APRIL 18 — On September 25, 193 member countries of the United Nations including Indonesia officially adopted a set of global goals to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all, namely the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs rest on the core values of human rights, equality and sustainability. They constitute a new vision for the future that embraces four key dimensions of development in a more holistic approach, i.e. inclusive social development, inclusive economic development, environmental sustainability, and peace and security. This whole approach is consistent with the principles of the 2000 Millennium Declaration which set out a broad vision of “freedom from and to” for present and future generations, and which build the foundation of the birth of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Building on the MDGs which ended last year and seeking to complete what these did not achieve, the SDGs comprise 17 goals and 169 specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years until 2030.

As the universal agenda, the SDGs are instrumental in many ways at various levels-global, regional, national and sub-national. The SDG framework can provide focus for priority setting in national and local development policies and programmes. The multi-dimensionality of the SDGs rallies broad support for the goals and their achievement and helps mobilise multi-stakeholder and multi-layer partnerships to address development issues. A report from the United Nations Sustainable Solutions Network states that the SDGs “are universal and apply to all countries, national and local governments, businesses and civil society” (Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2013).

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The goals’ emphasis on human development which places people at the centre of development helps shift policy attention well beyond the economic growth objectives that have dominated development agendas. Economic growth envisioned by the SDGs is the quality, equitable and sustainable growth which contributes to prosperity for all — current and future generations. The goals can also be used as the framework and practical tool for monitoring the implementation of development policies and strategies, hence holding governments at different levels to account. 

The use of the goals for comparing the achievement of development results of different levels of government could result in better prioritisation of planning and resource allocation for sub-national governments in specific sectors. Likewise, the global goals serve as an end that everyone and every level of governance — state institutions, private sectors, media, academic organisations and civil society — mean to achieve.

Like the MDGs, these new goals in many ways can and should be customised to national and local conditions. At the country level, the SDGs require to be aligned with national and sub-national development policies and strategies like long and mid-term development plans, annual development plans, sectoral development plans, annual budgets and other policy documents and action plans.

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For Indonesia, for many of the goals, most of the responsibility lies with subnational — provincial and district or city level-authorities. This is to say that many of the most critical decisions that influence the country’s SDG achievements are made at the local level. “As global experience with the MDGs demonstrates, the achievement of goals and targets depended on local governments and the engagement of stakeholders” (UNDP & UNHABITAT, 2014).

The important role of local governments in the SDGs was also well recognised by the High-Level Panel on the Post 2015 Development Agenda in its report to the UN Secretary-General. It asserted that “the most pressing issue is not rural versus urban but how to foster a local, geographic approach to the post-2015 agenda. The Panel believes that this can be done by disaggregating data by place, and giving local authorities a bigger role in setting priorities, executing plans, monitoring results and engaging with local firms and communities” (High Level Panel, 2013).

Being the front liner, closest to the people, sub-national governments are in the best position to identify and respond to the people’s needs through the provision of public services.  Let alone in the context of decentralised Indonesia in which local governments have their mandate from their direct  democratic election and accountability and they have steadily taken over substantial portion of the government’s routine expenditures.

The local government’s political asset through direct election and high fiscal decentralisation offer the potential to improve the provision of public services thus to create prosperity for the people, particularly the poor and vulnerable. However, a capacity deficit at the local level in many fronts — to plan, budget, implement and monitor development policies and programmes — has hindered this potential.  The capacity of local governments to mobilise wide support from and partnerships with other key actors — private sectors, academic organisations and think tanks, civil society groups — remains questionable. 

Hence, the local government should be encouraged and capacitated to enable the achievement of the SDGs at the local level. This requires the central government to provide adequate enabling frameworks, institutional and technical capacity, to accompany the transfer of responsibilities and fiscal resources, to local governments.

As experienced with the MDGs, the central government can develop a Roadmap and/or a National Action Plan for the SDGs in a widely consultative process involving sub-national governments and other key non state actors. This roadmap or action plan at the national level can serve as a reference or guidelines for all stakeholders and partners working to attain the SDGs through-out Indonesia.

In turn, the central government should facilitate the formulation of local action plans for achieving the SDGs at the local level. For the action plans to work, they necessitate to be budgeted, using the central and/or local government budgets. Additional efforts, including the establishment of the SDG financing strategies and mechanisms as well as allocation of financial incentives also need to be prepared to sustain the implementation of the action plans and development programmes leading towards the SDG achievement across Indonesia. To accompany these action plans, it is required to establish a tool for translating or breaking down the SDG targets into provincial, district and yearly targets.

In more practical terms, it is worth considering to adopt and adapt the MDG based Planning, Budgeting and Monitoring (P3BM), with its MDG-based poverty mapping, MDG score-carding and budget analyses, successfully implemented in more than 70 districts and cities and 16 provinces over the last seven years. As a result, budget allocations for MDG related sectors have increased by an average of 8 per cent and the share of direct development expenditure (versus the indirect mainly for administrative expenses) has risen by 2.5 per cent.

For the SDGs, these tools can instrumentally help localise the 17 goals and 169 targets. In using these tools, local governments engaging other local stakeholders can analyse development in a comprehensive and meaningful way to develop plans and budgets that address development challenges more accurately and effectively.

Without the high quality and disaggregated data, all these efforts would be meaningless.   

* Abdurrahman Syebubakar chairs the Institute for Democracy Education (IDe), a Jakarta-based think tank promoting Human Development and Democracy.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.