At its upcoming summit, the United Nations is soon due to replace its ambitious Millennium Development Goals with a new set of far more extensive and even more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals. However, the U.N.’s approach suffers from some major flaws. The world body sets some grand and vague targets, yet offers no practical way to achieve them.
Instead, the world should adopt strategies that have proven to deliver a healthier, greener, and more prosperous planet—strategies that also improve the resiliency of communities to whatever nature throws at them.
The U.N.’s approach is more wishful thinking than strategy. In addition to simply announcing a slew of targets that are unlikely to prove achievable, the U.N.’s approach emphasizes “sustainability,” a concept favored by development bureaucrats and NGOs, that imposes significant burdens on developing countries’ ability to achieve rapid increases in human welfare—which were the target of the original Millennium goals.
The U.N. also ignores the lessons provided by successful once-developing economies that have achieved developed status. Hong Kong and Singapore each followed a proven path to prosperity based on principles that have significantly increased the resiliency of their economies and people.
That is why a new paper I authored for the Competitive Enterprise Institute suggests that developing world economies should follow a different track than that proposed by the U.N. I recommend five realistic goals to pursue:
‐Secure Property Rights. Markets are the source of wealth and prosperity. They are impossible without security in property rights. Governments should make it a top priority to ensure that property rights are recognized and respected. The Arab Spring began because small businessmen were constantly having their merchandise and tools of their trade expropriated by government officials. Land titling is one important means of securing these rights. Common property rights should also be officially recognized and reformed. New technologies such as the Blockchain, the technology that makes digital currencies possible, can help to secure these rights.
‐Secure the Rule of Law. The rule of law reduces the possibility of arbitrary actions by governments that can place huge strains on a nation’s economy and its citizens’ human dignity. Improvements in the rule of law can empower the disadvantaged, help unleash entrepreneurial spirits, and reduce corruption. Technology can help deliver this goal, as recent e-governance projects in India show. Finally, charter cities can help deliver a “new start” to governance in countries with weak state institutions.
‐Ensure Access to Affordable Energy. Affordable energy is key to unleashing human potential, but the U.N.’s emphasis on sustainability perversely increases energy costs. Increased energy costs are an especially severe problem for the poor, who spend a larger share of their income on necessities like energy, along with shelter, food, and medicines. Thankfully, technological innovation in fossil fuel extraction has recently reduced energy costs, while reducing emissions in the developed world. These technologies can enable developing countries to develop their own energy sectors, making energy more affordable and plentiful to their citizens. Renewable energy can play a limited role in developing nations’ energy mix, but investments in advanced traditional energy can deliver much greater benefits and more quickly.
‐Ensure Access to Capital and Credit. Access to capital is crucial to unleashing “the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.” Credit allows those who have capital to share it with those who do not, to mutual advantage. Land titling process can help people access once-dormant capital. Microsavings, microinsurance, and microloans are made possible and more accessible by modern communication technology, which lowers transaction costs to unprecedentedly low levels. By some estimates, there is an economy of at least $13 trillion locked up that just needs to be freed up to allow it to benefit its owners.
‐Allow Markets in Education. The U.N. wants developing countries to provide free universal education. Yet, recent research shows that low-cost private education is available in many parts of the developing world, and that its quality outstrips that of supposedly free government schools. Moreover, these schools are helping to achieve gender equity, and are just cost-effective and financially sustainable. They are accountable to parents, and parents generally prefer them even when cost is taken into account. Concerns about affordability are unfounded.
Pursuing these five coherent, realistic goals will help us build a much stronger, prosperous, more resilient planet than the bundle of often contradictory targets advanced by the United Nations and other “sustainability” advocates.
The best way to achieve human health and flourishing is through policies that build a resilient and truly healthy society in the process, by empowering people rather than bureaucrats.