SDG4, the other SDGs, and the need for (societal) transformation

• In Event: Counter Hegemonic Struggles

Proposal

We are at the halfway point to the 2030 goal post of the SDGs. This paper is an assessment of how things stand, why they are this way, and what can be done about it. In my view, unfortunately, things are dismal! SDG4 is one of a long line of broken promises that were made by the international community since the 1960s. Even the most basic goal – universal primary education (UPE) – has repeatedly been promised and never fulfilled. UPE is now part of the first target in SDG4 and judging by current progress might not be achieved until the end of this century! Universal Secondary Education, also a target, is even more distant.

A major proximal cause of this failure is the failure to finance SDG4. A few years back, UNESCO estimated that the shortfall between what developing countries could provide and what was needed was $39 billion/year. An updated estimate says the gap between now and 2030 is $97 billion/year. And this is an underestimate. It does not include attaining all the SDG4 targets and it probably underestimates the costs of included targets, e.g., not including the cash transfers/scholarships that would be needed to enable disadvantaged children to attend school.

Various solutions have been offered, but none are promising at the moment. UNESCO’s GEM group looked at closing the gap by increasing the resources going to ODA from its current .35% of global GDP to the long targeted .7%, as well as targeting more of that money to education. But that only closed the financial gap by one-third. Much current effort is directed to increasing what is called domestic resource mobilization (DRM, a euphemism for taxation) in developing countries. But increasing ODA and national taxation and doing so substantially has not been forthcoming.

Moreover, it doesn’t make sense to focus on how to achieve SDG4 without considering where we are on all the SDGs. The barriers to SDG4 are part of the barriers to attaining all the SDGs.
This financing gap is, of course, much bigger when we look at what it will take to achieve all 17 SDGs. Estimates of this gap are very imprecise – and depend how you operationalize each SDG – but fall in the $1 trillion to $4 trillion/year.

In terms of the type of research outlined in the call for papers, my study would be classified as “conceptual/theoretical research.” It draws on a critical perspective to problematize SDG efforts, examines why these efforts are not likely to be successful, and considers what kind of transformations are necessary to make progress. It meets the criteria for a CIES paper contribution as follows:

RELEVANCE: SDG4 underlies many policy efforts to improve international education and all the SDGs are the major touchstone of conventional efforts in international “development.”

THEORY/CONTEXT: This study does not elaborate a theoretical framework but will rely on strong contextualization, as begun above, to understand the role and possibilities for the SDGs within structures of patriarchal racial capitalism.

INQUIRY: A critical analysis of the SDGs will elaborate how, despite good intentions, they are not a serious effort, basically being a form of compensatory legitimation that promises much more than it will deliver.

FINDINGS: I believe the argument above is clear and coherent.

CONTRIBUTION: We desperately need to re-examine the dominant approach to education and development policy and progress. This paper is meant to be a contribution to that effort.

Author

• Steven Klees, University of Maryland