SDG Target #2.2

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Sustainable Development Goal #2 is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

Within SDG #2 are eight targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 2.2:

By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons.

Within target 2.2 are three indicators:

• Indicator 2.2.1: Prevalence of stunting (height for age <-2 standard deviation from the median of the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age.

• Indicator 2.2.2: Prevalence of malnutrition (weight for height >+2 or <-2 standard deviation from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age, by type (wasting and overweight).

• Indicator 2.2.3: Prevalence of anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years, by pregnancy status (percentage).

We looked at the definition of malnutrition in the previous target. Stunting is the prevention of the development of height in a child due to malnutrition, often caused by diarrhea or infection by parasitic worms from living in conditions characterised by unsanitary drinking water, open defecation in the absence of toilets and sewage systems.

Wasting means the progressive loss of muscle and fat tissues.

The nutritional necessities of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women are addressed in this target, whereby upon ingestion of food to the digestion system of our organs, not all vitamins and minerals are successfully absorbed into our blood.

Indicator 2.2.1 is the first mention so far of the World Health Organisation, which the world’s come to know more familiarly with the COVID-19 pandemic. The unit of measurement for this indicator is for each year of age below 5, a ratio of height to weight assessing if stunting has occurred, with the global aim of zero stunting.

Whereas Indicator 2.2.1 measured stunting by 2 standard deviations from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards for height, Indicator 2.2.2 measures 2 standard deviations from weight - both underweight, in the form of wasting, and overweight, in the form of childhood obesity. Again, the objective for this indicator is zero prevalence by 2030.

Of note is within the UN process of selection, a target or indicator for the prevalence of adult obesity was omitted, meaning a body mass index greater than or equal to 3.0.

Indicator 2.2.3 focuses on anemia, a treatable condition whereby lab testing reveals an individual's blood is below a certain value of hemoglobin, often due to iron deficiency, disallowing the normal functioning of blood, the brain and muscles, and often compounded by deficiencies of other nutrients. 

For the purposes of this indicator, the measure is the portion of women aged 15-49 years old with a concentration of hemoglobin below 110 grams per litre for pregnant women, and 120 grams per litre for the remainder, including lactating women.  

This hinders one’s ability to productively work, thus to earn income, as well as academic performance for children, which has flow-on effects into adulthood. Research demonstrates the efficacy of treating anemia with iron supplements to remedy the effects on childhood development.

Furthermore, alongside children, women of reproductive age disproportionately experience anemia, largely from menstruation. Thus, women ought to be targeted for anemia treatment for the benefit of furthering gender equality via academic performance and workplace productivity 

In regard to anemia’s role in maternal and newborn health, the condition carries with it a greater risk of death for the mother, as well as the child either before or after the birth.

With the target of elimination of stunting and wasting, 149.2 million children under 5, or 22 percent of all children, suffer from stunting (low height for age), down a quarter from 2015.

7 per cent, or 45.4 million children under 5 suffered from wasting, and a similar amount were overweight. It’s anticipated perhaps 15 percent more children will experience wasting due to the current pandemic.

As of 2019, 30 percent of non-pregnant women of reproductive age suffered from anemia, with pregnant women reporting 7 percentage points higher, with the highest portion seen in South Asia and Central Asia, at close to half of all reproductive age women.

SDG Target #2.1

Sustainable Development Goal #2 is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Within SDG #2 are eight targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 2.1:

By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.

SDG #2 flowing on from SDG #1 implies the obvious interrelationship between poverty and hunger, with the poor most sensitive to fluctuations of food prices.

Target 2.1 flows on from target 1.C of the Millenium Development Goals, which was to “halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.” 

This target was met, but left 795 million people undernourished, including 90 million children under the age of 5.

Within target 2.1 are two indicators:

• Indicator 2.1.1: Prevalence of undernourishment.

• Indicator 2.1.2: Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population, based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale.

Hunger, in the context of sustainable development, is obviously differentiated from the sensation of being less than satiated. In the context we’re looking at, it is the global leading cause of death. It is to be unable to meet the essential nutrients humans require to sustain healthful lives over a long period of time.

Dismayingly, the global areas most vulnerable to acute hunger are those experiencing wars, pandemics and extreme weather.

Looking closer at the concept of undernourishment underpinning Indicator 2.1.1, undernourishment is a diet with insufficient nutrients. By this we mean calories providing us energy, but also the right biochemical combination to allow for proper metabolism, in the form of proteins, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins and minerals. Tragically, at the most extreme end of undernourishment is starvation.

Also worthy of mention is the more specific instance of micronutrient deficiency, whereby an individual is experiencing undernourishment of a particular vitamin or mineral necessary for healthy functioning. 

Target 2.1 specifically mentions infants, as nutrition during pregnancy can affect the gestating baby for life, highlighting also the importance of breastfeeding for newborn’s nutrition.

Many of us are familiar with the heart-rending images of starving children displaying the hallmarks of malnutrition in the poorest parts of the world. The medical term, marasmus, is often characterised by the wasted mass of emaciation for overall energy deficiency.  For children no longer nursing with the proteins of breast milk, and have instead moved to a diet of starchy carbohydrates with little other nutritional value, we recognise the symptom of distended abdomens, caused by swelling of fluid retention and a liver overwhelmed with fatty deposits. This condition, termed kwashiorkor, is caused by sufficient calories, but protein deficiency. In the following target, we’ll also look at the high prevalence of stunting, caused by undernutrition.

In subsequent SDG #2 targets, we’ll also look at the role of agriculture, particularly sustainable agriculture, to feed a global population approaching a trajectory of 9-10 billion without abutting the planetary boundaries, as well as the systems for which food is produced and distributed.

Despite the prevalence of malnutrition as described being overwhelmingly associated with the developing world, some developing countries are beginning to see another form of malnutrition far more common in the developed world: the inverse of undernourishment - overnutrition, overeating and obesity.

Development aid, from the developed countries to the developing world, is a clear remedy to preventing and reducing undernourishment in the form of dietary supplements, food fortification to enrich foods with micronutrients, and other forms of food aid. 

Aid is also required for developing countries to provide medical care for those in critically ill conditions requiring intensive care for undernourishment, perhaps compounded by an infectious disease. 

Furthermore, aid can assist the development of sanitation systems to ensure drinking water and sewage do not mix, which can lead to infectious diseases causing undernourishment. This can again be compounded by undernourishment leading to dehydration, further exacerbated if the drinking water isn’t sanitary, and contaminated by infectious pathogens. 

To meet the definition of undernourishment for the purposes of Indicator 2.1.1, using household surveys, we’re looking at regularly not having access to food sufficient to provide the energy for a normal, healthy and active life, given their own dietary energy requirement.

Often due to the geographical isolation, hunger acutely affects the most vulnerable regions of the world, represented by the UN’s list of least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing countries.

Food insecurity, the focus of Indicator 2.1.2, is the ability of households and individuals to access food. It measures the percentage of individuals in the population who have experienced food insecurity at moderate or severe levels in the period of the SDGs. It’s measurement tool, the Food Insecurity Experience Scale, is a survey of 8 questions.

With the aim by 2030 to achieve zero hunger as part of SDG #2, as of 2020, a tenth of the global population, equivalent to 811 million, experienced hunger and was undernourished. Tragically, the World Food Program, the food aid branch of the UN, has estimated that due to the effects of COVID-19, the number of people suffering acute hunger may have doubled by the end of 2020. COVID-19 may also have pushed between 83 and 132 million into chronic hunger. 

Though the trend of hunger experienced globally had been steadily decreasing, since 2015, when the SDGs were adopted, the UN’s agency focused on alleviating hunger and ensuring food security, named the Food and Agriculture Organisation, or FAO, has identified the total number of those living in a state of hunger has risen, predominantly in Africa and South America, with the main culprits being climate, conflict and recessions.

An estimated 2 billion people, or a quarter of the global population, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2019, up several percent since 2015. Much of the increase came from Latin America and the Caribbean, though the largest numbers remained in sub-Saharan Africa. 

SDG Target 1.B

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Sustainable Development Goal #1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Within SDG #1 are 7 targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 1.b, which is:

Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in poverty eradication actions.

To measure target 1.b, there is only one indicator, 1.b.1:

• Pro-poor public social spending 

Pro-poor is a term from the jargon of development studies meaning policies targeting the poor and poverty reduction.

Gender-sensitivity is a term surrounding efforts to create awareness around how the notion of gender, and gender roles affect our behaviours, and modifying them, if necessary, to engender a better sense of equality. 

Similar to an indicator reference in the previous target, Indicator 1.b.1 is defined as the share of government expenditure on health, education and cash transfers for the direct benefit of those living below each respective country’s poverty line, which we explored in Target 1.2.

These measures of health, education and transfer payments are used to measure the Target 1.b as these three areas are key to poverty alleviation, and evaluates whether governments are focusing spending on the poor.

To best measure Target 1.b’s wording of ‘policy at the national, regional and international level’, Indicator 1.b.2 can be disaggregated at each of these levels where the data exists. 

In 2019, the 30 developed country donors of the Development Assistance Committee spent only 0.2 percent of their collective gross national income in aid toward basic social services and food aid for the intention for poverty reduction, far below the 0.7% of gross national income continually committed by these countries across decades, though ongoingly reneged upon. 

Dismayingly, in 2020, the only exceptions among the DAC members to meet or exceed the 0.7% commitment were the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, as well as the small country of Luxembourg, and the UK. Further disappointingly, the UK has announced they will no longer meet the 0.7% measure from 2021, flouting a UK law enshrining this commitment.

SDG Target #1.A

Sustainable Development Goal #1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Within SDG #1 are 7 targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 1.a, which is:

Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions.

Target 1.a is the first example of a target designated by letters, rather than the previous targets’ designation by numbers (for example, 1.1 and 1.2). For all the SDGs, number-designated targets measure outcomes, whereas letter-designated targets represent means of implementation.

To measure target 1.a, there are two indicators: 

• Indicator 1.a.1: Total official development assistance grants from all donors that focus on poverty reduction as a share of the recipient country’s gross national income.

• Indicator 1.a.2: Proportion of total government spending on essential services (education, health and social protection).

Indicator 1.a.1 focuses upon the concept of official development assistance, or ODA, synonymous with international aid. 

The aim of development aid is to improve the economic and social development of humans living in countries which have not yet fully industrialised and are therefore considered ‘developing’ in the parlance of the field of international development. 

The degree to which a country is ‘developing’ is often defined by a country’s score in the Human Development Index, a composite measure of life expectancy, education, and per capita income. 

Separate, though entwined, to development aid, is humanitarian aid, more synonymous with logistical assistance in the face of disaster or conflict.

Official development assistance (ODA) is a concept defined in 1969 by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, or Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development.

The OECD, headquartered in Paris, France, is an international organisation of 38 member states, predominantly developed countries, with a focus on economic policies. 

The Development Assistance Committee, or DAC, consists of 30 OECD members, constituting the largest aid donors, as a forum to discuss aid and poverty reduction efforts. 

The predominant means of measuring donor amounts is as a percentage of the donor country's gross national income (GNI) otherwise known as gross national product (GNP).

Gross national income is very similar to the concept of GDP, but by contrast, GNI includes the economic output of foreign residents of the country.

The OECD DAC has an official List of ODA Recipients, all the developing countries and territories eligible to receive ODA. Included are dollar flows made via so-called ‘multilateral institutions’, such as the World Bank or International Monetary Fund. 

To be counted as ODA, donor flows must come from government agencies, with the aim of economic development and welfare of developing countries, and must be concessional i.e., either outright grants with no obligation to be repaid, or loans with much more generous repayment terms than loans available commercially in the market.

The sectors counted toward poverty reduction for the purposes of Indicator 1.a.1 include food aid, basic health, education, water and sanitation, population programmes and reproductive health.

