The problem with Pacific progress
Pacific nations are turning in report cards on their development goals, but each has significant data gaps that hinder progress. Henry Cooke reports from New York.
Five Pacific states are handing in their report cards to the United Nations this week – including New Zealand.
The report cards – more properly known as ‘‘Voluntary National Reviews’’ (VNRs) – are linked to a sprawling set of ‘‘sustainable development goals’’ (SDGs) almost every country in the world signed up to in 2015.
These 17 goals for 2030 cover everything from water to poverty to justice issues. These are a follow-up from the Millennium Development Goals, which some people credit with helping to lift millions out of poverty. (That conclusion is extremely contested.)
On almost every issue every country has some kind of positive story to tell in their report card – some initiative for poor children or investment in clean energy technology or small business boosted by an investment fund.
Fiji’s VNR was typical. A shiny video showed Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama talking up his country’s 10 straight years of economic growth, and a young boxing champion thanking the government for its investment in his business. He was ‘‘punching above his weight, much like Fiji’’.
But behind the goals are 230 statistical indicators that are meant to be used to measure actual progress. And for many countries in the Pacific and elsewhere these statistics are simply not available. They could be progressing on their goals, or falling behind on them – it simply can’t be known.
In fact, a 2018 monitoring report on Oceania found that there were more countries with ‘‘not enough data available’’ for the 17 goals than countries with either positive, negative or stabilised trends. We don’t know more than we know.
Fiji, for example, might have 10 consecutive years of economic growth, but lacks sufficient data on its adult literacy rate, the way its fish are being caught, and child labour. And it’s one of the
better measured ones.
Often the data that is available isn’t sufficiently broken down – so it is impossible to show if things are worse for specific groups like women or young people. This is a particular issue in a region where the data we have suggests outcomes for women are a lot worse than they are for men.
As a region, the Pacific has the lowest level of women in Parliaments in the world, and represent three of the four countries worldwide without a single woman in Parliament.
The Pacific’s SDG taskforce chose only to measure 132 of the 230 indicators, as it was clear they wouldn’t get anywhere near the full 230.
But much tiny even island for that many nations. slice of is the too Niue the Cook could Islands only only measure 45. Even 38, larger nations like Tonga and Samoa could only measure 61 and 60 respectively.
Across the region less than half (48 per cent) of the selfselecting slice is being measured, and less than a quarter of the wider swath. This means that for a country like Tonga, five of the 17 goals could not be properly assessed in the last global report.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly the fact that there are simply too many indicators, and probably far too many goals to really focus countries.
It is hardly surprising that not every country puts a premium on measuring, say, the ‘‘proportion of financial support to the least developed countries that is allocated to the construction and retro-fitting of sustainable, resilient and resource efficient buildings utilising local materials’’ or the ‘‘number of companies publishing sustainability reports’’ – both indicators included as part of the 230.
But the Pacific isn’t just missing these nice-to-have figures – data on education and water quality is also missing. And the surveys that make up the data that is available is often not collected at regimented timeframes, but instead simply when the money is available or when it suits a donor group to survey, according to a report from a group of Pacific bodies trying to improve statistics in the region.
This puts a serious strain on the groups set up to help national
statistical organisations as they are constantly rushing to and fro for ad-hoc surveys. It also hinders proper application of the development funding other nations send to the Pacific, as it is can be unclear what works and doesn’t work.
Indeed, any government unable to properly measure the effect of its policies will have trouble designing good ones.
This is not a new problem for the UN.
‘‘The data for measuring progress are in many cases nonexistent or inadequate and also dated,’’ former New Zealand prime minister and former United Nations Development Programme head Helen Clark complained in a recent speech on the goals.
‘‘One looks at the most recent UN progress report to find the latest information reported is often five or more years old.’’
There is obviously a scale problem. Ironically the smallest countries are some of the hardest to properly measure. Statistics New Zealand actually has more staff than some Pacific nations have people.
The national statistical offices that do exist are often too small and too inexperienced to collect and analyse the data robustly.
Even with all those staff in New Zealand, we are missing some measures in our reporting too. It may seem like a losing battle, but as the adage goes, you can’t fix what you don’t measure. When the 17 SDGs were developed it was acknowledged that several of the targets would be basically unmeasurable, especially for developing countries which had enough trouble with the basics.
Yet Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, a professor of international affairs at The New School, argued in a paper that pushing for more indicators than could immediately be measured was key to push statisticians all over the world to innovate.
‘‘Many criticise the inclusion of unmeasurable or unmeasured targets; they weaken SDG monitoring, and furthermore they add a huge and unmanageable burden on statisticians, particularly in developing countries with few resources even to maintain such fundamentals as population data,’’ Fukuda-Parr wrote.
‘‘Yet the extension of the
international development data frame work also challenges the statistical community to create measurement tools for critical challenges, which is essential in shaping action – because what is measured gets attention.’’
New Zealand itself contributes to efforts to bolster data collection in the Pacific through its aid programme. Stats NZ also offers technical assistance to its counterparts around the Pacific.
And ironically, one of the actual SDGs refers to the need to increase the statistical provision in developing countries, so the UN itself has several programmes aimed at helping the region measure itself more closely.
But 2030 is not all that far away. And measuring a statistic does not mean you will make it any better.
Pacific nations fought hard in 2015 to have climate action included as one of the sustainable development goals. In the developed countries that emit most of the greenhouse gases we are fairly good at measuring them. Yet emissions continue to climb. Measuring isn’t everything.
The reporter’s attendance at the United Nations was supported by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and UNDP Pacific Office.