
Gianni Vaggi
43
Revista Internacional de Cooperación y Desarrollo Vol. 3 No. 2 | Año 2016 | PP. 35-59
Agenda 2030 is often criticized because there
are too many goals which do overlap and some
goals are extremely ambitious: zero poverty by
2030.
3
There is also a confusion between ends
and means, between those targets which could
be regarded as being a nal desired outcome,
like end hunger, gender equality, and those
goals which are indeed instrumental to achieve
the former ones, such as energy, infrastructures.
Notice that from the 2000 MDGs to the 2015 UN
Resolution the last goal always refers to partner-
ship. In the MDGs goal number 8 reads: Develop
a global partnership for development. There are
6 targets and 16 indicators which include issues
such as the increase of aid, the extension of mar-
ket access, debt sustainability. MDG 8 has been
quite often criticized because many targets and
indicators are very dicult to measure and in ge-
neral it provides a generic commitment to achie-
ve the other goals. The story of MDG 8 is howe-
ver rather interesting because originally there
was no goal number 8. As late as June 2000 in a
publication by OECD, World Bank, IMF and UN
called A better world for all the goals were still
seven(see OECD, 2000). MDG 8 was introdu-
ced later at the request of developing countries
which wanted the goals to be the responsibility
of all countries including the rich ones.
SDG 17 reads: Strengthen the means of imple-
mentation and revitalize the global partnership
for sustainable development, with 19 targets(-
see UN, 2015). SDG 17 seems to refer more to
the quantitative aspect, that is to say to nan-
cial support. The 2014 Synthesis Report was
more specic asking for “better regulation and
more stability in the international nancial and
³ Among the several comments see Maxwell, 2014
and Engel and Knoll, 2014. On the progress and improve-
ments of SDGs over MDGs see Fukuda-Parr, 2016.
monetary system”(see UN-SR, 2014, p.22, n.
95) and it even suggested the possibility of
nancial transaction taxes(ibid, p.25, n. 112).
Moreover the Synthesis Report requested the
implementation of “comprehensive and ade-
quate nancial regulations in all countries, as
the risk of another global nancial crisis has not
be suciently reduced”(ibid. p. 25, n. 114). The-
se recommendations did not nd their way into
the 2015 nal Resolution.
Goal 17 confronts itself with a major issue
which is the main topic of this paper: how to
give concrete content to the term ‘global part-
nership’. This implies raising the necessary re-
sources to support the SDGs which could be an
enormous amount of money(see Greenhill and
Prizzon, 2012). However partnership for deve-
lopment is not just about funds and above all
it does not take place in a vacuum, it must be
implemented in a specic economic and social
international environment. “Global partnership”
cannot ignore some major changes that have
taken place in the world economy since the ni-
neteen-eighties. We highlight two of them:
4
-economic growth in Asia
-the rising role of international nance.
Both facts have a structural nature; they are
here to stay and they have huge implications for
the new goals; it is only by taking into account
these facts that international cooperation activi-
ties and policies can be set in a realistic context.
We will briey see some positive and some ne-
gative aspects of both facts.
4
For a wider discussion of both changes see Vaggi,
2015. On Asian growth and the beautiful image of the
“ying geese” model see UNCTAD, 1996. For a history of
this model see Kasahara, 2013. Akyuz,2015 provides an
interesting analysis of nancial markets and developing
countries.