NIGERIA NEEDS TO SCORE MORE ON SDGs AND HDI

 ADEREMI MEDUPIN

Backdrop

On Thursday- July 28, 2022, the United Nations Secretariat shared the news of the day, that: “the General Assembly adopted a historic resolution declaring access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, a universal human right”. The significance of this resolution-in anticipation of its full implementation by member nations including Nigeria-can be seen in the fact that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution is the largest cause of disease and premature death in the world, with more than seven million people dying prematurely each year due to pollution. The resolution is also significant given its direct link with the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the General Assembly in 2015 as well as the Human Development Index (HDI) earlier instituted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1990.

The SDGs

We recall that the SDGs were developed at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in 2012- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The purpose was to create a set of global goals, related with the environmental, political and economic challenges that humanity as a collective face. The Goals are 17 in number and agreed upon to serve with effect from January 1, 2016 as the overarching guide to signatory nations up to the year 2030, thereby replacing the preceding Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that spanned 2000-2015. As a successor to the erstwhile popular MDGs, the SDGs were adopted to guide socio-economic management during the period 2016-2030.  The agreed Goals resulted from the work of the United Nations Open Working Group (OWG) that was mandated by the UN to develop a post-2015 development agenda which must be all-inclusive—in the sense that everyone has a stake and a role to play.

The 17 Goals

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere [No Poverty]

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture [Zero Hunger]

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages [Good health and Well-being

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all [Quality Education]

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls [Gender Equality]

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all [Clean Water and sanitation]

Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all [Affordable and Clean Energy]

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all [Decent Work and Economic Growth]

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation [Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure]

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries [Reduced Inequality]

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable [Sustainable Cities and Communities]

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns [Responsible Consumption and Production]

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts [Climate Action]

Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development [Life below Water]

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss [Life on Land]

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels [Peace and Justice Strong Institutions]

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development [Partnership to achieve the Goals]

In the optimistic words of Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator, in January 2015: “World leaders have an unprecedented opportunity . . .  to shift the world onto a path of inclusive, sustainable and resilient development". Emphasis is on sustainability of development initiatives that must accord fidelity to the three pillars upon which the SDGs rest.

Essence and importance of Sustainability

On the blog, esgthereport.com, a directly relevant question posed, is: “What are the Three Pillars of Sustainability?” The response provided is even more relevant due to its correctness and clarity, which is that:

At the heart of sustainability, there are three pillars: environmental, social and economic. The environmental pillar emphasizes reducing our impact on nature. The social pillar focuses on improving equity by empowering individuals and communities. The economic pillar promotes innovation. For a company or country to be truly sustainable all three pillars must be working together within their value systems

Speaking at the London School of Economics in 2002, the then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan stated, “The whole idea of sustainable development… is that environment and development are inextricably linked.” This perspective is echoed by Professor Jeffry D. Sachs of Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York,-in his piece: “From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals”, as he recalled how “the idea of the SDGs quickly gained ground because of the growing urgency of sustainable development for the entire world. Although specific definitions vary, sustainable development embraces the so-called triple bottom line approach to human wellbeing. Almost all the world’s societies acknowledge that they aim for a combination of economic development, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion”. That, in apt summary, is the essence of sustainable development to be realized through the enunciated 17 Goals. As indicated earlier, a global agenda of development paradigm preceded the SDGs, namely: HDI.

The HDI

For a long time, across most economies of the world, progress was measured primarily in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). The limitation of this measure can be appreciated especially against the backdrop of the reality of grossly uneven income distribution and mindless assault on the environment even as accelerated growth was being recorded. Thus it came to collective realization that a country’s GDP may be rising whereas the condition of living of the inhabitants may not improve and for most members may actually even be worsening as instances of oil spillage in producing regions came into shared consciousness and consideration. This was how the idea of Human Development Index (HDI) was adopted, developed and applied by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1990 initially through the hands of a Pakistani economist, Mahbub ul Haq.

The HDI is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human life, created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country not economic growth alone as captured in the GDP or GNP measurement. The dimensions of human life covered by HDI are:

1. A long and healthy life- assessed by life expectancy at birth;
2. Being knowledgeable-measured by average years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and above as well as expected years of schooling for children of school entering age; and

• Having a decent standard of living-measured by gross national income per capita.

