Focused on the Wrong Nature

To track progress toward reaching MDG-7 on environmental sustainability, the MDG framework establishes three global targets and eight global indicators. Unfortunately, these targets and indicators fail to capture the aspects of the environment that exert the most powerful impacts on the lives of the poor or that show the most promise for ending extreme poverty.

Target 9, the first of the three MDG environmental targets, calls for countries to “integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources.” Accompanying this rather vague, general statement are five quantitative indicators. (See Table 2.) One of these (Indicator 29: Proportion of population using solid fuels) is directly relevant to how the poor use the environment. But the other Target 9 indicators fail to shed much light on aspects of environmental sustainability that matter most to the poor. Instead, some of the current indicators track issues of global environmental concern, such as per capita carbon dioxide emissions and consumption of ozone-depleting chemicals. Others touch on issues of importance to the poor, such as land area covered by forests and land area set aside to protect biodiversity, but do not measure directly the ability of the poor to access key ecosystems as a source of environmental income and sustainable livelihoods or to protect the ecosystems on which they depend from depredation and damage by outside interests and powerful elites.

Targets 10 and 11, the second and third MDG environmental targets, commit nations to “halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation” and to “have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.” These targets and their accompanying indicators are more directly propoor, but they too fall short when it comes to establishing broad markers for progress based on an explicit recognition of ecosystem integrity as the touchstone for sustainability. For instance, under Target 10, countries should focus not just on the numbers of people hooked up to water and sanitation services, but also on the need for integrated water resource planning and policies that take account of a wide range of other considerations. These include water demand, water supply, and water quality issues, as well as water-project impacts on other community objectives and on environmental management goals. Other suitable indicators could focus on governance issues that relate to the poor’s access to water, such as the reliability of water service or the pricing of water service relative to income.

At the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the international community created additional targets related to environmental sustainability, sometimes referred to as “MDG-Plus” targets. (See Table 3.) These targets specifically incorporate pro-poor elements related to sustainable management and use of ecosystems, such as application of the ecosystem approach in conserving biodiversity as well as maintaining or restoring fish stocks to levels that can support sustainable yields.

Realizing that the MDG targets were broad in their outlines, the MDG framers encouraged countries to modify the global MDG-7 targets to suit their local conditions, as well as to establish new, country-specific targets and indicators. A recent UNDP review shows that about half the 100 reporting countries have set one or more MDG-7 targets that modify or add to the global targets (UNDP 2005a:3). For example, several nations have set specific goals for maintaining or increasing forest cover, or expanding the network of protected areas for biodiversity conservation.

But despite these worthy efforts, countries are not, for the most part, paying sufficient attention to developing and reporting on a broad set of targets and indicators that would accurately gauge their progress toward the goal of MDG-7 of ensuring environmental sustainability. UNDP’s analysis of MDG-7 implementation suggests that environmental monitoring and reporting are not being undertaken systematically. Lack of available data is a significant constraint for some countries. But at the same time, many countries have not drawn on existing data from other environment-related efforts, such as National Strategies for Sustainable Development, State of the Environment Reports, and National Biodiversity Action Plans (UNDP 2005b:5).