Indicator 1.a.2 is defined as the total expenditure on all levels of education, health, and social protection from all levels of government, as a percentage of overall government expenditure.  

The rationale of Indicator 1.a.2 is to evaluate the priority given to each government’s focus on improving wellbeing via public expenditure on education, health, and social protection in comparison to in other sectors.  

As the Millennium Development Goals ended in 2015, with it did UNESCO’s Education for All campaign. Subsequently, at the 2015 UN World Education Forum in Incheon, Korea, the Education Framework for Action was adopted, to ensure SDG #4 is met by 2030. 

Relevant to Indicator 1.a.2 was the Education 2030 Framework for Action’s recommendation of 15-20 percent of public expenditure spent on education.

However, between 2015 and 2018, only 30 percent of countries had spent the recommended 15-20 percent of expenditure on education.

Furthermore, ODA grants intended for poverty reduction toward basic social services and food aid represented only 0.02 percent of gross national income of the donor countries of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee in 2019.

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SDG Target #1.5

Sustainable Development Goal #1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Within SDG #1 are 7 targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 1.5:

By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters.

The interrelation of disaster and poverty represented by target 1.5 acknowledges the reality that disasters in developing countries are responsible for 95% of the deaths resulting from global disasters, as well as visiting loss and damage 20 times greater as a percentage of GDP of developing countries in contrast to their developed counterparts.

To measure target 1.5, there’s 4 indicators: 

• Indicator 1.5.1: Number of deaths, missing persons and persons affected by disaster per 100,000 people.

• Indicator 1.5.2 is Direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP).

• Indicator 1.5.3: Number of countries that adopt and implement national disaster risk reduction strategies in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030.

• Indicator 1.5.4: Proportion of local governments that adopt and implement local disaster risk reduction strategies in line with national disaster risk reduction strategies.

The year 2030 has been set as the deadline for this target, to be met in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals as a whole. 

Looking first at indicator 1.5.1 measures the number of people who died during, directly afterward or as a direct result of a hazardous event. 

It also measures those whose whereabouts is unknown since such an event, as well as those who’ve suffered injury, illness, or other health effects. 

It additionally measures how many people were evacuated, displaced, relocated, or suffered direct damage to their livelihoods and assets of many forms.

Indicator 1.5.2 measures the relation between economic loss attributed to a disaster, whether direct or indirect. Examples of such assets physical assets are homes, hospitals, schools, and other buildings; various forms of physical infrastructure, such as transport, energy and telecommunication; industrial plants, crops and livestock.

Indicator 1.5.3 focuses on a global policy relevant to all indicators of Target 1.5. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030., adopted by all UN member states in 2015, the year of the SDG’s adoption, pertains to worldwide goals responding to disaster risk reduction. The framework was taken up within the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, hosted in Sendai, the largest city in Japan’s north-eastern Tōhoku region, the epicentre of the catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami. 

Under the purview of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the period of the Sendai Framework is parallel to the SDGs, from 2015 through to 2030, articulating four priorities for the prevention and risk reduction of new disasters, as well as 7 targets, several of which bridge with SDG target 1.5’s indicators. 

The four priorities of the Sendai Framework are:

1. Understanding disaster risk

2. Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk

3. Investing in disaster reduction for resilience and

4. Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to "Build Back Better" in recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction.

Lastly, indicator 1.5.4 relates to the previous indicator, but in contrast to 1.5.3 which measured the number of countries which had adopted disaster risk reduction strategies like the Sendai Framework, 1.5.4 measures the percentage of local governments within each country who’ve adopted and implemented disaster risk reduction strategies in alignment with the national strategy.

Looking at the progress of target 1.5, in 2019, 24,000 people were reported as disaster fatalities, down from 126,000 in 2018. 

Though the mortality trend had been downward since 2005, the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to reverse this progress. As such, disaster risk reduction including biological risks such as pandemic’s is crucial.

Direct economic loss of $70 billion was reported in 2019, 60% in the agricultural sector.

In 2020, 120 reported they had developed and adopted either national or local disaster risk reduction strategies, an improvement from the 48 countries reporting such strategies at the adoption of the Sendai Framework in 2015.

SDG Target #1.4

Sustainable Development Goal #1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Within SDG #1 are 7 targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 1.4, which is:

By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance.

To measure target 1.4, there’s two indicators:

• Indicator 1.4.1: Proportion of population living in households with access to basic services

• Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, (a) with legally recognized documentation, and (b) who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and type of tenure.

The year 2030 has been set as the deadline for this target, to be met in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals as a whole. 

To better break up this lengthy target, let’s look at each of the indicators at a time. 

Indicator 1.4.1 is looking at households’ access to basic services. 

The definition ‘access to these basic services’ implies “sufficient and affordable service is reliably available with adequate quality.”

As a measure, the portion of a population’s households is used, whether a family, one person, or a group of unrelated people in the same dwelling. What is meant by the broad term ‘basic services’ though? As we explored in the Target 1.2, poverty has many dimensions. We also looked at a similar definition in the Target 1.3, in the context of the basic needs provided by welfare and social security. Without meeting these basic needs, it is likely one may meet the definition living in extreme poverty, bereft of drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, and education. 

As we saw in the previous target, more developed countries which value welfare withing their state can provide services allowing for more equal opportunities and the distribution of wealth via tax revenue. These services could be homeless shelters for those experiencing homelessness. Charities can play a role, independent of, or in tandem with the state, to run food banks to ameliorate hunger, and meet nutritional needs. Services can focus on the vulnerable, such as disability or care for the elderly. In some countries, or via some charities, education is provided free of charge to the student. Rather than collecting fees as a fare to move around by bus or rail, in some public transport systems, passengers ride for free. In the Information Age we live in, helping bridge the digital divide is a more recent basic service now considered necessary universally.

These services can be provided by the centralized government of a sovereign state, in a policy of service to the public. Or it could be provided by more localized forms of government.

Under the UN definition for this indicator, basic services mean government provision of drinking water services within a 30-minute round trip; sanitation facilities not shared with another household; availability of a handwashing facility on premises with soap and water; clean fuels, which don’t contribute to unhealthy indoor air quality, as kerosene and coal can; convenient access to transport, whether in rural or urban contexts; waste collection, whether from the municipal government or other means; basic health care and education, and broadband internet access.

Also mentioned in Target 1.4 is such as microfinance, the provision banking and lending facilities, to individuals or small businesses, in a way they otherwise would not be able to access, due to their low levels of income.

Turning our attention to Indicator 1.4.2, we’re looking at what portion of adults in each country’s population have secure tenant rights to the occupation and ownership of land and buildings, as well as the passing on of such property, often between generations of families. 

Indicator 1.4.2 measures secure tenure rights by two necessary concepts, and disaggregates the measures by sex, recognising the prevalence of inequality for women in matters of tenure and inheritance laws and protections. 

1.4.2 is also disaggregated by types of tenure. An example of a type of tenure is a leasehold, whereby a lessee contracts with a lessor to use the property for payments over the period of the lease. Another type of tenure is customary, according to the customs of indigenous communities. The other two tenure types by the definition 1.4.2 is public tenure i.e., property owned by the state, as well as freehold, which is owning the property, it’s land and the space above it. 

The two necessary concepts to meet the definition of secure tenant rights for the purposes of Indicator 1.4.2. is the backing by legally recognized documentation, as well as individual’s perception of the security of their tenure, for instance, a fear of involuntary loss of land due to a disagreement over land rights, irrespective of such tenure’s official recognition

Due to global stresses on food security, urbanization, and environmental degradation of natural resources, tenure systems face challenges, providing the rationale for this indicator. Additionally, there is now greater demand for land reforms in favour of the poor.

SDG Target #1.3

Sustainable Development Goal #1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Within SDG #1 are 7 targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 1.3:

Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable.

To measure target 1.3, there’s one indicator, 1.3.1:

• Proportion of population covered by social protection systems, by sex, distinguishing children, unemployed persons, older persons, persons with disabilities, pregnant women, newborns, work-injury victims and the poor and the vulnerable”.

The year 2030 has been set as the deadline for this target, to be met in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals as a whole. 

So, what is meant by ‘social protection’? Basically, these are government-sponsored programs designed to shield the vulnerable from impacts which could affect their position of poverty and wellbeing. This includes mitigating any factors which could prevent someone from participating in the labour market, whether due to experiencing unemployment, being socially excluded because they belong to a marginalised minority, are disabled, afflicted by sickness, or otherwise are in old age.

To promote and protect citizens, interventions are made in the labor market, via social safety net programs, for instance, Medicare and Medicaid in the US, as well as Social Security and unemployment benefits.

Though this model of social protections is common to European countries who pioneered the model, with a European tradition of taxing and transferring larger portions of the country’s economic output to provide for the social safety net, the degree and robustness of social protection varies from country to country.

As the indicator 1.3.1 identifies, the vulnerable are characterised by sex, essentially suggesting societies where women are more vulnerable than male counterparts, and in particular, women in pregnancy, as well as newborns in the first months of life, and children and teens in general. Additionally, this indicator encompasses as vulnerable those experiencing unemployment, disability, injuries or accidents at work, as well as older persons, especially in the wake of COVID-19.

Whilst the aforementioned demographics may be exposed to vulnerabilities that at times require social protection, not all countries have the ability to tax the population, then transfer the revenue from such taxation to the vulnerable. This is very true of the least developed countries. The logic behind this is, if the average citizen lives on barely subsistence, enough to survive hand-to-mouth day-to-day, they do not have a surplus of income beyond survival for the government to tax, and the government has a meagre tax base to collect from and provide services to improve wellbeing with.

In other instances, there may be less of an appetite from the government or electorate to either tax enough to support such transfers, or political obstacles to make such transfers, perhaps due to societal stigmas toward certain vulnerable groups. This could be an example of political wrangling in countries where enough surplus income exists to provide for a potential tax base, but taxpayers have resistance to their tax payments being transferred to others as welfare.

These gaps are exactly what Target 1.3 aims to remedy. As of 2016, the year of commencement of the SDGs, 55% of the global population, approximately 4 billion individuals, were not living with a social safety net below, thus exposed to economic shocks in the market for wage labour which could impact their quality of life. 

The ‘floor’ of social protection mentioned in Target 1.3 are human rights which aim to guarantee a minimum of services to provide a threshold of guarantees for all citizens, as set out by a country or international organisation such as the UN, to provide for a lifetime of the essentials: health care, income sufficient to provide for food security, education, housing and other goods and services necessary to an adequate standard of living.

When we look at progress toward Target 1.3, its intersection with COVID-19 has demonstrated many developed countries were able to adapt by tapping in to global capital markets for lending to provide income support accompanying the effects of the lockdowns, yet such income support was less accessible to developing countries with more circumscribed ability to borrow to finance such protections, affecting incomes, jobs and health. 

As of 2020, the proportion of the global population with access to a minimum of one social protection payment was 47%, down only 8% since the start of the SDGs in 2016, and with the population total still around 4 billion.

However, from the onset of the pandemic in the early months of 2020 through year-end, among all countries, 1500 social protection efforts were announced, albeit many on a short-term basis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

SDG Target #1.2

Sustainable Development Goal #1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Within SDG #1 are 7 targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 1.2, which is:

By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.

The year 2030 has been set as the deadline for this target, to be met in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals as a whole. 

For this particular target, distinct from the previous target 1.1, of eliminating ‘extreme poverty’, we need to understand how this target defines ‘poverty’. As we learned in the previous target, extreme poverty is defined as living under $US1.90 a day, an international poverty line for extreme poverty.

So, what does the more generalised term ‘poverty’ mean in the context of target 1.2?

The term ‘relative poverty’ comes in handy here. Whereby the definition of ‘extreme poverty’ is the same internationally at $1.90, ‘relative poverty’ depends on the cost of living in different countries. Each country has its own individual poverty line, and therefore is also a reflection of the economic inequalities within a country.

