Taking Sustainable Development Goal 17 Seriously
187
exactly the same characteristics and face the same risks that national public goods do. Think of malware programs, epidemics, and nuclear proliferation, which pose threats to rich and poor countries alike. The crux of the problem is that sovereign states behave like individuals at the national level and do not perceive the benefits of contributing to the global public goods supply. Kaul’s theories resonate as a powerful call for effective international cooperation and coordination. Over the past decade, the concept of global public goods has permeated the policy discourse of development actors.8 In 2006, the International Task Force on Global Public Goods, cochaired by Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico, and Tidjane Thiam, former Ivorian minister of development, called for “significant additional expenditures on global public goods.”9 The task force’s message was clear: Because greater financing for global public goods benefits not only developing countries but also donors, global public goods need to be addressed separately from and in addition to official development assistance.10 Development assistance seen through the lens of global public goods is no longer just a ma er of pure altruism or solidarity; it is now considered to be in the self-interest of donor countries to cooperate with each other to combat the negative externalities that could arise in the absence of efforts to mitigate climate change, prevent armed conflicts, protect biodiversity, or eradicate communicable diseases. In line with this changed paradigm of development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda stresses that “global partnership should reflect the fact that the post-2015 development agenda, including the sustainable development goals, is global in nature and universally applicable to all countries.”11 SDG 17 represents a shift from the prevailing approach to development “assistance” to a sense of common and shared “responsibility” for enabling sustained poverty reduction at the global level. In its 2013 report A Renewed Global Partnership for Development, the UN System Task Team on SDG 17, of which the Bank is a member,12 unambiguously criticizes MDG 8 for perpetuating the model of “donor-recipient” aid, “rather than calling for collective action at the
8
Sco Barre , “Global Public Goods and International Development,” in Too Global to Fail: The World Bank at the Intersection of National and Global Public Policy in 2025, ed. Warren Evans and Robin Davies (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015), 13; Michel Mordasini, “Implementing Global Public Policies: Are the Aid Agencies Walking the Talk?” International Development Policy 3 (2012).
9
International Task Force on Global Public Goods, Meeting Global Challenges: International Cooperation in the National Interest, Final Report (Stockholm, 2006): 99.
10
Ibid., xxv and 110.
11
Third International Conference on Financing for Development, A/CONF.227/L.1, “Outcome Document of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development: Addis Ababa Action Agenda,” para. 10, July 15, 2015. h p://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc .asp?symbol=A/CONF.227/L.1.
12
UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, A Renewed Global Partnership for Development, Annex III (March 2013).