Because hunger is increasing: Focus on top 19 SDG targets instead of thinly spreading funds among all 169

Three years have passed since world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with 169 targets that must be reached to transform the planet. We are one-fifth of our way towards 2030, but miles behind on achieving the lofty goals to reduce poverty, increase prosperity, protect the planet and advance peace.

There are worrying signs that the number of extremely poor people in the world – which has long been dropping – may stop falling and might even start rising. And after years of decline, hunger is increasing – with observers linking this to regional conflicts and climate change. Of most concern: the world’s development agenda, based around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is not fit for purpose.

The development agenda is flawed because it is the inevitable result of trying to be all things to all people. The highly successful Millennium Development Goals which preceded SDGs were short and sharp – and made a huge difference to global progress – yet were criticised for having been non-inclusive.

In response, the UN laudably invited a long list of players to create SDGs – but then failed to prioritise the Agenda to make it manageable and implementable.

Thus, vitally important targets – such as the eradication of all forms of malnutrition, and getting more boys and girls into school – are devalued by being placed on an equal footing with targets as peripheral and vague as promoting “sustainable tourism”, ensuring that people are informed about how to have “lifestyles in harmony with nature”, and creating more green spaces for “women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities”.

Faced with the impossibly long list, in three years only two countries – India and Germany – have made even a partial assessment of how much investment is required for the goals. The Agenda is woefully underfunded – one estimate shows $2.5 trillion more needed each year. Even if we spent all of the world’s development funding it would only get us 5% of the way. We really have to prioritise what we want first.

This was clear even when SDGs were being created. My thinktank, Copenhagen Consensus Center, analysed SDG targets in real time as they were drafted, and enlisted a panel of Nobel laureate economists to identify the most and least effective. Their findings make it clear what needs to be done. If we want to get out in front of increasing hunger, then we need to tackle the problem effectively.

Climate and peacekeeping policies are expensive and complex, and at best do very little to solve problems like hunger, even in relatively long time frames. Yet, cheap investments can be made in fixing micronutrient deficiencies in children, helping immensely and right now.

Investing an extra $8 billion annually in agricultural R&D would increase yields globally, generating more food at lower cost. It could save 79 million people from hunger and prevent 5 million cases of child malnourishment, with each dollar producing $35 of social benefits.

This has the added effect of helping the world’s poorest: the World Bank has found that productivity growth in agriculture can be up to four times more effective in reducing poverty than growth from other sectors.

Poverty has a simple solution: As in China, free trade can lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. Although Trump makes it harder, we have been dithering for much longer. We must revive the WTO’s Doha Round, which would lift 145 million people out of poverty by 2030. It could make the average person in the developing world $1,000 better off every year – allowing them to not only better feed themselves and their children, but also afford better health care, more education and lead more prosperous lives.

Improved agricultural yields and freer trade are two of 19 concrete, specific development targets that the Nobels identified to do the most, for every dollar invested, to help the world’s poorest, protect the environment, and improve billions of lives. Others include achieving universal access to contraception and family planning, ending tuberculosis by 2030, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and protecting coral reefs. Focussing on these top 19 targets would achieve about four times more benefits than just thinly spreading funds among all 169 targets.

Because the UN didn’t prioritise when it created the SDGs, nations are making those choices themselves. The biggest risk is that their selection will not be based on which targets could do the most good, but on far more capricious measures such as which targets have more media-friendly images or the most NGO attention. There are some worrying signs.

A preliminary analysis by the OECD shows that rich nations are closest to reaching targets related to ‘Planet and Partnership’ – in other words, issues like climate, biodiversity and oceans. These are issues that fill a lot of column inches in newspapers, and are focussed on by the chattering classes. But global polls consistently show that people care much more about the areas where these countries are lagging behind: the economy, jobs and education, and peace. Three years into the implementation of the 2030 Development Agenda, it is clear that we are trying to do too much – and failing to do enough that matters.