Thus, the phrasing of target 1.1, “...according to national definitions,” meaning the threshold each country - both developed and developing - holds for an individual or household to live adequately to meet their basic needs: a minimum standard of living for food, clothing, shelter, health care and toilets.

Whatever its causes, poverty leaves individuals and communities vulnerable to hunger, disease, climate change, slavery and forced prostitution, open defecation, slum conditions in urban residential areas, inequities around access to health care, the freedom to participate in the economy or labour market, overpopulation, outward emigration of highly-educated citizens, corruption, and discrimination based on age, caste, race and sex.

Another aspect of target 1.1 worth exploring is the reference to “poverty in all its dimensions”. Whereas a national poverty line would traditionally be measured by an amount of income or consumption, a multidimensional approach to poverty broadens the definition from solely income or consumption, to include other important facets of development.

Another measure of poverty heavily in use is consumption expenditure equivalent to US$3.20, with data measuring this obtained by household surveys. This consumption measure includes food purchased, as well as food produced by the household itself, particularly pertinent to the least developed countries. Poverty obviously does not end once the $1.90 international extreme poverty line has been crossed. 

Yet this meagre difference of a threshold of $3.20 is common to the lower tiers of the middle-income countries. The World Bank forecasts a quarter of a billion people’s fortunes reversed, pushed back under the measure of $3.20 income per day due the COVID-19 pandemic. A quarter of the world’s population, or 1.80 billion people, live under the $3.20 poverty line, in contrast to approximately a tenth living under the extreme poverty line of $1.90. This amount is less than at the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, with 140 million living under $3.20 a day, down from more than half the global population in 1990. The number of people living under $3.20 is comparable now to the amount of people living on $1.90 a day in 1990.

Half of those living under $3.20 live in South Asia, as do a quarter of the extreme poor. This contrasts to sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the world’s population living in extreme poverty, and a third under the $3.20 poverty line. East Asia has seen huge progress on eradicating extreme poverty in the past three decades, but as of 2018, 150 million East Asians lived under the $3.20 poverty line.

Quite separate to the severe plights of the low- and middle-income countries is the relative poverty experienced of high-income countries, generally synonymous with members of the OECD. For these countries specifically, the SDG Index has an indicator for poverty rate after taxes and transfers, or the share of the population whose disposable incomes fall below half the median income

The Human Development Index has been published by the UN for the past twenty years, using a formula to assign indexes to countries based on per capita income, life expectancy, and years of schooling.

Such indexes have since been expanded to reflect how the world now recognises development since the UN agenda moved on from international development to further overlapping factors of deprivation encapsulated within sustainable development.

Another important feature of multidimensional poverty measures allows for measures of both the prevalence of poverty, but also the depth of poverty within those proportions.

Another factor of importance in achieving this goal, not reflected in the UN’s official indicators, but proposed by the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network as an indicator, is total fertility rate. The assumption is the more births per woman, the greater the population growth, a trend forecast for those countries still mired in poverty, with strong evidence demonstrating the links between high fertility and high poverty rates, eroding sustainable development efforts furthermore. As well as reflecting living in poverty, high fertility rates can be related to poor access to reproductive health options.

The two official indicators for target 1.2 are reflective of the concepts of poverty lines and multidimensional poverty indices:

• Indicator 1.2.1: Proportion of population living below the national poverty line, by sex and age. 

• Indicator 1.2.2: Proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.

SDG Target #1.1

Sustainable Development Goal #1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Within SDG #1 are 7 targets, of which this episode will focus on Target 1.1, which is:

By 2030 eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.

The year 2030 has been set as the deadline for this target, to be met in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals as a whole. With the ambitious target of eradicating extreme poverty for all people everywhere, we need to understand the definition of ‘extreme poverty’.

Extreme poverty is defined by an international poverty line as deemed by the World Bank, the international financial institution within the UN system, tasked with providing loans to developing countries with the objective of poverty eradication.

The international poverty line, as this target explains, is measured by living on $1.25 a day. That $1.25 a day is measured in U.S. dollars, using 2005 prices. Since the SDGs have been adopted, the measure of extreme poverty has been raised by the World Bank to $1.90 using 2011 prices. 

Wherever one may live, and whatever the local prices of goods and services, less than US$2 a day is scarcely enough to meet basic needs of safe drinking water, food at or below subsistence, and access to health and education.

Approximately 700 million people met the definition of living in extreme poverty when the SDGs were adopted in 2015, the overwhelming majority living in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Before the industrial era, beginning in the middle of the 19th century, close to all of the human population lived in a state of extreme poverty.

Yet, as this graph demonstrates, since the turn of the millennium, there has been a steady decrease in both the overall number of people living in extreme poverty, as well as the percentage of the global population.

One of the key reasons for this encouraging drop in extreme poverty rates was the power of the Millennium Development Goals. The Millenium Development Goals were the preceding development framework of the UN, prior to the adoption of the SDGs.

The focus of the MDGs was on the fight against extreme poverty, and its accompanying ills, with the SDGs building upon these efforts.

Conceptually, sustainable development builds upon the international development focus of the MDGs’ focus on economic development, to add two more pillars: that is, ensuring any economic growth is broad-based and socially inclusive, as well as being environmentally sustainable.

The sister goal of SDG #1 was Millennium Development Goal #1, set to halve extreme poverty levels by 2015, again using the international poverty line measure of $1.25 of income, in this case, measuring the proportion according to 1990 prices.

Millennium Development Goal #1 was met five years before its due date in 2010, largely due to the astounding growth rates of China in the 1-year period of the MDGs between 2000 and 2015. 

In total numbers, this meant MDG #1 saw a billion people lifted from extreme poverty, compared to 1990, when almost half the population of countries considered developing lived under $1.25 a day.

Yet the 800 million still left behind at the end of the Millennium Development Goals period in 2015 is an enormous number of people continuing to live in destitution and penury. 

So how do we measure this target 1.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals? 

The indicator in use by the UN is ‘proportion of population below the international poverty line by sex, age, employment status and geographical location.

The disaggregation by sex, age, employment status, and geographical location is to ensure the gains are measured evenly across all demographics, ensuring no one is left behind, and all economic development is broad-based to meet the social inclusivity pillar of sustainable development. 

According to the World Data Lab, there were at June 2021, 716, 045,000 people presently living in extreme poverty, with a rate of 0.8 people per second escaping extreme poverty.

Yet the target rate for escaping poverty for SDG target 1.1 to be met is 2.4 people per second. 

In total, that means again for June 2021, the world is off-track by 231,163,000 people approximately. 

Of course, just as some escape poverty, others enter into it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted progress on this goal and target, with signs of slowing progress even before this, compounded by both conflict and climate change.

In 2015, the proportion of extreme poverty rates was 10%, this dropped from a low of 8.4% in 2019, back up to 9.5%. This can be equated with up to 124 million people being thrown back into extreme poverty, meaning the global extreme poverty rate rose in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years.

Furthermore, this trend projected 6 percent of the global population, or 600 million people, would still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, missing the target 1.1.

SDG Episode #4 - John Thwaites - Monash Sustainable Development Institute

In this episode, we’re joined by Professor John Thwaites, who boasts a very impressive CV.

John Thwaites is currently the chair and Professorial Fellow of Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute, ClimateWorks Australia & BehaviourWorks Australia.

John is Chair of Melbourne Water and a Director of Fair Trade Australia New Zealand.

John is the Chair of the National Sustainable Development Council, which has developed the Transforming Australia: SDGs Progress Report 2018. We’ll be speaking with him today predominantly about the 2020 update of the Transforming Australia report, for which John was the Principal Lead. You can find the report at sdgtransformingaustralia.com

He is a Co-Chair of the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (“SDSN”) launched by the Secretary General of the United Nations to provide expert advice and support to the development and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Lancet Covid-19 Commission, one of the pre-eminent global bodies created solutions to the pandemic appointed John as a Commissioner.

John Thwaites was also Deputy Premier of Victoria from 1999 until his retirement in 2007, as well as holding Ministerial portfolios including Health, Planning, Environment, Water, and has the honour of being Victoria’s first Minister for Climate Change.

Transcript

Dominic Billings 

Firstly, John, thanks so much for everything you've done as part of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, particularly with Monash Sustainable Development Institute, as the anchor of the Australia, New Zealand and Pacific network, part of the SDSN. Obviously, we're chatting today because MSDI has released Transforming Australia, a report getting up to speed with where Australia is at in terms of the SDGs. So, John, I tend to think of Australia is languishing with the environmental SDGs, but prospering with the economic Goals and one of the most things I found most striking about the Transforming Australia report was have woeful the picture portrayed of reality of Australian socio-economic life. That was something I wasn’t expecting to come out of the report. But obviously, the data is there. Some of the indicators off-track included on inadequacy on welfare payments, elevated levels of psychological distress, high household debts, high rent burdens, homelessness, underemployment, and victims of sexual assault. And obviously, many of those topics were negatively affected by COVID. Do you see COVID as both a driver, which has been combating those issues, but also on the other hand, an opportunity to address some of those shortcomings seeing is they're so obviously in the public eye now and perhaps experienced more broadly, among the broader population

John Thwaites 

COVID-19 has had a negative impact on women, on young people and on lower-income households. And from that point-of-view, it's exacerbated pre-existing inequalities. So, I think we've got to see COVID as a huge challenge, but also there are some opportunities. And one good thing about the COVID pandemic has been the way in which Australians have come together, largely collaborated, to respond to the health demands of the pandemic, and largely relied on expert health advice on the science. And we've shown that when we do that, we can have huge achievements. And Australia is performing better on COVID than most countries in the world. And I think we can learn from that, as we meet some of these other challenges that we've highlighted in the report like climate change and embedded inequality.

Dominic Billings 

Another I issue I probably wasn't expecting Australia to stand out in was that we're off track in investment in knowledge-based capital, which obviously has flown effects to the resources that are made possible to even capture the data for the Transforming Australia report. And a lot of the work I imagine on the Monash Sustainable Development Institute is doing. It's a bit of a qualitative question, but what would you attribute to Australians' reticence to not invest more in in R&D?

John Thwaites

This is really one of the most shocking findings in the report, I believe, for a country that is so advanced and put such a high priority on education, that we invest less in knowledge-based capital than most of our comparable countries. Now, when we say invest in knowledge-based capital, we mean things like in IT, in human capacity building, research and development. So in those things that build up knowledge in the community that are very much the core of the knowledge economy, which is the future economy, we spend much less on that, for example, in most European countries, but also much less than the United States. And the disturbing finding in the report is that our expenditure on research and development, for example, is reducing now. We're spending less now than we were five years ago, and we're spending considerably less than the OECD average. So, in Australia, we're spending about 1.79% of GDP on research and development. The OECD average is 2.4%. And that's a significant difference. Unfortunately, that's going to mean we're not going to be as prepared as we should be for the future economy, which is based on knowledge, digital technologies, and human capital.

Dominic Billings 

I suppose like you mentioned, the knowledge-based capital indicator was probably one of the surprises, but I suppose one of the indicators, which was less of a surprise was the continued prevalence of obesity, which as the Transforming Australia report indicated was about a third of the population. And I just want to ask you, firstly, kudos on your role as Commissioner on the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. That's a very prestigious role to hold. So, congratulations. But I was curious whether the slow-moving nature of an epidemic such as obesity, whether at the level of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission, whether there had been much discussion as to the relation between obesity and a fast-moving, infectious pandemics, such as COVID-19 has had - if the interplay between those two have been discussed at that level of the Commission.

