some reflections for this years work on the SDGs
Interlinkages One of the main differences from the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) was that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognized that we needed to move away from a sector approach to a sector and interlinkage approach. As some people seem to be harking back to the idea of prioritizing different SDGs eg one is more important than the other. I would remind them that that discussion on prioritizing the SDGs happened during the Open Working Group meetings promoted in particular by the US and the UK who wanted a more MDG+ and the development NGOs who saw it as somewhat an impact on their funding….among other things. The SDGs are a huge achievement of a participatory engagement of all stakeholders, not just the small subset that calls itself civil society. One of the sad things about the SDG negotiations were the collision of the stakeholder discourse (from the sustainable development world) and the civil society discourse (from the development world). Fo...