In the past few months, considerable work has been carried out by the United Nations to produce a document on sustainable development goals and earlier this week it was announced that a consensus has been achieved over this document that lists 17 goals and 169 specific targets.
The final document, which is now ready for adoption, is brief but wide-ranging; it is entitled Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Taking into account the different national realities, the 17 identified goals cover a wide range of issues (see box) that form the global sustainable development agenda for the next 15 years. They aim to eradicate poverty, promote prosperity and increase environmental protection – constant objectives of the international community that are continuously aimed for but so far not achieved.
The renewed commitment to achieve these goals is welcome. However, both the goals and the specific objectives will have to take account of different national realities and capacities, while respecting national policies and priorities.
Although the document has been described as a historic achievement, in practice it is nothing of the sort. We have been here before. For the past 40 years, commitments have been made at one global meeting after another, only for the world community to come back years later with a slightly different document.
In Malta, the politics of sustainable development is generally cosmetic in nature: full of rhetoric but relatively void when it comes to substance.
Sustainable development should be primarily concerned with having a long-term view which spans generations. It seeks an inter-generational commitment, with the present generation committing itself to ensure that future generations have sufficient elbow room to take their own decisions. Even if we limit ourselves to this basic objective of sustainable development, it is clear that such a commitment is nowhere in sight in Maltese politics.
Sifting through the rhetoric, a clear gap is very visible. Rather than being development over the years, the rudimentary sustainable development infrastructure has been dismantled. The National Commission for Sustainable Development, through which civil society actively participated in the formulation of a National Strategy for Sustainable Development, was dismantled by the previous administration.
If the politics of sustainable development is to be of any significance, it has to be evident at the roots of society and the sustainable development strategy itself has to be owned by civil society. In Malta, a completely different path is followed. The sustainable development strategy is owned by the state and not by civil society. Hence it is largely irrelevant and practically insignificant.
The net result of developments in recent years has transformed sustainable development politics in Malta into another bureaucratic process, with government appointees pushing pen against paper, producing reports and no visible improvement.
There is no political will to implement a sustainable development strategy, as this runs diametrically opposite to the political decisions of the current administration, which seeks to intensify the complete domination of Malta’s natural heritage by economic forces, plundered for short term gain.
The fragmentation of environmental governance is the latest building block of this strategy which is clearly evident behind the rhetorical façade.
This is neither the future we want nor the future we deserve – and it is not the transformation that Malta requires.
Next September, Malta will join the community of nations at New York in approving a document which it has no intention of implementing. Behind that rhetorical façade, the farce continues.