Sustainable Development Goals in fragile countries ( Afghanistan as an example)

The United Nations resolution adopting the 2030 Agenda, called SDGs “integrated, indivisible, global in nature and universally applicable”?(UNGA 2015). A significant number studies have since focused on bringing to light these interlinkages and interdependencies to enable national policymakers in integrating and contextualizing the 2030 Agenda in their national plans and policies.??

Among this community of researchers on SDGs interlinkages, Le Blanc was perhaps the first to use social network analysis to identify interlinkages of the global SDG targets?(Blanc 2015). He saw SDGs “as a network of targets” and mapped the interdependencies among targets using a systemic approach?(Blanc 2015). He showed how targets were connected to their own goal and to other SDG targets. For example, SDG 12 on responsible consumption and production was connected to at least 14 other SDGs?(Blanc 2015). However, Le Blanc’s paper was bent on demonstrating that the SDGs were far more interconnected compared to Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) and required integrated policy solutions at the national level. Put differently, many of the interlinkages mapped were relevant to global SDG targets with lesser practical implication for integrating SDGs into national policymaking or priority setting.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) developed and used a methodology that treated SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation) as the cobweb of the other 16 SDGs?(UNESCAP 2017). This methodological framework further assessed causal relationships between two or more targets and analyzed the nature of these interactions. For example, it assessed whether the causal relationship was direct, indirect or otherwise?(UNESCAP 2017). It found SDG 6.3 to have the highest number of causal relationships to other targets. ESCAP used social network analysis techniques to conduct this study. While practical for policies focused on SDG 6, it does not, however, account for numerous causal relationships that exist among the rest of SDG targets.

The Millennium Institute offers by far the most comprehensive integrated model for policy interventions on SDGs. While expanding and further developing its Threshold 21 system dynamics model, the Institute developed a comprehensive scenario simulation model?(Millennium Institute 2019). This model is the first comprehensive integrated approach allowing policymakers to gauge various policy options and interventions. It also has an in-built tool for assessing co-benefits and identifying conflicting relationships between two or more targets?(Millennium Institute 2019). However, the utilization of such an integrated modelling approach in a fragile context requires sufficient investment on systems thinking as well as building the necessary capacity to run integrative modelling simulations in each of the A-SDG custodian agency in Afghanistan.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a report entitled “Better Policies for Sustainable Development 2016: A New Framework for Policy Coherence”?(OECD 2016). It introduces different frameworks that can help with policy coherence for SDGs. For example, its first component (the analytical framework) focuses on interactions and interlinkages among different SDG targets as a starting point for policy coherence?(OECD 2016). While bringing to light the nature of various relationships that exist between SDG targets, the report rightly argues that those sets of targets with the highest out-degree causal relationships would need to be prioritized because of their capacity to set off chain reactions across the whole of the 2030 agenda.?

Another study also uses a similar approach. It argues that many of the SDG targets are interconnected and policy solutions must take into account these intrinsic relationships as an entry point to maximize the impact of interventions (Boas, Biermann and Kanie 2016). This approach is called a nexus approach and primarily helps in undertaking a cross-sectoral integration of SDGs.

Even before the SDGs were adopted in 2015 as an agenda for sustainability transformation, a group?of scholars from the German Council for Sustainable Development looked into how sustainable development could be integrated through identifying interlinkages and interdependencies?(Cutter, et al. 2015). They clustered integration attempts at three different levels: (1) a systemic, holistic, system-based approach; (2) the balancing of the three dimensions of sustainable development; (3) the use of interlinkages for better and policymaking?(Cutter, et al. 2015).

Expanding on these integrated approaches, Nilsson and his colleagues developed a framework to gauge and distinguish the nature of various interactions that exist among the SDG targets?(Nilsson 2016). These authors clustered the interlinkages to seven possible types: indivisible, reinforcing, enabling, consistent, constraining, counteracting and cancelling. These seven types of interactions were then ranged on a seven-point scale from +3 to -3. This framework was much more practical to SDG priority setting in fragile contexts as it offered an approach that could be utilized without deploying complex modeling tools.

