Environmental Engineering Reference
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Less optimistic is Aswani Saith (2006) who notes that the MDGs owe too much
to the United Nations Development Programme and for some represent a narrowing
of the (sustainable) development agenda to just a few issues in what used to be
called the 'Third World'. Various points are made: poverty and deprivation exist in
Japan, the UK and US too; people with disability who make up around 10 per cent
of the global population receive no mention and neither do the elderly who increasingly
constitute a significant percentage of the global poor; and there are no goals and
targets for secondary education, etc. The identification of the goals and their
accompanying indicators and metrics also offer concern. For instance, feminist critics
find it difficult to see how gender empowerment can be reduced to a single target
or goal as this issue cuts across so many other areas - for example, universal primary
education and gender inequality. Setting targets may also easily distort social and
cultural behaviour, inducing governments to divert funds to meet reportable targeted
areas to the exclusion of others arguably as important but not incorporated with
the MDGs. Problems with data, particularly regarding malaria, tuberculosis and
maternal mortality, make accurate assessment and evaluation a most important issue.
There is little point in setting targets if it is uncertain which actions will produce
what outcomes. The MDGs require that initiatives are costed but Saith suggests that
This immediately reveals the futility of such exercises. One might ask: what
would it cost to overcome violence against women? What might it cost to address
the issue of son preference and the appalling and falling sex ratio at birth? What
would it cost to get the parents to agree to send the girl child to school? How
much would have to be spent to change the laws on property rights?
(2006: 1178)
The global neoliberal economic agenda, structural inequality and the gap between
the rhetoric and reality on human rights and environmental protection seem to go
largely unchallenged and unexamined. Veteran neo-Marxist critic Samir Amin (2006b)
sees the MDGs as clearly designed to shore up the North's global economic and
political dominance of the South. The rhetoric of 'partnership'and the notion of
'good governance' is really about opening up commercial markets for the major
economic powers. He asks cynically: what else can be expected from an initiative
emanating from Japan, the USA and the European Union, and co-sponsored by the
International Monetary Fund, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and
Development, and the World Bank, which for Amin is little more than 'the G8's
Ministry of Propaganda'?
The World Bank's emphasis is largely on the economic aspects of sustainable
development, suggesting, in language reminiscent of corporate business strategies,
that if human well-being is to be enhanced, then society has to carefully manage its
'portfolio of assets', recognizing that this mix of 'assets' necessary to support improve-
ments is likely to change over time. Economic growth, at the expense of social and
personal well-being or the natural environment, is not a feasible option for the
future. Unchecked industrial development has led to horrifying environmental damage
in some areas which, like the devastation experienced in many parts of the former
Soviet Union, has led to massive human, environmental and economic costs - disease,
pollution, loss of livelihoods and ecological habitats. The development of the Soviet
cotton industry in central Asia led to the massive use of water for irrigation, which
