs by 2030. In fact the number of people living in
> poverty in Africa is increasing; likewise the number of children who
> are stunted. Global maternal mortality (now 216 per 100,000 live
> births) is unlikely to reach the target of 70 by 2030 if the rate in
> Africa remains high (currently 542).
>
> Part II lists a range of WHO programs, projects and engagements and
> seeks to demonstrate how, through these activities, WHO is
> contributing to the achievement of the SDGs. Many of these are
> admirable initiatives and WHO staff are to be congratulated for their
> commitment and achievement.
>
> Unfortunately, despite these valiant efforts, in many areas the
> shortfalls with respect to achieving the health related targets are
> growing. A72/11
> <http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA72/A72_11-en.pdf>does not
> seek to explain these widening shortfalls. Simply listing all of the
> activities which WHO is contributing to is not enough.
>
> The key to understanding the widening shortfalls in achievement is the
> contradiction between the humanistic aspirations of the SDGs and the
> dynamics of liberalised transnational capitalism.
>
> Simply measuring poverty distracts attention from the distribution of
> global wealth and global income and the dynamics which maintain
> extreme inequalities of wealth and income;
>
> Simply measuring stunting distracts attention from the world food
> system including protection and price supports in the rich world; the
> capture of arable land, water, and energy to over-feed the rich; the
> global structures which drive small farmers off their land.
>
> Simply measuring health care impoverishment distracts attention from
> the global forces, political and economic, which extract the wealth of
> resource rich countries leaving governments without the fiscal
> capacity to underwrite health care costs; which enforce high prices of
> medicines in order to maintain pharma profits and export earnings.
>
> Simply noting the impact of global warming on food production and
> environmental disaster distracts attention from the corporate and
> political forces seeking to prevent and defer action on greenhouse gas
> emissions.
>
> The SDGs provide an inspiring vision of ‘the world we want’. However,
> they also serve to distract attention from the economic and political
> forces which are preventing the realisation of this vision. In effect
> they are helping to maintain an appearance of good faith and
> commitment on the part of those who are in effect working to prevent
> the achievement of the goals. This is the legitimation function of the
> SDGs.
>
> PHM urges member state delegates to speak truth to power at the Health
> Assembly.
>
> PHM urges health activists around the world to raise public awareness
> and lobby their governments around the disaster that is looming behind
> the language of ‘sustainable development’. Key talking points in such
> advocacy include:
>
> *
>
> insist on naming liberalised transnational capitalism as a failed
> economic system (driving widening inequality, deepening the
> imbalances between productive capacity and consumption, increasing
> financial fragility and deepening our peonage to the banks through
> increasing debt);
>
> *
>
> insist on naming neoliberalism as a policy package (austerity,
> small government, privatisation, tax competition and corporate
> privilege) being implemented in order to protect the transnational
> corporations and preserve the privileges of the transnational
> capitalist elite;
>
> *
>
> recognise the contradictions between the neoliberal program on the
> one hand and the goals of reducing poverty, promoting Health for
> All, and mitigating climate change on the other;
>
> *
>
> reject the bizarre assumption that the SDGs can be paid for
> through increased economic growth (as measured by GDP) without
> attention to the harms or benefits of the market transactions so
> measured;
>
> *
>
> insist on the need for a New International Economic Order as
> called for in the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration
> <https://www.who.int/publications/almaata_declaration_en.pdf>(and
> completely ignored in the October 2018 Astana Declaration
> <https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/primary-health/declaration/gcphc-declaration.pdf>);
>
> *
>
> insist on naming the xenophobic backlash, and the populist
> demagoguery which is stoking it, as barriers to effective action
> on the SDGs; and
>
> *
>
> continue to denounce the restrictions imposed on WHO’s capacity
> and its voice by the donor chokehold and the ACs freeze.
>
> These issues are all strikingly absent from A72/11
> <http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA72/A72_11-en.pdf>.
>
>
> Internal contradictions
>
> In previous commentaries we have focused on the contradictions within
> and across the SDGs themselves. These remain important.