In Afghanistan, this framework, together with a cross-impact matrix that was proposed by World Bank research paper on SDG prioritization?(El-Maghrabi, I.Osorio and J.Verbeek 2018), constituted one of the main criterion for systemic impact analysis. MoEc also reviewed and used, as part of this integrated criteria, the framework developed by another group of scholars on distinguishing SDG targets’ interactions?(Weitz, et al. 2018). Later, the MoEc adopted a multi-criteria analysis framework that included a baseline assessment and a policy gap analysis. This integrated approach heavily drawn on the work of Cameron Allen and his colleagues, who proposed a much more integrated approach called “a multi-criteria analysis decision framework”?(Allen, Wiedmann and Metternicht 2018)

The starting point for measuring and reporting progress on Afghanistan Sustainable Development Goals (ASDGs) is knowing what the country’s national development priorities are, and to what extent are they aligned with Afghanistan’s commitment to the 2030 Agenda. Obtaining this understanding was the main objective behind the exercise to align Afghanistan’s National Priority Programs (NPPs) with ASDGs. Work started after the senior leadership of the Ministries of Finance and Economy established a task force consisted of representatives from both ministries and the UNDP support project.?Building on a Rapid Integrated Assessment (RIA) carried out with the technical support of UNDP in June 2018, the task force created a matrix, organized meetings with key stakeholders and aligned almost all the thematic areas of NPPs with the ASDGs.

The initial assumption was to go through the program documents for 10 NPPs, identify key program outcomes and align them to the most relevant ASDG targets. The results of this review were mixed. Many of the program documents did not have a results-framework or specific programmatic outcomes for relevant interventions as stated at the outset of each document. The task was further complicated after it was found out that a majority of the NPPs did not provide any sort of pathway or a common currency that could help in linking interventions with expected outcomes.

A clear grasp of each NPP was necessary for the team to integrate them into the ASDGs. Therefore, a number of meetings were held with the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, and the Ministry of Agriculture to better understand their NPPs. Many of the participants in these meetings confirmed that at least a number of the on-going programs were not aligned with their respective NPPs.?This points to the need for additional work to first align these projects with the NPPs and, later, for NPPs to inform and guide implementation of future interventions.

The Taskforce (TF) continued with the alignment of NPPs with ASDGs. Most of the thematic areas covered in the NPPs were aligned with their relevant ASDG targets. To measure progress on ASDGs, however, alignment with NPPs may not result in providing meaningful metrics. The TF recommends a new course of action—aligning key on-budget and off-budget programs with ASDGs and developing an integrated M&E framework.??

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The TF reviewed most of the themes, and, where possible, specific programmatic outcomes in 10 NPPs and compared them against the most relevant ASDG targets. First, we illustrated the alignment in percentage of each NPP across all the ASDGs. Second, we identified the thematic contribution of NPPs to each of the ASDG goals. Third, we aligned the relevant thematic areas of NPPs with the ASDG targets clustered in budgetary sectors: agriculture, health, education, economy, social protection, infrastructure, security and governance. In general, the 10 NPPs mostly covered ASDG goals 2, 16, 11, 5, 1, 8, 3, 4 and 9. It also partially covered ASDG goals 10, 6, and 17. Others could be considered with limited or no coverage at all.

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Figure 2. provides an overview of the ASDG targets with the NPP at SDGs goal level. Ending hunger (SDG2), good health and wellbeing (SDG3), clean and affordable energy (SDG7), innovation and industry (SDG9) and Sustainable cities (SDG11) are the goals well represented in the NPPs. On the other hand, sustainable production and consumption (SDG12), climate (SDG13) and life on land (SDG15) are the least aligned SDGs in the NPPs. Other SDGs such as poverty (SDG1), education (SDG4), gender equality (SDG5), water and sanitation (SDG6), job and economic growth (SDG8), justice, peace and inclusive societies (SDG16) and partnership for the goals (SDG17) are addressed in the NPPs to some extent.

