In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the Atlantic and reshaped history. You might think of him as a sailor but he was really an economist, because he didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t know where he was when he got there, and it was all done on a government grant.
It’s an old joke, repeated by the US economist Jeffrey Sachs in discussing global commitments with youth development advocates meeting in New York early this month to plan the next stage in implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The 17 SDGs are a wish list of all the things the UN believes we need to keep us going indefinitely. Things like no poverty or hunger, good education and health, clean water, clean energy, decent work, less inequality, climate action, “responsible consumption”, “peace, justice and strong institutions”, among others.
The very idea of sustainable development and the overarching idea of nations united for any sort of universal public good are looking like impossible dreams in a world beset with disaster, conflict and dysfunction at levels unseen since the UN was founded 80 years ago.
Each new upset, each bruised leader’s ego seems like a nail in the coffin of those noble aspirations as the world is hit with crisis upon crisis: the Russia-Ukraine war and perpetual conflict centred on Israel and in Yemen, Libya, Sudan and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, Kashmir and Myanmar to name a few. Not to mention famine on three continents and counting. And weather disasters.
It doesn’t help that Donald Trump is removing the US from global health, climate and sustainability efforts while isolating it from the world trade system and from any country or person he deems un-American. He’s now denying people due process while arresting and deporting them, on the weekend sending National Guard troops into Los Angeles streets to keep protesters at bay.
This is US democracy at work. Yet Australia and most other democratic countries continue to treat the US as if nothing has changed. We are stuck in old habits that are getting us nowhere. It’s time for a fresh perspective.
I’m not always on the same page as Jeffrey Sachs. I don’t subscribe to his excuses for Russian aggression, for instance. But with open dialogue in very short supply, his stance against the dominant narrative that all wisdom derives from Western democracy is worth noting.
At that UN sustainable development meeting, Sachs outlined why we have developed this world view whereby everything that’s good flows from the West and everything that’s bad comes from non-Western governments, especially old enemies China and Russia but including the God-forsaken Global South.
In the Sachs worldview this is all down to European colonialism from Columbus onward. The biggest historical culprit in his eyes is Britain, but others – France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and from the 20th century onward the United States – must also take blame.
“I’m not so pessimistic,” he told the UN youth assembly. “I just see the world changing. I can understand the pessimism … in the US, because they’re all geared around the idea of the US as number one.”
A world in which China, India, and African and Middle Eastern countries play a larger role, said Sachs, is “a great world… a world of diversity – much better food, much better conversation, much better places to visit…”
Sustainable development, he said, required decarbonised energy and agricultural systems and and a digital society working effectively for the public good – all by mid-century. He told his young audience that planning for sustainability is “very hard”, and “most governments don’t know how to do it effectively. China is better at planning in this way than any other government that I know.”
But China is a one-party state, now in the hands of one person, Xi Jinping, so where is this taking us? What does it say about democracy, where multiple views must somehow be accommodated?
So many questions. Could a narrower focus on the home front be a way to go? The UN has its SDGs; Tasmania’s equivalent long-term mechanism is the Climate Change (State Action) Act, now being reviewed for the third time.
Oh, wait. The parliament has just voted no confidence in the premier, Jeremy Rockliff. The review is once again sidelined along with all other business of government while leading players rearrange the existing parliament or get voters to elect a new one. Again.
This is enough to make the brain hurt. Clearly we don’t know where we’re going. But then, neither did Columbus in 1492, and look where that took the world!