From the above, we see that HDI uses two types of social data-embracing health and education (ref i & ii) - and one type of economic data (ref iii). The logic is that, a country with a very high life expectancy will score +1 and a country with a low score will be close to 0. The same is done for the two other measures and a final rank order is achieved. As explained by the UNDP, “the scores for the three HDI dimension indices are then aggregated into a composite index using geometric mean.” It needs to be noted that whereas the HDI measure was designed to overcome obvious limitations of GDP as a development index, it still did not really capture issues of income inequality, poverty, insecurity or gender disparity. At the same time, however, its superiority must be acknowledged to the extent that it incorporated some social measures of development for calculating the overall development of a nation. In laying out the rationale for its HDI paradigm, the UNDP recalled how,

During the second half of the 20^th Century, there were growing concerns about ‘the tyranny of gross domestic product’-in the belief that economic growth and well-being are synonymous. This belief was shattered by a statement in a speech delivered by Bobby Kennedy to the effect that GDP ‘measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile’”.

 Meanwhile, the HDI measure has gained popularity with its simple yet relatively comprehensive formula. As hinted, the inadequacy of the measure must still be reckoned with and addressed. This is why over the years, there has been a growing interest in more comprehensive set of measurements that capture other critical dimensions of human development. Other complementary measurements to the HDI that have been suggested are aimed at capturing in particular issues of poverty, inequality and gender gaps. This is what in 2010 led to the adoption and publication of ‘inequality adjusted HDI’, “which adjusts a nation’s HDI value for inequality in each of its components under (i)-(iii) above. Ditto is done to address the issues of poverty gender disparity and their due reflection in the composite HDI.

Nigeria’s Performance so far on the field

Our next logical step is to ascertain how Nigeria has performed on the two globally accepted development frameworks of SDGs and HDI respectively.

On the SDGs front, in the 2019 SDG index, Nigeria ranked 159^th among 162 countries compared in terms of their achievement of the SDGs. Nigeria’s performance score of 46.6 is just a little above the score for the Central African Republic which is at the lowest rung of the index;  in 2020, Nigeria was ranked 160^th. This explains why an online platform, Dataphyte, after examining the relevant data, posed the question: “Can SDGs be achieved in Nigeria before 2030?” Its understandably cautious answer to the question is: “Not likely”.

Coming to the Human Development Index, the country’s score as at 2019 stood at 0.539 which indicates a low ranking of 161 out of 189 countries and territories covered. Incidentally, available data shows that between 2005 and 2019, Nigeria’s HDI value increased from 0.465 to the 0.539 figure for 2019; these are contained in the 2020 Human Development Report. The UNDP has displayed the statistics on Nigeria’s HDI for selected years between 1990 and 2019:

On  a comparative basis, UNDP noted that Nigeria’s 2019 index of 0.539 was above the average  of 0.513 for countries in the low human development group and below the average of 0.547 for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (emphasis added-AM) and that is precisely where the challenge for Nigeria registers.

The Challenges

United Nations Reports as well as publications by Nigerian scholars and policy analysts have identified major challenges that can hinder Nigeria from performing optimally on the SDGs and HDI, among them the following:

• Poor funding of education;
• Large pool of out-of-school children
• Poor utilization of budgetary allocations to respective sectors of the economy underpinned by weak accountability mechanisms fueled by corruption;
• Infrastructure constraints spanning power, roads, rail and more recently air, modes of transportation; and
• Absence of requisite political will at the top of the political hierarchy.

What’s to be Done?

Even just from the Report of Nigeria’s National Peer Review of 2020, there are substantial and cogent comments and recommendations on the way towards enhancing the nation’s performance on the SDGs and HDI. The following are extracted pointers with some additions-all of them fairly obvious:

• There must be more investment in public health to ensure the most vulnerable are reached through universal access to essential services.
• With a population of approximately 200 million people, regional disparities are significant. with 78% of the South-Western children able to read full or part sentences, while only 17% of the North-Eastern children can. With only 1.6% of GDP devoted to education, the country needs to increase resources to provide quality education.
• Nigeria’s informal economy is one of the largest on the continent-estimated at 53% of the labour force and accounting for 65% of GDP. It is estimated that 75% of all new jobs are informal-with the youth in dominance; hence the need to build the required skills for them to move into secure and less precarious forms of employment that would ultimately help reduce poverty while promoting the diversification of the economy through digitization and subsequent reduced dependence on oil and gas.
• Nigeria should strengthen the evidence-based planning and accountability mechanisms at the State level for accelerating performance on SDGs and HDI.

Concluding Note

Even though we are mindful of the limitation of invoking numbers to assess development, the SDGs and HDI provide objective measures which can be monitored for helping in decision-making as to whether we are progressing or retrogressing on these key platforms.