Prioritise UN goals to reach relevant targets

THIS weekend, President Jacob Zuma will be asked to sign up to development targets that will shape the way many trillions of rand are spent across the world. He should demand a better deal.

For the past 15 years, SA has made considerable progress in achieving the United Nations (UN) millennium development goals (MDGs). But the MDGs are ending. In New York City this weekend, heads of state will replace the MDGs with the sustainable development goals, to last until 2030. SA should demand changes to the goals to help it build on recent progress.

The UN process of horse-trading and complex negotiations have created an unmanageably long list of 169 development targets. All of the targets are well-intentioned, but range from grandiose (eradicate extreme poverty and end hunger) to peripheral (promote sustainable tourism) to flat-out impossible (full and productive employment and decent work for all). Having 169 competing objectives is like having no priorities. Doing everything at once means doing very little at all.

The Copenhagen Consensus Centre asked more than 80 economists to analyse the UN’s targets. They used cost-benefit analysis, which lets us identify all of the social, environmental and economic results from an investment, and express these in a monetary figure. This means we can compare competing priorities and see where SA — and everyone else — can achieve the most.

The academics’ work showed that spreading money across all 169 targets would result in R7 of good for every rand spent. A large sum would go on targets that achieve relatively little, and a small fraction on a few powerful targets.

Picking just a few very effective targets would help much more. A panel of top economists examined the research and identified 19 smart targets that could achieve R32 of social good for every rand spent. Prioritising these would be the equivalent of more than quadrupling the global development budget over the next 15 years.

One such investment is tackling HIV/AIDS, where SA has the highest number of infections. A target needs to be set of achieving male circumcision coverage of at least 90% among HIV-uninfected adult men. This will reduce the rate of HIV infection for men, and lead to reduced rates of infection among women over time. For Copenhagen Consensus, economists looked specifically at SA and found that achieving this target would mean averting 685,000 South African HIV infections by 2030, and 2.2-million HIV infections by 2050.

This is a relatively cheap intervention that lasts a lifetime. Globally, every rand spent tackling HIV/AIDS through circumcision would achieve about R28 worth of benefits.

Another phenomenal development target is achieving universal access to contraception and family planning. Not only will it reduce the number of women dying in childbirth by about 150,000 a year, it will also cut the number of children, relatively increasing the working population, driving more growth. It is estimated that every rand spent will do R120 of social and economic good.

Battling malnutrition is another phenomenal investment. Both children and adults need a good quality diet but feeding a young child well will make a big difference for his or her entire life. A small amount spent on child nutrition will generate benefits worth 45 times the expense.

Good childhood nutrition produces people who can contribute more and help boost economic growth and can themselves bring up well-fed, healthy children.

With its experience implementing the MDGs, SA is in a strong position to help other nations identify what works — and what doesn’t. It is clear that the most effective development investments should be prioritised in the UN’s list of 169. Rather than trying to please everyone, we need fewer, more effective development priorities. It would ensure SA and other nations can make strides in the areas that really matter.