John Thwaites 

There has been some discussion of that. And there's certainly been some evidence that obesity is a risk factor for those who are infected with COVID-19. And can lead to higher cause of mortality or morbidity as a result. So certainly, obesity is a risk factor for COVID, as it is for numerous other conditions. And that's a real concern, because the health story in Australia is generally a very positive one. We've seen increasing life expectancy, our life expectancy has actually increased more in Australia than in most comparable countries, were now sitting on life expectancy of around 83 years, which is one of the top in the OECD. So, we're doing generally very well. Obesity is this black mark that we have. And it's something that if we're not careful, we'll turn around that very good result we've had to date. So much of the improvement in life expectancy has been linked to better health care, to access for all to health care that we have here that they don't have in, for example, the United States. But in the future, health care itself isn't going to be enough. It's how we take care of ourselves. That is, how healthy we are, what our well-being is, our mental health. What we need to look at is some of these non-communicable diseases as someone are ironic at a time, when we're all focused on the first major infectious disease that's affected my life and probably most people's lives in a really big way. But the non-communicable diseases, linked to things like obesity, are the sort of ticking time bombs that are going to potentially lessen life expectancy and certainly increase ill health into the future.

Dominic Billings 

Another one of a couple of indicators that some fell under SDG 10 - Reducing inequality both in Transforming Australia report, which you've just released, and also the broader SDSN's SDG Index. I'm conscious that in the Gini coefficient for both reports, and the upper two quintiles in net worth, that we're off-track in both of those. And it strikes me that, I'm not sure whether it's a symptom of the media narrative. But do you think, again, this is quite a qualitative question, but would you say that recognition of that trends towards inequality...Again, we're familiar with that in the US, that I tend to less  associate it with Australia, unless I see those stark indicators exhibiting that were off-track. Do you feel like it's under-represented in a more public space, like the media, for instance?

John Thwaites 

It's a mixed bag, and certainly some elements of the media have highlighted inequality. But I don't think there's a full realisation of the extent, or what the real focus of that inequality is. Australia hasn't done too badly in terms of income inequality. It hasn't improved, but it hasn’t gotten a lot worse. Where we've really got a lot worse in terms of net worth or wealth. How much of the total wealth of Australia is owned by different segments of the population and the bottom 40% of the population now only own about just over 5% of the total wealth. And that's come down very substantially in the last 20 years. So, it's really in access to wealth. Now, why does that matter? Well, it matters. first, of course, because it's unfair and equitable. But it is wealth that gives people access to funds that they might need, if they have a rough patch, if they're unemployed for a period, rather than just living hand-to-mouth. So, while incomes, haven't shown a huge increase in inequality, wealth has, and I think we've got to really focus some of our policies and strategies on that. Now, unfortunately, we're doing some things that are probably going to make that worse. The fact that people were able to access their superannuation during COVID seemed like a good idea at the time, but it means for the lower-income people who did that, they're going to have significantly less wealth that they can call on in future years. Similarly, I think a lot of our policies around housing are very much focused on people who already have a house and protecting them. And some of our social security policies are very focused on that. Whereas people who don't have a house, they don't have an asset - they're renters largely - are losing out. And another thing that we point out in the in the Transforming Australia report is that lower-income renter households, are now paying a greater proportion of their income on housing costs. We're seeing more and more of those lower-income renters paying more than 30% of their income on housing costs. So, I think the big story here is about wealth and assets, and how we can make that fairer across the community.

Dominic Billings 

I suppose the following questions, a bit more of a question of your personal opinion, when you just kind of you feel like you took the pulse of Australia. I know you were Deputy Premier of the state of Victoria in the past. And I guess coupling that with knowing that the Federal Government haven't seemed to fully embrace the SDGs or the Paris Agreement, for that matter. Do you feel optimistic about the decade ahead? Or instead you feel like institutions like the SDSN and Monash Sustainable Development Institute are the key drivers of Australia shifting, having a greater consciousness of the SDGs to one to reach the Goals?

John Thwaites 

Are you talking generally or in relation to climate change?

Dominic Billings 

More looking toward the SDGs by 2030, in contrast to, let's say, like a decarbonisation by 2050.

John Thwaites 

So, like a lot of things, it's a mixed bag. And I believe that there are some positive signs, as I said, the response to COVID in Australia has been pretty good. The immediate economic response by the Federal Government was appropriate. And the fact that JobKeeper was at a reasonable level across the whole community and JobSeeker was increased well beyond Newstart, were all very positive policies. What's depressing is that the Federal Government seems to be turning back from those good directions, and now threatening to go back to the old, totally inadequate level of Newstart, which will put tens of thousands of people below the poverty line. So I think that's where I say there have been some green shoots of hope. But what we don't want is for them to be snuffed out across other SDGs. We're seeing, I think, good efforts in health and education, we're certainly seeing attempts at improving areas in the economy. Where we're really seeing very little substantial progress, at a national level least, is in climate change. And reality is our emissions as a country today are pretty much the same as they were in the year 2000. We've improved very little since then. There have certainly been some positive steps in renewable energy for electricity. And so, we're seeing now more than 20% of our electricity is when renewable, but in transport and industry, there's almost no step forward at all. So if you ask me, am I optimistic, I see some positive signs, but I'm not optimistic that we're going to be anywhere near the targets that we need, if we're going to have the sort of healthy society, the safe environment that we need, and that are set out in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Dominic Billings 

In the past few years, you've taken on the role as the head of Monash Sustainable Development Institute, which, when the SDSN was established became, like I mentioned at the beginning of the show, the anchor of the SDSN, for this region of the world, Oceania. And obviously, you've taken on the commissioner role of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. And also, you're the co-chair of the worldwide SDSN Leadership Council. I guess like from the point where you left politics, and took on the role of head of MSDI and also the head of ClimateWorks, to kind of reach where you are now on I guess, again, just on a very kind of personal human level, what's kind of been that experience to be working alongside the people that you are, who are preeminent in the field of sustainable development. What's been the emotional, life trajectory of realising that if you ever do smell the roses,

John Thwaites 

(inaudible) ...very inspiring to be around people who are very smart, very knowledgeable and very passionate about sustainability and sustainable development. Politics was very different. Obviously, the great advantage of being in politics is that you can do stuff. I mean, it's where the power is. And to a degree, it's sometimes frustrating in academia, or outside government, that you can't implement the things that you think need doing. But on the other hand, you have a lot more time to really learn from others and to get the best ideas. Whereas in politics, you're so time poor that you have to jump at a solution probably too fast, most of the time. So, it's just a very different lifestyle, and a very different (inaudible)...some of my practical experience in politics to work of academics and others who have (inaudible). So I see my role really is a bridge between the two using my background in politics, but my current job embedded in a university to help bring those two cultures together.

Dominic Billings 

Again, John, really appreciate your time, especially considering carrying on counting all those really important roles. So yes, thank you so much, John. Really appreciate time and thanks for everything you do.

John Thwaites 

Pleasure.

SDG Episode #3 - Jody Lightfoot - Campaign for Australian Aid

In this episode, we’re joined by Jody Lightfoot of the Campaign for Australian Aid

Jody’s work aligns most closely with Goal 17 – Partnerships for the Goals, specifically target #17.2, which is:

Developed countries to implement fully their official development assistance commitments, including the commitment by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income toward official development assistance to developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of gross national income toward official development assistance to least developed countries official development assistance providers are encouraged to consider setting a target to provide at least 0.20 per cent of gross national income toward official development assistance to least developed countries

Campaign for Australian Aid is a movement of people, organisations, communities and businesses who believe Australia can and should do more to help build a better, fairer future for all. The Campaign is made up of fifty of the country’s leading aid and development organisations, including World Vision, Oxfam and Save the Children, to name a couple.

Good news developed not long after Jody and I spoke. The Australian Government announced at the beginning of November an added $500m to assist in the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine to the Pacific and South East Asia.

The $500 million will be rolled out over three years to ensure full immunisation coverage for the Pacific and will make a significant contribution toward Southeast Asia.

Transcript

Dominic Billings : Thanks very much for joining us, Jody, really appreciate it.

Jody Lightfoot:  My pleasure, Dom.

Dominic Billings:  Jody, would you be able to tell us a little bit about the Campaign, please?

Jody Lightfoot: The Campaign for Australian Aid is a coalition of about thirty of Australia's aid and development groups. We're coming together because we believe that we can achieve more by working together than we can alone and primarily focus on calling on the Australian Government to increase that international development aid.

Dominic Billings: Is it correct now the focus is a campaign calling End COVID for All, with the focus about the effects on poverty that the coronavirus has had?

Jody Lightfoot:  Yeah, that's right. So End COVID for all started as collaboration between Campaign for Australian Aid, the peak body of international development groups known as the Australian Council for International Development, and another coalition of Christian aid agencies known as Micah Australia. So, it kind of came together to develop this campaign in response to the COVID crisis.

Dominic Billings: I've been involved in the Campaign in the past, as you know. I was familiar with the ACFID component of the of the alliance is, could you tell us a little bit about Micah's background?

Jody Lightfoot 

Yeah, so Micah Australia formed as a group that were largely taking action on the Millennium Development Goals, uniting through the identity of their Christian faith. They've done a lot of great work in advocating on issues like climate change and poverty. They run a great tactic where they bring hundreds of Christians to Parliament each year, train them up. It's a multi-day thing and then often meet with 100-plus MPs over the course of a couple of days. So, they're seen as a very effective group, and have played a really leading role in the End COVID for All campaign.

Dominic Billings: Was the alliance, both Micah and all those ACFID mentioned organisations that you mentioned, effectively the same alliance that was responsible for Make Poverty History?

Jody Lightfoot: Make Poverty History Alliance re-branded as Campaign for Australian aid. There is crossover, like there are organisations that are members of Campaign for Australian Aid as well as Micah, as well as ACFID. So, there is that crossover.

Dominic Billings: A bit about before you had become involved with Campaign for Australian Aid. You mentioned at the top, about the focus of about campaigning towards the government. Had your focus in your own work, prior to becoming involved with Campaign for Australian Aid been more focused on influencing government.?

Jody Lightfoot:  Yeah, I think my journey started with a group called Oaktree as a volunteer. Within that work was primarily advocating for the government to increase our international development assistance. And that's really been the journey that I've been on over the last decade. And whilst I've been advocating on the issue of poverty, I've also been involved in other campaigns. like Love Makes a Way advocating for compassionate treatment of people seeking asylum. And helping to build faith-based justice movements, like Common Grace, and helping to bring a Christian voice to climate action. And so, I've been involved in a number of different issues, but certainly extreme poverty has been at the heart of it.

Dominic Billings: What is the act, or the process of campaigning tend to look like? Is that a lot of emails? Is it trying to get a whole bunch of grassroots people on board? What are the means of campaigning that you feel are most effective, Jody?

Jody Lightfoot:  In the End COVID for All campaign, the approach that we took was a twin track, where we kind of integrated a lobbying strategy with a public advocacy strategy. And so, the role of the lobbying strategy was to really make a national interest case to the government. Which is the kind of arguments that they can get on board with to expand our aid program and the public advocacy track was really to demonstrate political cover. So, the government could actually implement that in policy. And so what that actually looks like, there were tactics we ran, a selfie mask activation, where we brought together hundreds of CEOs, influencers, refugees, disability groups, etc., to post a selfie wearing a branded End COVID for All mask, all at the same time. And we created a virtual mask filter to enable thousands of Australians to participate as well. And so that was of one of the tactics, I think, probably the most effective tactic, that we did. Just focus on building an alliance that was beyond the aid and development sector. And so, we had groups like the Nurses and Midwives Association. We had groups from Islamic Relief to Hillsong. We had business groups like Thankyou, and people like the chairman of Woolworths, Gordon Cairns writing op-eds on the importance of international development in the Financial Review. And so, what we're hearing from ministers in this campaign, is that this kind of cross-sector, beyond aid voices, has been the most impressive part of it. So, it's about 230 organisations across different sectors that have joined the campaign and taken action. One of the ways we displayed that was a full-page ad in the Financial Review, to highlight the breadth of the organisations involved. And then regularly trying to feed this into essentially influencing the Expenditure Review Committee, which is the group of decision-makers that decide on budget outcomes.