Given that more than half of the population of Afghanistan live under the poverty line and 43% do not have food security and maternal and child mortality rate is significantly high, targets related to these areas are stressed to a good extent in the NPPs. On the other hand, consideration of targets and goals related to climate and disasters are notably missing in the NPPs. It is important for Afghanistan as a country prone to disasters and vulnerable to climate to consider targets related to these issues into national plans and strategies. Access to renewable energy and affordable houses, sustainable urbanization, transport, economic growth, full employment and income growth of the bottom 40% have been considerably emphasized in the existing NPPs. While some important aspects of the social protection such as child labor, violence against women and girls and returnees and IDPs are under-represented in the NPPs.?

Target 16.6 which is effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all level, which is one of the most influential targets of the SDGs with high leverage point, has been deducted from Afghanistan Sustainable Development Goals Targets and Indicators Framework. Development of strong and effective institutions has to be on top of every governments priority especially for Afghanistan which suffers from lack of it.

A large number of NPPs do not lay out in sufficiently clear and more certain terms how progress against each of several planned interventions will be measured—monitored and reported. None of the NPPs have a list of indicators or a reference framework that could be used as a guidance tool for the implementation of programs and projects. Thus, the first challenge makes it very difficult to mainstream on-going programs and projects into an NPP.

Discussions revealed that many on-budget programs are not integrated into the NPPs. Much of the planning, monitoring, and reporting actually seem to take place at the program and project level in an organization with no reference to NPPs. For government agencies, executing programs that they have designed at an agency level is much easier because they do not crisscross between several agencies and are backed up by a relatively common reporting mechanism.

The only NPP-led program that has an “operational manual” or anything close to a results framework is the first phase of Citizens’ Charter. But even this program works pretty much away from what is prescribed in the Citizens’ Charter NPP. For example, there are two lead agencies for implementing the Citizens’ Charters rural and urban components: Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance. But none of these two agencies implement any projects on “ending open defecation,” a key sub-component of the Citizens’ Charter NPP. There are separate M&E mechanisms for the urban and rural components of the Citizens’ Charter program in its current phase. The Citizens’ Charter program had to be fragmented into several components to allow for a single-agency-led project implementation approach.

Having said that, the need for NPPs to develop results frameworks, and how they will contribute, among other things, to alignment with the ASDGs and progress reporting, is subject to debate in favor of exploring this option in conjunction with others.?One reason being, in case of some NPPs, the stage they are in in terms of their implementation timeline since their development.

To measure progress on ASDGs, they have to be aligned with on-budget and off-budget programs currently being implemented.?The TF suggests stocktaking of ongoing programs that contribute to ASDG targets. This approach would allow a proper integration of these programs and projects into their relevant ASDG sectors. The only way for genuinely reporting progress on ASDG targets is to align them at this level. Most of these projects have an indicators framework and reporting mechanism that will greatly facilitate measuring progress on ASDG targets. Alignment with NPPs is unlikely to achieve the same results.

Some of the SDG goals and its indicators ended up with not being realistic or being a supply driven practice by the United Nations efforts and thus had no or little buy in by the government which resulted to the little or slow progress toward the set objectives.

The agenda such as SDGs can only be implemented if translated properly to the context of the country which could and should be in real context of the society and at the same time is a demand driven with more buy in by the government and stakeholders. Shall it not be the case, we will end up in being back to the square one as we are now in Afghanistan. No - discussion or progress on SDGs as if there has been never ever an SDG attempt in the country. Now there is no NPP nor any other national document that articulates the efforts which were strived toward the plan of action for 2030 agenda and seems Afghanistan need another decade to be on the same speed as the other countries and this replcates to a number of countries in the world which are in crisis.

The international aid agencies such as United Nations who are the costudian of such efforts should not let the efforts go aways in a single go, but ensure that all these are institutionalized in a way that when and as required it can start from where it has begin not from zero.

Plan of Action or SDGs are important for people, planet and proseprity.