>
> See PHM comment on Item 31.2 at WHA69
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hy64u7j2T6f0flFdxglfh_-UKwLJd7vu7_0vktnWftk/edit?usp=sharing>which
> highlighted:
>
> *
>
> Goal 12 which promises sustainable consumption and production but
> lacks any drivers to achieve this;
>
> *
>
> Goal 8 which promises high rates of economic growth but ignores
> the contradictions between economic growth and ecological
> sustainability; and
>
> *
>
> the contradictions between the SDGs and the real effects of ‘free
> trade’;
>
> See also PHM comment on Item 16.1 at WHA70
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1710S9ZzSn5W_g1Y6H5sdQ-PHjcaByPqn4Ant8K9rCeA/edit?usp=sharing>which
> highlighted:
>
> *
>
> the need for a real world ‘theory of change’ regarding how the
> SDGs could be achieved;
>
> *
>
> the dangers of the drive towards ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’,
> as in SDG17.16 and 17.17, which projects universal beneficence and
> completely ignores the Trojan horse functions of many such
> ‘partnerships’;
>
> *
>
> the importance of following the health implications of allof the SDGs.
>
> Two of the chapters in the current Global Health Watchalso carry
> powerful criticisms of the SDGs:
>
> *
>
> A1: Sustainable Development Goals in the age of Neoliberalism
> <https://phmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/A1.pdf>
>
> *
>
> A2: ‘Leave No One Behind’ — are SDGs the way forward?
> <https://phmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/A2.pdf>
>
> SDG8 proposes that the cost of meeting the rest of the goals will be
> met through ‘sustained per capita economic growth’. GHW comments that
> the assumed metric, GDP, is a measure of market transactions
> regardless of their contribution to ecological sustainability or human
> development (or health). Manufacturing and deploying weapons of mass
> destruction makes a powerful contribution to GDP.
>
> SDG8 calls for full employment (Target 8.5) and for ‘higher levels of
> economic productivity’ (‘increase in real GDP per employed person’).
> This combination of targets ignores the role of productivity increases
> (as measured) in creating unemployment! Conventional economic theory
> assumes that the labour displaced by increased productivity will
> simply be re-employed in new forms of better-paying work. What such
> theory disregards is the massive displacement of agricultural labour
> from ‘increased productivity’ in agriculture and the huge mobilisation
> of Third World workers (displaced from agriculture) in global
> manufacturing: “too many workers competing for too few jobs to produce
> too many goods or services for too few consumers with too little
> income to afford them without increasing their already high levels of
> personal debt”.
>
> GHW5 also comments on the continuing call for increased ‘development
> assistance’ as a key pathway to funding the SDGs. This strategy has
> failed to impact on sustainable development over several decades even
> while fragmenting health systems and placing huge administrative
> burdens of governments. Meanwhile no action is proposed on tax
> evasion through transfer pricing and tax havens nor on the pressures
> of tax competition and corporate tax extortion which have held back
> tax revenues and public spending.
>
> GHW5 also comments on principle of reciprocity (non-discrimination) in
> the current regime of trade agreements; a principle which treats poor
> countries the same as rich countries despite massive differences in
> economic and political power. The New International Economic Order,
> which features in the Alma-Ata Declaration (and is notably missing
> from the 2018 Astana Declaration), envisaged discrimination in favour
> of developing countries to be structured into a rules based trading
> regime. Not only are modern trade agreements non-discriminatory (in
> the sense of including few or no provisions for ‘special and
> differential treatment’) but they discriminate blatantly in favour of
> the rich countries through extreme IP provisions, regulatory
> harmonisation and investor protection.
>
> GHW5 also addresses the difficult topic of population control. It is
> established that family sizes fall with economic development and the
> provision of social protection. However as population levels level or
> fall in the rich countries the call is increasingly heard for
> encouragement for population growth through fertility and (selective)
> immigration. GHW5 labels this as a Ponzi population policy:
>
> Its argument is that, with population aging, immigration and/or
> incentives for larger families should be encouraged to re-swell a
> comparatively shrinking working age cohort (those between 15 and 64
> years).The economic rationale is that the taxes collected from the
> productivity of the working age population is needed to pay for the
> services and pensions of a proportionately greater and increasing
> number of elderly.That makes sense, perhaps, for the short-term. But
> fast forward 40 or 50 years, and the re-swelled working age cohort has
> itself become elderly (and far more numerous), requiring an ever
> larger expansion in the base of the working age population.And so on,
> and on, and on.
>
>
>
>
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