Dominic Billings: I'm curious, I hadn't given too much thought about this before in the past. You mentioned the involvement, of for instance, Micah. But obviously, I know quite a number of the organisations from that have formed the alliance from the beginning, are NGOs, which might have a faith-based component. Would you say anecdotally, you have a sense of more engagement from those faith-based communities in contrast to more secular organisations - Oxfam and Water Aid, for instance?

Jody Lightfoot: Yeah, that is hard to say. I wouldn't say necessarily. So, I would say there are some secular organisations who really dive into the advocacy space, like Oxfam, for example, are a key player within that. And then you have other secular aid organisations that don't dive into the advocacy space as much. And same with faith, you have faith groups that dive in and other faith groups that hold back a little. And so, I think it's predominantly determined by other factors. But I have seen the power of faith, you know, across Christianity, across Islam, to really drive people towards action. And, you know, part of my journey came from exploring spirituality. And I felt his deep desire to act arising out of that. And so, faith can be very powerful motivator for action. But it's not the only motivator for action.

Dominic Billings: I feel like you might possibly have the statistics somewhere in your head, Jody. Is there quite a disconnect between the amount of aid levels that that the public perceives Australia to give, in contrast to the reality?

Jody Lightfoot: Yeah, there's a huge disconnect there. There's been a number of different polls and research done on this. The public estimate that we give approximately 15% of gross national income. And in reality, you know, as of now, we give 22 cents in every $100. So, yeah, the disconnect is huge.

Dominic Billings: The international aim for any listeners that aren't aware is 0.7% of gross national income. Over the past couple of decades, what's been the rise and fall of that level?

Jody Lightfoot: Australian aid was actually at its highest point in the early 1970s. It was above 45 cents in every $100 at that point. And from the 1970s to 2004, the overall trajectory was one of decline across both Labour and Liberal governments. 2005 was a significant year, because that's when John Howard announced to the UN that he would essentially double aid by 2010. This was really an unprecedented commitment within our nation's history. Then, when the Rudd government got elected in 2007, Rudd then expanded the aid program at an even faster rate than what Howard was advocating for. What we had at that point was a bipartisan consensus to increase the aid programme to 50 cents in every $100. So that was an excellent period for our aid program. But then, 2013 came and under the Abbott/Turnbull Government, aid began to be slashed dramatically, to the point where it reached the lowest level in our nation's history. I think it got down to about 21 cents in every $100 of gross national income. And so, aid's kind of been on the chopping block over the last seven years, I suppose. In the 2019 election, we had a glimmer of hope, as Labour announced if they were elected government, they would increase aid by 1.6 billion over four years. But as we know, they weren't elected. And within the Federal Budget that recently passed, the Coalition actually made the first increase to Australia's international development financing to the tune of $305 million. And that was that was the first increase of a government in eight years,

Dominic Billings: In terms of how the political parties respond to aid levels, whether it's heading into an election, or between elections when they're creating their platform, which I know is has been a central pivot point for Campaign for Australian. Do you notice that the parties tend to follow what they perceive the electorate wants? Or it's more top-down?

Jody Lightfoot:  There's a number of considerations. And I think, I think the global financial crisis and the rise of nationalism around the world has created a more difficult environment to have discussions about international development and to gain commitments. So, I think that's been one key driver. But I think when you look at, if you look through the research literature on what really drives governments to increase aid, there are a number of factors, but one of the most important factors is the willingness of the prime minister to either increase or decrease aid. You saw that with Howard, you saw that with Rudd, being personally very committed. You've seen that in other countries, with people like Angela Merkel in Germany and in the UK. And so, I think that's a really important factor. Other factors are things like the presence of aid champions within the party in government, the broad-based party support from MPs within the party, because whilst it's the decision of the Expenditure Review Committee, if they've got support of the broad party room, it's more likely to get through. And so, the public sentiment does fit within that. And so, it's interesting within the recent Federal Budget, the government actually increased our international development financing by $305 million. But it wasn't promoted by government as an increase. It was kind of hidden in a way that they didn't have to say it was an increase, but it was there. One potential reason for that was that they don't want to be seen as increasing aid, during a global pandemic when there's high debt. And so, I think the public mood does matter, but kind of the extent of the level of campaigning, as well as those other political factors. And obviously, economic factors are also important.

Dominic Billings:  At the time of that we're recording, we're probably maybe five weeks since the Federal Budget was just announced. On the back of your End COVID for All campaign, were you relatively happy, given what you just said, or was that kind of around about where you were expecting, for the aid levels to be adjusted, in line with a COVID-19 budget?

Jody Lightfoot: I think what we can say is that it could have been a lot worse. And so, we've seen repeated cuts for many, many years. And this was the first increase by a government in eight years. And so, I think you have to celebrate the win when it comes. And so, given the context, that it could have been worse, I do think this is something worthy of celebration. At the same time, you know, it's by no means perfect, and we've got a long way to go. There were cuts to disability programs in the budget, there were cuts to a number of programs, like Afghanistan, for example, Pakistan. And we've got a long way to go before we're actually showing global leadership and stepping up as a good global citizen, and as a leader within our region. And so, I think we can both celebrate the win whilst recognising we've got a way to go.

Dominic Billings: Obviously, the pandemic effects every person individually on some level or another. Have you noticed with End COVID for All campaign, have you noticed people quite engaged about the international repercussions in the developing world? Because I feel like in the news media, we do hear a lot about the Western countries, whether it's Europe, Western Europe particularly, and also the US. Have you felt that the End COVID for All campaign has gained particular traction in contrast to the regular campaign that you've been conducting all the time?

Jody Lightfoot: Yeah, I think we have broken into the media to an extent. The End COVID for All messages have been featured in all major publications, we launched on Sunrise. One of the key messages that were using in the campaign is that this crisis doesn't end for anyone until it ends for everyone. And I think what COVID presents is an opportunity to link the issue of international development. And through an issue that Australians can relate to, in a fairly unprecedented way, I think Australians really do understand that COVID spreading in Myanmar can affect people in Melbourne. There's an interconnection, both with health, with economy, our interconnectedness is more evident than ever before. And I think that's an opportunity to share the importance of global cooperation, because COVID is one example of where we do need global cooperation to solve a global problem. And if we can get it right with COVID, and we can help people to understand the importance of global cooperation. As you know, we're seeing the rise of nationalism around the world, that's going to better prepare us to solve other major crises like climate change and other areas of inequality as well.

Dominic Billings: Taking a more personal tact, Jody, what's been your journey to have become as passionate as you are about the distance between 0.7% of gross national income that Australia has repeatedly committed to giving over the years and what it's actually been? What has been your path to feel so strongly about what you're doing?

Jody Lightfoot: As I mentioned a little earlier in the conversation, some of my passion kind of was born out of an exploration of spirituality. And so, when I was at university, I was studying music. And that was wonderful. And during that time, I decided to attempt to try and follow the teachings of Christ. And one of the central teachings is to love your neighbour. And I was thinking that, well, so many people in the world are living in poverty or oppressed and loving your neighbour has to include seeking to enhance their freedom. So I had this desire to want to do something, but I didn't have any friends who were involved and had no idea what it would look like to be involved. After a little bit of looking, I decided to join Oaktree, an organisation run by young people to end extreme poverty. And I was blown away by the level of creativity, leadership and energy that these young people were showing and doing some really excellent movement building work. And I think my time at Oaktree started to teach me a theory of change that if you can build a movement strong enough to create change that can help to address our systemic issues that is leading to a lot of poverty and oppression. And so, yeah, basically, joining the dots between loving your neighbour, for me, has a lot to do with helping to build people-powered movements to address the injustices of our time. And I think I think that was really kind of where it started. And since then, it's really been reflecting a lot on just the preciousness of life in a way. Thinking about how, you know, I hope this doesn't get too philosophical. But you know, for billions of years, we just haven't existed. And suddenly, out of nowhere, we're here. And we didn't do anything to deserve to be here we just popped up. And not existing as like an ant or a snail but as human beings able to have conversations like this, able to dream and able to experience the beauty and the goodness of life. And for me, that's really where injustice becomes so offensive, because we have the opportunity to live these wonderful lives and experience the goodness of life. And the idea that people would spend that life being exploited sexually, being exploited under forced labour, being oppressed, dying needlessly from diseases, because they can't access something like a vaccination or clean water. That makes it so offensive. And so, I think, yeah, just regularly thinking almost spontaneously about how grateful I am to be alive, to have had the opportunity to experience the goodness of life. I want to do my part to help other people experience

Dominic Billings: How would you say you experience frustrations, whether it's professionally in your role. If you've been working toward an increase in aid for a couple of years, and then an election comes around. Or a budget’s announced and the results, perhaps you don't feel like they fall the way you would want them? How do you reconcile those setbacks? Do you feel like you need some glories along the way? Does that make sense?

Jody Lightfoot: Yeah, it makes sense. And it can be hard. Like I would start with a position of gratitude, just recognising that I'm extremely privileged to be able to do this kind of work. Firstly, just very grateful that I get to do this. Yeah, it does feel like an uphill battle at times, because you're often working in very short timeframes, trying to do a lot within those short times, with limited resources, and run into things that are fairly significant, like get very powerful decision makers to act in particular ways, which is hard to do. And so, most of the time, you don't win the campaigns because of what you're trying to shift. And so I think, like I went through a really difficult mental health period, a couple of years ago, and that was, in large part because I wasn't managing my emotions and managing my mind in a way that could kind of bear the toll of setbacks and the lifestyle of kind of go, go, go activism. And what was interesting was that when I started to share my story with other people, I was just shocked about how many people had the same story. And I had not known it was that bad. Now, I've just got activist friends who are burnt out, suffering from mental health issues. And it's kind of this thing that we don't talk about very often. But we probably need to because it's actually really bad. If activists get burnt out, well, of course for them as people, and then for the movements that they're participating in, because then it can no longer contribute as effectively. I think for me, a few of the things like mindfulness was a game-changer for me, because the first time you know, I developed a greater capacity to not have to identify with thoughts that come up. And that creates space to be able to choose whether you want to follow a thought train, which is sometimes skilful, and sometimes unskilful, you can allow thoughts to just arise and appear without having to feel like you're attached to them or feeling like you have to believe them. Whereas if you don't have a capacity to be mindful, you just identify with every thought, follow every thought train, and there's less of that degree to be able to calm the mind when it's skilful to do so. And it took a couple of consistent Budget cuts for me to start thinking about, which is really an idea from Eastern spirituality, which is non-attachment. I think there's it's really difficult to do but reducing your attachment on outcome whilst going all in on process. And so you bring your full heart and passion to what you're working on and seeking to express the world that you want to see within your life, within the tactics, within how you operate in the world. And then whilst you're doing that, you release yourself from things that you have, like either no or very little control over, like the outcomes, like it's really ultimately to the Expenditure Review Committee if they want to increase international development. And we can do all that we can and seek to learn and become more strategic at how we do that. But ultimately, it's their decision. And the question is 'How much am I willing to allow myself to deteriorate in my mental health because of a decision that someone else is making that I can't control?' So, whilst I think it's normal to be disappointed if that happens, and even angry, but I think we can take steps to reduce our attachment to that. And that can build a greater equanimity and acceptance of what we can change and what we can't change. And that can help with positive mental health amidst kind of the bustle of campaigning.

Dominic Billings: I really love that sentiment so much, Jody. It's fascinating, we want to do in some ways, things that require just so many people, almost superhuman, but there is this very human aspect to it to all of us, because we do have our physical limitations, and particularly our mental and emotional limitations. We’ll leave it there, Jody, because I really like that sentiment that you've expressed so much, and I how effective it is, for all of us to be able to reconcile. So, thank you so much, Jody. Is there anything in particular you want to promote in relation to the Campaign for Australian Aid?

