Dialogue|South America
work in mind. It will be interesting to follow-up its work once it is running to assess how successfully this is achieved.
Colombia early on. Of course the work of this newly creaetd Commission does not start with a clean slate. Colombia has a National Development Plan (NDP) that sets out the Government’s priorities every 4 years. The most recent one, “Todos por un nuevo país”, was drafted in 2014 and runs to 2018 and actually constitutes the basis for SDG implementation. Analysis of early plans for SDG implementation in Colombia highlight 4 challenges going forward: First, prioritisation. Colombia’s national development plan currently covers 91 targets out of the 169 SDG targets. How are authorities making decisions about which areas to prioritise? Setting priorities adapted to national contexts cannot be used as a justification for abandoning some of the SDGs, particularly those harder to implement, leading in that way to an “à la carte” implementation menu. At the same time, to be effective governments need to prioritise policy areas in some way; the key is to make that process as transparent as possible and for CSOs to closely monitor the choices made. Second, another challenge posed by an agenda such as the SDGs, and by many of the objectives set out in Colombia’s national development plan for that matter is that they are cross-sectoral (e.g. dealing with peace and security issues also requires addressing social mobility and inequalities). Institutionally, this requires strong inter-agency coordination. In its institutional make-up, the Commission set up to follow-up SDG implementation has been designed with the coordination of different institutions and cross-sectoral
Third, the SDGs include a strong focus on ‘Leaving No One Behind’, meaning that progress on goals and targets should reach groups in society who are marginalised because of their ethnicity, location, gender, among others. While Colombia’s national development plan refers to reducing inequalities between regions and groups, there are no indicators specified to follow u p o n t h o s e c o m m i t m e n t s. Introducing disaggregation for indicators will be crucial to deliver on this agenda and key pillar of the SDGs. This also highlights the importance of the data agenda and the need to revamp efforts and put plans in place to strengthen data collection that provides granular information on marginalised populations. The utilisation of new data sources and the maximum use of the available administrative records data will be crucial to this end. Fourth, despite Colombia’s capacity to mobilise resources domestically, access to clean technology and finance for green infrastructure projects is an area that has been identified as lacking sufficient resources. Therefore, discussions on financing of green infrastructure in the coming COP meeting remain highly relevant for the implementation of the SDGs in middle-income countries. In addition, other sources of finance, such as environmentally-related taxes (e.g. the transport fuel tax or the natural resource extraction tax) could be increased and used to finance priority public expenditures as part of the domestic resource mobilisation commitments made in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda earlier this year. Ultimately, the decision by Colombia’s government to embrace and champion the SDGs early on makes the national process of implementation an experience that will be watched closely worldwide and reflects a choice to take a strong international leadership position on this agenda. Only time will tell how these efforts and commitments continue to materialise, and, most importantly, how they contribute to Colombia’s path towards sustainable development. PAULA LUCCI is a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute where she writes on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), urbanisation, urban poverty, and inclusive growth.
Dialogue by KCL Politics Society ————————————————————- Page 23 of 46