Daily Times

Five years on since Pakistan signed and adopted the UN Sustainable Development Goals regime but is still crawling. Performance remains insignificant in terms of time and resources spent in despite having federal and provincial secretariats to mainstream SDGs into the development projects. Additionally we have a cell in the Prime Minister secretariat and a Parliamentary Taskforce on SDGs to set the direction for public representatives to play their role in the parliament and in their respective constituencies. Unfortunately we don’t see a reasonably mentionable contribution of the public elected representatives. Hardly to find political will even in the top tier.l.5

A few development professionals cannot do miracles until they have generous backbone support and a high-level political will in the top tier of the government and the public representatives are sensitized enough to vigorously push the development agenda in the right direction. Recently, Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) organized a webinar where the development expert and civil society practitioners identified lack of authentic data, capacity to deliver, skilled human resource and paucity of funds as the key challenges for achieving the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its required pace. This is alarming rather worrisome though we realize that the process is on, and our government has shown some improvement on some of the SDGs indicators. Can we remain silent on most of the SDGs where simply no change is visible? Surely not. Pakistan’s slow pace on SDGs is upsetting for the vigilantes and development practitioners as we may miss again the development targets as envisaged in the SDGs regime. So, the country needs to urgently review its mechanisms and strategies running the SDGs regime, and budget allocations too.

Five years after, do we really see sufficient public awareness even on the basic indicators at the grassroots level? If the lower and middle tier, even the top tier leadership and the government hierarchy and the public representatives are practicing to push the SDGs indicators up? Answers to both the questions would add more distress and anxiety to what already exists at a higher point. So, it is suggested, if someone is listening, to go for a wider awareness on grassroots level by engaging districts and local governance. May we ask the provinces that are deeply in love with the 18th Amendment grating them with the devolution of autonomy, authority and funds, please transfer the powers and funds to the districts, if you really want to achieve the actual benefits of the 18th Amendment.

Fiscal devolution, collaboration and coordination among the stakeholders and partners are foremost to pace up progress on achieving the targets and for brisk improvement in the SDGs indicators. Despite five years in practice, a comprehensive integrated system is missing while integration of institutional output also lacks besides meagre participation of industry and civil society. Another missing element is a universally accessible database and also a digital platform to showcase the accumulated output for a well-deserved outlook for the external world. It would bring much needed development partnerships, and technical and financial resources too.

Pakistan was the first country to endorse the 2030 Development Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. A unanimous resolution to this effect was passed by the National Assembly and since then the SDGs were incorporated in the national development agenda. The stakeholders for the institutionalization of the SDGs include parliamentarians, provincial and local governments, think tanks, academia, private sector and other development partners. The National Initiative on SDGs has identified as many as 31 focal persons in different ministries to coordinate and mainstream SDGs in the development projects of different ministries and government departments. But unfortunately, every other time they are changed that hamper consistency in the coordination and marred the performance too.

The National Initiative on SDGs has identified as many as 31 focal persons in different ministries to coordinate and mainstream SDGs in the development projects of different ministries and government departments

Some other challenges facing the SDGs regime in Pakistan are financial inclusion, funds and innovation to handle the process of progress on the indicators. Mainstreaming of SDGs into development projects and mapping of the indicators, grassroots level awareness and data reporting would immensely improve Pakistan’s performance on SDGs. He urged the media and civil society to come up with the vibrant solutions to improve the conditions.

The National Assembly taskforce on SDGs has created awareness among the parliamentarians about the importance of SDGs which they believe would improve the quality of life of their voters. Because of the awareness the parliamentarians adopted the SDGs framework in the National Assembly session.

The NA Taskforce is expected to launch the Constituency Scorecard to measure the development in the context of SDGs indicators after some measurable success of the Citizens Scorecard that supported the inclusion of citizens’ valuable inputs.

SDG-17 is the last in the row but very important. It is overlooked too despite being the backbone of all – the partnerships. No SDG would have meaningful success without substantial partnerships, sharing of resources, skills and capacity, coordination and collaboration. Segregated efforts would not bring desired results. Unfortunately we could harness the potential of international partnerships but have also to do so at domestic level too.

Thanks to Malik Amin Aslam, now a Special Assistant to the Prime Minister, for launching several big initiatives that have created a real hype for ‘SDG-13 Climate Action’ across the globe, and getting admiration and appreciation for Pakistan. SDG-14 is one of the least touched SDGs. It deals with the blue economy that shall be of the foremost attention but seems to have no priority on the government agenda.

The NA Taskforce on SDGs shall be reaching out to the 273 constituencies with the support of provincial and local authorities, public and civil society organizations. Data gaps are very high that could be avoided with a live online doc where departments should be updating their data in real time. Streamlined coordination would improve overlapping only if the data is provided and managed properly.

We need to integrate the legal frameworks for improved monitoring and reporting to ensure the subjective outlook for subsequent reporting on the UN SDGs platform. We also need to improve horizontal communication mechanisms.

The writer is Director Devcom-Pakistan, a policy advocacy and outreach think tank in Islamabad