Jody Lightfoot: No, nothing particularly I'm looking to promote, other than I do want to say, really appreciate you having me. I think you're doing is awesome, promoting education around SDGs. And I think that, all of us, in our own little ways, can be doing what we can to be promoting the world that we want to seek, living that out. I think we can get closer to that world. And that's an exciting prospect.

Dominic Billings: It's really great. Thank you so much, Jody and all the best with all the really great work that the Campaign's doing.

Jody Lightfoot: Thanks for having me, Dom.

SDG Episode #2: Daniel Pejic - University of Melbourne Connected Cities Lab

In this episode, we’re joined by Daniel Pejic of the University of Melbourne’s Connected Cities Lab.

Dan’s work aligns most closely with Goal 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Daniel Pejic is a Research Fellow in International Urban Migration and a PhD researcher at University of Melbourne’s Connected Cities Lab as part of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning.

The Connected Cities Lab is a laboratory designed to address the challenges city leadership faces, and the information it needs in an interconnected and increasingly urbanised planet.

Dan is currently researching the role of cities as actors in global migration governance and the rescaling of the politics of migration

Transcript

Dominic Billings: Welcome, Dan Pejic. Thanks very much for being with us, Dan. Pleasure. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the Connected Cities Lab at the University of Melbourne.

Daniel Pejic: Connected Cities Lab has been around for a few years in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. And what we do is look at various aspects of city leadership and the role that cities can play to address global challenges. And I guess most of that work is focused internationally. So looking both across cities and across regions and the way that cities can kind of learn from each other and what we can learn from looking comparatively at cities and generating evidence and knowledge in that way. But also looking at the role that cities can play and the emerging role that cities are playing as international leaders and a lot of policy areas. And this is really an emerging and expanding area, which has come about for a few reasons. The world is primarily urban. And by that, I mean, now we now have more than half of the world's population that live in cities. And cities are becoming critical sites. They always have been, but certainly in the modern world, critical sites for the way that we think about economic sustainability, migration, health. Really any issue right now you look at and cities are completely central and critical to that. So we think that city leadership is a really viable and valuable avenue to try to address global challenges, and certainly the SDGs that we're going to talk about today and other things are evidence of that.

Dominic Billings: Michele Acuto, is he the leader of the Connected Cities Lab?

Daniel Pejic:  Yeah, that's right. So, he's the director, also Professor of Global Urban Politics at the university.

Dominic Billings: Did he effectively coin the phrase 'city diplomacy'?

Daniel Pejic: He's certainly done a lot of the formative work on that. So, he was previously at University of Oxford and at UCL and he had a City Leadership Lab at the University College London. And they did a lot of work on the international dimensions of city leadership, like we do at the Connected Cities Lab. And him and a few other scholars started looking at this idea of city diplomacy. And by that we mean the role that city governments and their representatives can play in shaping the way that the world works essentially. So, when we think of diplomacy between states, we think about sort diplomats that are representing their countries, flying around to different parts of the world and negotiating agreements. And working together collaboratively on issues. And city diplomacy is similar in some ways. Most large cities around the world now have an international department of some kind and often an international affairs director who will act as a diplomat essentially, for that city, and speak to other cities, international organisations and other groups that they work with, to try and advocate for that city's issues and work collaboratively together on issues. But also, I guess, in our interpretation, city diplomacy can be a little bit broader than just that kind of direct city-to-city relationship. It can be about the fact that different parts of city governments are now increasingly happy to work transnationally on issues just to achieve outcomes for the citizens in those cities, because the issues that they're dealing with - and I think COVID is a good example of that - but certainly a range of other issues that cities are having to deal with nowadays, all have global dimensions. And that's kind of been a result of really increasing globalisation, since the 1970s. And this widespread urbanisation that I've been talking about and will come back to. So because of that, I guess, cities have had no choice but to start to look internationally and engage more internationally to achieve the kind of outcomes and reach the goals they want to reach for their citizens. And we see, I guess, city diplomacy as being a useful avenue through which cities can work collaboratively to achieve those outcomes.

Dominic Billings: I know one of the most conspicuous examples of those kind of city networks and cities working together seems to me to be the C40. Is C40 instigated by Bloomberg?

Daniel Pejic: Yes. So C40 cities goes back a little way but came out a group of cities who came together to try and lead on climate. So, lead on the mitigation of climate change. So, the original thinking was, you have a lot of large cities around the world who are now responsible for a lot of the economic output, but also the carbon emissions. So, cities have an integral place to play in the way that we mitigate climate change. So, Bloomberg Philanthropies, along the way, some other philanthropic groups have been involved in funding, C40 cities, but it's now a group of 96 large cities around the world. And it, I think has been the number one example. There are some other large city network groups as well, but I think it's been very prominent. Also, having someone like Michael Bloomberg as the president of the group has meant that it has achieved a lot of recognition and I guess, achieve a lot of media focus as well. But it's also been quite effective. So, the organisation itself has instigated about 15,000 individual climate actions among its member cities. And there's been a lot written I guess, about C40 and the potential that C40 has, or at least that and other groups working on climate, to take the mantle from nation states that have thus far been really ineffective at coming up with collective agreements and action on climate change. What I would usually say about that, and I've written with Michele and others about this as well, is that we don't think that cities are going to be able to just take over the governance of climate. I think that's not really a feasible thing, but they certainly have a really important role to play, and need to work collaboratively with national governments and international organisations to meet the challenge. I think C40 cities has proved a good avenue of instigating some of that change and creating those connections between cities to learn from each other.

Dominic Billings: You mentioned both yourself and Michele and Anna Kosavac, in discussing the role of city networking and whether it was a passing phase or whether it was actually gaining even more traction. And to me in that article, 'Tracking the Trends and City Networking' as part of the Perry World House in University of Pennsylvania, that the Rockefeller Foundation had ended the program of 100 Resilient Cities. What was the trend behind that?

Daniel Pejic: It came as a surprise to quite a few people because 100 Resilient Cities was one of the largest and well recognised transnational city networks. And the Rockefeller Foundation had put a lot of support and funds behind that program. I think another reason why that program was quite successful is it was building on these ideas of urban resilience so that the capacity of cities to withstand and bounce back from shocks and crises, and we're certainly in the middle of a very big one right now. And one of the reasons 100 Resilient Cities was very effective is it also made resources available to those cities to create their own resilience plans. Melbourne, the city we're in right now, has a resilience plan and resilience officers. Encourage also and provided resources for cities to have their own chief resilience officers or equivalent position. Rockefeller Foundation had said that they were going to fund that particular initiative for a certain amount of time and essentially got to the end of that time, and they decided that they weren't going to renew that commitment in the same way. That organisation is now transformed into a new program, but certainly not on the same scale as before. We've seen with some of these other city networking initiatives as well is there's a lot of them right now. And that paper that you referred to, says we've estimated there's over 300 of these initiatives. We've done some research that looked specifically at a database of 200 and looked at the features and characteristics of those networks. But there are a lot of these networks and they're vying for not a lot of resourcing. And the ones that we've talked about, C40 and 100 Resilient Cities are ones that have been lucky to have quite large, US-based philanthropic funding. A lot of the other networks are very reliant on international organisation funding. States haven't been huge players in the transnational city networking space. So I think a lot of people were surprised with the decision not to continue 100 Resilient Cities, but at the same time, I think it's a reality that when you're at the whim of philanthropic funding, that those priorities can change. You can't expect that philanthropic funding is going to continue forever. And certainly some of the new large-scale city networks that have been developed over the last few years, the idea has been that they would be seeded with philanthropic funding, and then they would diversify those funding streams over time and C40 cities done to some extent. The Mayors Migration Council just another example of a group that started in the last few years that I've done a bit of work with and doing some research on right now is a group has been funded primarily by the Open Society Foundation, along with the Swiss government as well and C40. That's another group that the plan for that group is to become self-sufficient or look for other revenue streams at the end of the Open Society Foundation funding. So yeah, long answer, but essentially, it was a surprise, but at the same time, I think that if these city networks want to have long-term viability and influence, then they need to look at different funding models that are going to work over those timeframes.

Dominic Billings: You mentioned the Mayors Migration Council. Am I correct that your PhD research is focused on the intersection of migration in cities?

Daniel Pejic: Yeah. So, what I'm looking at my PhD research is the city diplomacy that we were talking about earlier. So, looking at the way that city diplomacy has emerged and evolved in the global governance of migration. That's been a new phenomenon. So, I guess most of the large-scale and well-publicised city networks have been focused on climate, sustainability, some extent resilience, and other groups as well. There's some large-scale health networks as well. But international migration has been a newer area, and a lot of this started around the negotiation of the UN Global Compact of Migration, the two agreements that made up that Global Compact. In the lead-up to that, some cities advocated quite strongly that there should have been an urban voice and a place for city leaders to be involved in the negotiations of that agreement. And that made a lot of sense, because most migrants around the world end up going to cities. As increasing responsibilities are being devolved to city governments around the world, we're seeing city governments have to take up more and more responsibility for creating inclusive societies and providing the kind of support services that migrants need to be able to be included and be prosperous in cities. So there's a bit of a disconnect between migration policy, which is primarily governed by national governments and in some places, regional governments as well, but predominantly national governments and the increasing burden or responsibility that's been put on cities to manage the impacts of mass migration. So, my PhD is looking at the way that cities have emerged as actors in that space. So why they've actually started to take a place on the global stage on migration issues. How they've gone about influencing or attempting to influence the way that migration is governed globally. And then what the impacts of that city diplomacy have been.

Dominic Billings: An organisation I wasn't too familiar with is the International Organisation for Migration. Am I correct, is that an official UN body now?

Daniel Pejic: It is, yeah. So it wasn't, for some time it wasn't, but now it's been brought into the United Nations System as the main UN organisation for migration,

Dominic Billings: Would you be able to speak briefly about what the Migration Governance Framework within the IOM is?

Daniel Pejic: Yeah. And the answer to that question is, there isn't one, to an extent. So, migration is governed by a range of different agreements. And it depends on what type of migration you're talking about. So if you're talking about asylum seekers and refugees, you have some international legal frameworks that are created under the UNHCR and you have processes through which asylum seekers can apply for refugee status in countries and international processes for collaboration. So, you have I guess, law in place. When it comes to other types of migration, which far outweigh refugees in terms of numbers, there's just a mixture of frameworks. So, for instance, the International Labour Organisation has some governance dimensions in relation to labour migration. Different parts of migration, for instance, will be governed by agreements around visa systems around a process like that. So, it's a real patchwork of governance structures that exist. And that was one of the main challenges of the Global Compact of Migration, which I should point out is not a legally binding compact in any way. It's a voluntary compact, there's no enforcement mechanism attached to it and the IOM doesn't have any enforcement mechanism. So one of the challenges of trying to come up with a document that states can agree to around the overall governance of migration is that you have a lot of intersecting responsibilities, a lot of intersecting agreements, and no overall overarching governance system when it comes to the movement of people between countries.

Dominic Billings: With those two compacts you mentioned, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees, what's been the uptake with the ratification of that. Has it been broad or patchwork?

Daniel Pejic: There were a number of countries that just didn't participate in the negotiation, the US being the most prominent one for the negotiation. But the commitment to it has been pretty good from the countries who participated in the negotiation of the agreement. But it's important to state that the agreements are voluntary. So it's not difficult to agree to the principles of an international agreement when you know that nobody's actually going to be able to hold you legally to the responsibilities of that particular agreement.

Dominic Billings: I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about one of the projects that the Connected Cities Lab at the Melbourne University is running at the moment, which is the SDG Cities Challenge?

Daniel Pejic:  Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm not working on this project, I should say, and not across all the details of it. But in general, it's a pretty large-scale initiative that the labs are undertaking, and it's involving a range of local governments, local authorities in our region, and those are touching on a range of facilities. We've got representatives from Philippines, Malaysia, India, Vanuatu, quite a few in Australia, Solomon Islands as well. So it's a range of local governments and the thinking behind the project is essentially to get a group of cities together and get them to commit to and collaborate to achieving some projects that align with the SDGs. And the way that that's being carried out is there's some profiling work and some collaborative work that's happening between those cities so they can learn from each other and also have resources being developed to help those cities to be able to commit and work towards some of the SDG goals. The ultimate, I guess what they're working towards is what we call a Voluntary Local Review. So essentially, around the time of the development of the SDGs, you would know that the nation states will provide to the United Nations reviews of how they're tracking against various SDG markers. And there a few city governments in Japan, and New York City that have been quite active in the space. And they worked together to come up with the idea of Voluntary Local Reviews. So, cities volunteering to do their own stocktake of how they're tracking against SDGs. And to be able to report that in a way that provides the missing information that you're not getting just from the national reviews. So the idea of the SDG Cities Challenges is that these cities would work together, commit to some projects that are going to work towards these SDG goals and then eventually work towards completing their own Voluntary Local Review.

Dominic Billings: And I guess that ties in with an event that Connected Cities Lab has coming up in the coming days which is the Sustainable Development Goals, Climate Change, and Cities Symposium, which is on 30 September to 2 October in Melbourne, which I assume is online because Melbourne's currently in restrictions. Is that correct, Dan?

Daniel Pejic: It is very online. This is a big initiative for the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. So the faculty will put together a symposium annually, I believe, and this one is focused around the SDGs,  particularly around climate change and cities, which is obviously an area that that our Lab does quite a bit of work in. So, our Lab is taking the lead with a few other collaborators on this program. And the program for the event is online now. Anybody's able to sign up. There is a registration fee, but people can sign up and take part in the programs, listen to the keynote speeches and other events if they'd like to. So, all that information is on our website, but also on the on the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning website. There’re some great speakers so I think it's going to be bringing together speakers from around the world. One of the keynotes that I'm looking forward to is from the International Affairs director at the City of New York, who has been quite influential in advocating for this Voluntary Local Review process. There's a range of other excellent speakers and will also have the opportunity to throughout it to talk a little bit about the work that the Lab is doing and the SDG Cities Challenge. The cities that are being involved in the in the SDG Cities Challenge are also being worked into the overall symposium programme as well. So, I think everybody's looking forward to it. It's been a lot of work to put it together my understanding, so we'll see how it goes in the online format.

Dominic Billings:  I know your research has shifted from the following a little bit, but I know you've published middle of last year in the Scientific American about 'Why Cities Rankings Matter'. Would you be able to speak about a bit of the work that you were doing in terms of city rankings?

Daniel Pejic: Yeah. Absolutely. So, we did a bit of a pilot study where we started looking at comparative city rankings. So, I think most people would be aware of things like The Economist Intelligence Unit's World's Most Liveable City ranking, which Melbourne has done quite well in historically. We worked with a consultancy in London called The Business of Cities who have a large database of comparative city rankings. So, we did some analysis on that database just to look at the way the recent trends in these in these rankings, and we found that the number of them was certainly increasing. We looked a little bit about who was producing these kind of rankings, what areas they were looking at. And then went on to think a little bit about the way that cities were using these rankings and did a few interviews with a few local governments. What we found is that there's an increasing number of these rankings and the types of domains they're looking at are changing. So originally, they were really focused on economic markers. And we've found that they're shifting a lot more rankings are shifting towards what we've called "softer" domains and liveability would be an example of that. And the range of groups that are producing these is an interesting mix. It's primarily driven by private sector actors, particularly out of multinational corporations, and real estate actors and other groups, but about a fifth are being produced by research organisations and think tanks and other groups. So in the academic space, I think these measures are often kind of derided somewhat, and seen as just for the newspaper reporting and just for cities to put a badge and say we are number 'x' in this measure. And what we ended up concluding and have argued in that research is that we think that these are becoming quite a significant source of urban data. And there could be an opportunity to better utilise that data considering that there are significant problems with the way that urban data is collected or not collected and managed and the relationship between that and the SDGs because it's certainly a significant problem in the way that SDG 11 has been tracked and measured.

Dominic Billings: Beautiful. Thank you so much for being with us Dan. A reminder the Sustainable Development Goals, Climate Change and Cities Symposium, as part of the Melbourne School of Design's Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning is on from 30 September to 2 October. That's all online. Thank you so much, Dan. Really appreciate you being with us today.

Daniel Pejic: Pleasure. Thanks so much.

SDG Episode #1: Annie Woollard - Footprints on the Globe

In this episode, we’re joined by Annie Woollard of Footprints on the Globe.

Annie’s work, though interlinked with all the Goals, hews most closely with Goal #4 – Quality Education, specifically target 4.7:

By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

Footprints on the Globe, collaborates with schools, educators, and corporations to inspire all to educate, explore and act for global change.

Via professional development, Footprints on the Globe ensures global education is at the forefront of schools around the globe, and in its advisory capacity, designs and creates innovative educational resources.

Footprints on the Globe is a specialist educational consultancy with a focus on embedding global education into the classroom and schools.

Transcript

Dominic Billings: Thank you very much for joining us, Annie. Just want to say first off, I'm really inspired in researching Footprints on the Globe. In some ways, it can feel like with the SDGs, that only a very small part of the population is familiar with them, which can be discouraging at times, because it seems like they're important. But I was very inspired by looking through your website, and everything you've done, because you have really advocated for it so broadly through your educational efforts. But you've also brought together lots of resources I didn't even know existed from the UN and all the other organisations you've been collaborating with to also advocate for the SDGs. I was curious what led you to start Footprints on the Globe in the first place, Annie?

Annie Woollard: Thanks for having me, Dom, looking forward to our chat. So, my background in a snapshot, is a primary school educator, and I've been in and out of the classroom over the years, and depending on whether family, we're up to with young children, and consulted and wrote resources, then went back into the classroom six years ago, and discovered the Global Goals, was probably three or three years ago for counting now. And then my whole lens of teaching just transformed. I was right into gifted and talented education and then I met the Global Goals and I just thought "This is where I’m meant to be."

And from that day on my classroom became the 'global classroom', and everything we did had a focus on the Global Goals, and they are up in the classroom, and children were really involved, and these were upper school primary children, so 11 and 12 year old’s. And, much as I love my own little group, and my own little class, and the journey that to go on with the class for the year, I still thought "I can do more".

So, I took the big leap of faith and resigned. Some say, it might have been a bit mad, but anyway, you got to have a challenge, and resigned and started and launched Footprints on the Globe, with the main aim of spreading the word about the Global Goals, or the SDGs, whichever one you want to call them. And then, in the early stages of the journey, I applied and was accepted to become a Teach Sustainable Development Goals Ambassador.

And I just thought, right, this is it. This is the launch pad. And off I went, and so the business revolves around writing content that is through the SDG lens, or presenting to schools and businesses as to how they can embed or incorporate the Global Goals into their daily lives and how easy it is, and it's not an added thing. So that's it there in a very short snapshot.

Dominic Billings: Do you remember what it was specifically about the SDGs that acted as a catalyst for you at the time to spur you into being so inspired to take that journey you went on?

Annie Woollard: Yeah, I was at a professional development day. And it was a corporate one. And the guy who was running it said, "Does anyone know about the Global Goals?" So, this was 2016, so four years ago.

And I'd never heard of them, and only about a handful of people put their hands up. And he said, "Well, you've got to get on to those."

So, I went home, and I just searched them and just fell in love with them. Because I think the beautiful thing about goals is, they're something that we are all aiming for, and they're full of positivity and hope, because especially now in this scenario, we're all hoping for a better world. And I just strongly believe they are a true global curriculum. Doesn't matter which country, which state, where you are in the world - they are something that we can all follow. And they inspire you to act. And I think that's the trigger point too, that rather than just going "Oh yes, that's someone else's problem over there.", it's inspiring people, no matter what age or where you work, not just for schools to take action, and just every little step works towards achieving the Goals.

Dominic Billings: Is it fair to say that Footprints on the Globe came from that sentiment of little steps?

Annie Woollard: Yes, I came across that and I love walking on the beach, and that's sort of my thinking time, and I just thought "That's it". You know, it's little steps, it's not thinking that everything's so huge, because some of the Goals are enormous, and I do get that a lot. That people will say to me "How can a ten-year-old child work towards world poverty - Global Goal #1 - No poverty. And I think it must be that there has to be little steps, little steps, and if we all took little steps together, then it starts making action and making change. And that is the crucial thing, that there is a goal there for everybody. They are just such a beautiful collection of goals: 17 goals and 169 targets.

And there's something there for everyone, no matter what you're interested in. If you're interested in oceans and life below water, that's Global Goal #15. If you're interested in education, that's Global Goal #4, and there's something there for everyone. And to be inspired to follow them and act.

Dominic Billings: I'm curious, quite recently, I felt a little bit overwhelmed, just generally as it relates to both the SDGs and just in life in general, that I'm not great at breaking down goals into smaller steps. And as you mentioned, those 17 goals are broken down to 169 targets. Would you have said that was a principle that you carried through life up to that point, about breaking down huge tasks into something more manageable from your education background?

Annie Woollard: Probably didn't think of it as straightforward as that. But that probably is the way that I would operate and break things down when things seem too overwhelming to try and break them up into smaller bits. So, I like that correlation. I might use that one a bit more.

I'm from Melbourne, and in Melbourne, there are families struggling below the poverty line. So, we don't just say Global Goal #1 - No poverty, happening in Africa, in countries on the other side of the world. It's happening right on our back door. And to be aware of that, and to know that you can do little things, like donate to a food bank or donate to a charity or just be aware. Being aware is a crucial thing as well. And we are trying to create global citizens and our children of the future, whether they're 5, 15, or university students, are going to be the citizens of the world. And a true global citizen makes sure that they are treating everybody with respect, and they follow a belief that people can bring change.

Dominic Billings: I'm curious, I know you've been mentioning the importance of global citizenry, but also in the same breath, mentioning being from Melbourne, which I find to be an interesting city, in that it can be quite parochial, but at the same time, very outward-looking. In the sense where it's the home of Lonely Planet, for instance, but at the same time, it's also a place which can be as inward-looking inward as outward-looking. Do you know what it was, that led you to take that global mindset, in contrast to a more "charity begins at home" mindset?

Annie Woollard: I do strongly believe that charity begins at home, but I also started connecting with global educators. And I was teaching in a private school in Melbourne, and that was the epicentre of my world. And you step out of there, and you say, "Well, that's just a large school, but a school in a suburb of Melbourne, in a city in Australia", and you sort of do that zooming out thing, and then connecting with global projects, with other educators around the world, who are all working towards the Global Goals. And I thought, every single teacher teaching their schools thinks that that is their little world, and to branch out further, and to show your children that you're teaching that you can branch out further and connect with classes across the globe is a wonderful thing as well.

Dominic Billings: How have you felt that educators have found incorporating the SDGs into their teaching and into their curriculum?

Annie Woollard: Well, now, educators are just trying to keep their heads above water with the trauma of remote learning, and things go smoothly, and then they don't go smoothly. I do find the curriculum, no matter which country you're in, is so full, and there's always lots of things added into it and not many things taken out. So that is one of the concerns that I get asked: How can I put another thing in? They don't have time. They don't have the space in the curriculum to put another so-called subject in but the beautiful thing about the Global Goals is that they just integrate beautifully. They're not an add-on. They're just something that sort of sits like a filter across the top of every lesson that you do.

So, for example, I always ask that every teacher that gets involved with the Global Goals has them on display in their room so they're very, very visible. They're very, very, there in children's eye level so they can see them. And then anything that you did, if it was a literacy activity, you connect it to one of the Goals. What was the focus? What were you writing about? What we are reading about? Which Goal could this connect to? And it's amazing once you start that, you just sort of see connections everywhere, even mathematical subjects can fit into data and graphing and geography and all sorts of things. So, you just have to find the true connection there.

Dominic Billings: I noticed from looking at your website, Annie, Footprints on the Globe seems to have somewhat of a mantra of "Think, feel, act". Where did that emanate from?

Annie Woollard: I think a lot of companies have the 'inspire', 'educate' - big words, and I wanted to try and make it simple, and to have three steps.

We 'think', so you gain an understanding of global issue. And this is also for businesses as well, not just for children. But we simplified that we 'think', and then we 'feel', which means value diversity and learn empathy and compassion.

And then once you learn empathy and cultural diversity, then you're encouraged to take 'action', which is the act path, and you're encouraged to invent, innovate, and campaign for change.

So, it's like a three-step thing. It's not isolated - you learn, then you 'feel' something about what's going on in the world, whether it's endangered animals, whether it's girls not being able to go to school, whether it's ocean conservation, whether it's sustainable cities, you 'feel' something, you 'feel' some sort of connection and then show how you're going to slightly help this in some shape or form.

Dominic Billings: Would you say that action in the past has come naturally to you? Somebody once said to me that empathy is different from compassion and that empathy occurs inside, but compassion is acting on empathy. Would you have said you've always been able to act on your beliefs, Annie?

Annie Woollard: I hope that I have been able to. I mean, I suppose we try to walk the talk or and show that we are doing everything that we can do. And I mean, I was trying to get involved with community projects and community things and involved in the local climate action group where I'm living now. And I think being engaged is the most important thing too, to be engaged with what's happening around you. It's all very easy for everyone to just to live in their own little bubble. And I think the coronavirus has shown how we are all connected and what happens on one side of the world will domino effect to all of us and vice versa. And it's the true time to make sure that we are being aware of what's happening and in an optimistic way. It's not doom and gloom and we're very conscious of that as well especially with children and living in Australia with things that have happened this year from the bushfires through to COVID and lockdown and especially in Melbourne and Victoria. But I think you must be looking forward to the sunshine on the other side. It's the first day of spring today, so that's always exciting. And knowing that there is a way out and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And I think these Global Goals sort of shine that way through.

Dominic Billings: You mentioned the Teach SDGs program. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about that, in your role as Ambassador for that organisation

Annie Woollard: Started by a fabulous collection of global educators and Jen Williams is one of the main driving forces behind that and she's a global educator that I admire greatly. It's an advocacy for the SDGs.

So, to get involved with that means that you sort of take a pledge that you're going to try and incorporate them as much as you can in your classroom, school curriculum. And then to spread the word about them. So, you apply for it, showing that you're doing things with the Global Goals in whatever field of your education expertise, but the connections with global educators, that's just been the amazing thing. And got into Twitter, which I was never on before and I was sort of like "I don't know another social", but that is just an amazing collaboration of global educators and what they're doing and sharing resources and sharing ideas and all working together, I suppose.

Dominic Billings: And you've been one of the facilitators on the Goals Project as well.

Annie Woollard: Yeah, well, there's a couple of global projects that I get involved with and these are run by Jen Williams and Koen Timmers. The Goals Project was uniting classrooms all around the world to look at the essential idea or the essential question was what type of world would you like to create? And the concept was that everyone looked at their self and then local or community, national or global and then actually into looking further, looking into the universe. As a facilitator, I think I had 16 classrooms from all around the world. There was one in India, there are a couple in the US. I had one in Russia, one in Greece, and you sort of work with those 16 class classrooms and worked through the questions and they uploaded their project ideas of how to solve that particular question, all based on a Global Goal. So that was a fantastic one.

The Climate Action Project is coming up in September. And that's working together to find solutions for climate change and ideas. Global education is an amazing force and educators working together and sharing the ideas is fabulous.

Dominic Billings: I mentioned at the at the start of the show of how inspired I found the resources that you'd gathered together in one place in your work, Annie, and one that particularly stood out to me, which I wasn't familiar with up to then was the World's Largest Lesson run by UNICEF and UNESCO. Is it fair to say you've drawn on that for teaching resources quite a bit?

Annie Woollard: Yeah, yeah. They are fantastic. I need to put more resources on my web page - that is on my to-do list. But World's Largest Lesson just combine everything they can about Global Goals and it's my go-to place.

So well worth getting involved in that. There are things for junior school students. So, they've just released a whole program on Explorer series, which is aimed at 4-to-8-year old’s explaining what the Goals are all about with characters and lesson plans for teachers and activities for parents, and then there are resources and comics and books and videos all to do with the Global Goals. Everything's connected to one Global Goal. So, if you don't know where to start, if you're sort of thinking it's all too big, that's a great place to just kick off, with some videos, beautifully done things, and it's just a central go-to. So that's my number one tip for that.

Dominic Billings: I really liked how you earlier you phrased the work that you, and the Global Goals education agenda, as the global curriculum. Would all individual teachers have strong feelings about the curriculum themselves? I think to myself, when I was going through primary and secondary school, I would have loved to have had a curriculum that was entirely guided by being a global citizen. Is it fair to say quite teachers would have strong feelings about the curriculum in general?

Annie Woollard: Absolutely. They still have their hands tied by which curriculum they're going to follow. So, the Australian curriculum or the US curriculum or the Indian curriculum, whichever country are in. You have to make sure it's not just a ticking-off episode. But with the Global Goals that is one of my catchphrases that they are the global curriculum, because then they can be adapted to any country or curriculum. So if I'm writing content or writing resources for a particular subject or a particular company that want educator resources, I don't try and put the Australian curriculum in them because if you want them to be truly global, you want educators from Canada to pick them up, and then they can match them to their own curriculum.

So you want educators from all around the world to say, I want these resources because they're connected to the Global Goals, and then I'll figure out how they're going to connect to my own curriculum, whichever country I'm in.

Dominic Billings: Is your ideal for Footsteps on the Globe as an organisation to operate internationally, if you could get people to take up the workshops and professional development, to do so?

Annie Woollard: Oh, that would be wonderful. I've done a couple of international things. Two weeks ago, through my connections with Koen Timmers, I taught in Tanzania, which was cool. So that was one Saturday night, my time here, and we did an introductory lesson to the Global Goals.

So, there are some international things that are happening. And, you know, there are other global conferences that I've spoken at on virtually.

And I think as time goes on, word gets out. And I mean, there's a lot of educators out there, but I think it would be a fabulous idea.

Dominic Billings

When you started the consultancy...How long did you say...it was in 2016 that you started?

Annie Woollard: No, no, I started 2019 February.

Dominic Billings: Did it feel like quite a brave step at the time?

Annie Woollard: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because it was an idea and I knew that there was space for it. And I knew that there was lots of interest in it, but it was still an idea.

And the safe, easy option would have been to stay where I was and keep teaching and keep working on that way.

And sometimes like any small business, you question your decisions, but it's been fantastic. I love what I do.

You know, there are highs and lows in running your own small business, but it's just growing and growing. And I think lots of potential there.

Dominic Billings: What about the kids? How have the kids taken up the materials and the workshops?

Annie Woollard: Good, really, good. And you know, the children are amazing. They are fabulous that they'll try anything new. Trying to get through to all the educators that I work with. Some are still concerned that it's another added thing. But I'm also doing workshops and helping businesses as well - how they can incorporate the Global Goals. Because when I started, which was only 18 months ago last year, there would be people that would say to me, "I've never heard of them - never heard of the Global Goals."

And that to me was just staggering. So, I love when I find someone else who's another advocate for them and knows about them. Because that amazes me, that there's so many things going on, even in your local community, and I think "Gosh, that should have a Global Goals sticker on it", showing people that they're recycling. "Hey, that's #12 that you're working towards.

And I'd love to have that recognition of everything that people are doing. And that is the crucial thing, whether you're in school, whether they're in your business, there's so many things that people are already doing towards the Global Goals. They're just not aware of it. That's one of the things I do in my workshops is put all the Goals up on the white butcher paper and get people to go around and write down what they're already doing.

And the list that we get, just from that half an hour exercise, from doing food drives at Christmas to helping a charity to having a compost to having a veggie garden to involving themselves in a community project.

You can go along, and you can say, "Look, you're working towards nearly something in every one of these Goals." And that gives them a great "Okay, so it's not that hard." So, you look at what they're already doing now. And then "Wow, isn't that fantastic?" Rejoice in that, and then let's look forward to what we can do in the future.

Dominic Billings: Annie, there's one more platform, I thought was quite cool in going through your work, which was Belouga, which I wasn't familiar with before getting in touch with you and The Pursuit of Happiness series. What was your background doing that that series for Belouga?

Annie Woollard: Belouga is an educational platform. They call it sort of the Netflix of education, which is all these wonderful, wonderful resources that companies, or teachers or educators have designed and put up on their website. But the beautiful thing is everything is connected to a Global Goal. So, it's not connected to the US curriculum. So, you search by Global Goal and you search what age group and which Goal you're interested in, and then a whole heap of resources will come up that you can then use. It's very visual too so there's a lot of imagery in little clips. And I just had one series that I put up there called 'The Pursuit of Happiness'. I thought it was timely - a resource to create and put up they're all about children's mental health and what is happiness and what makes you happy?

So, while there's simple questions, there's sort of complex thinking processes that go through and analysing and thinking "Well, what does make me happy, and what can I do to make me happier?" So that was one. I've got lots of other plans to put up there but that was one that I put up there just recently

Dominic Billings: Finally, Annie depending on your answer it will be optimistic or pessimistic ending: 18 months in, how have you found making the SDGs so central to your work and your life. As I mentioned at the top of the show, it can seem sometimes, like not many people would know about them and that's what's so wonderful about what you're doing. Have you found the whole process encouraging or discouraging and fulfilling?

Annie Woollard: I found it really, encouraging, and full of promise and full of hope. When COVID hit, and I thought "I might have to change direction here", and I don't want to use that P-word that everyone else is using.

Because at that time there were so many educational resources out there and everyone was sharing the love with "free this" and "free that" and I thought, "Well, that doesn't really help me if I'm creating content but no one's going to want it if everyone's sharing the love with their free stuff" - which is fabulous, don't get me wrong. But then, switching more to businesses, and they're really starting to get involved; councils starting to get involved with Global Goals. And it's like this little bubbling, simmering, little pot that people are seeking me out. I've had quite a few companies reach out through LinkedIn or via Twitter.

And just say "I'd really like to have a chat." It all starts slowly, slowly. But it is full of optimism and it is full of hope. And there are lots of things that are so exciting about the Global Goals and working together and getting businesses involved as well is the crucial thing. It's not just something for the young. We're trying to achieve them by 2030, which there are a lot of articles around now about have we gone backwards because of COVID? But I don't think so, goals are wonderful optimistic things that we work towards, we strive towards. And so, having these 17 Global Goals as a global cohort of everyone on the planet working towards is fabulous.

Dominic Billings: Thank you so much for speaking with me today. Annie, I really feel as you said like these are the goals that kind of the whole globe is directed toward and you're obviously making that clearer to everybody to inevitably move toward those goals. So, I feel like you're doing amazing work in doing so.

Annie Woollard: Thank you, I'd say to everyone who's slightly interested, jump on board, dip your little toe in, find interesting things on Twitter or Instagram.

Just search up Global Goals, find something that resonates with you, something that you find is interesting, and then dive right in.

Dominic Billings: Finally, if educators would like to engage Footprints on the Globe for either professional development sessions or workshops with students, they can do so on footprintsontheglobe.com.au and there'll be more details of Footprints on the Globe and everything we've discussed in the show notes for the pod.

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