Major challenges
Finance
What is often presented as a ‘financial crisis’ is in reality part of a series of interlinked crises – food, energy, climate, human security and environmental degradation – that are devastating the planet, and compounding the poverty and exclusion faced on a daily basis by millions of people across the world. There is a pressing need to reverse the current trends that lead to more inequality and the erosion of people’s fundamental social, economic and political rights. While the finance targets focus mainly on resource mobilization, it is unclear how this could happen. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) is the outcome of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, which took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July 2015. The AAAA with its narrative of scaling-up resources through leveraging private investment falls short of the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda. This is partly because it leaves the implementation to mechanisms and conditions of private investments and markets instead of regulating them effectively and trans- forming their modus operandi.
Resource generation is key to implementation, and so is the long overdue achievement of the 0.7 percent goal of rich countries for official development aid (ODA). However, as long as one ODA dollar inflow is outpaced by three dollars leaving the poorest countries through illicit financial outflows, the necessary resources cannot be generated.
Tourism, as many other international business activities, uses aggressive tax optimization and avoidance strategies and enjoys tax exemptions and subsidies by governments. Interestingly, the 2030 Agenda rightly emphasises the need to abolish subsidies that undermine sustainable development in various goals, but fails to clearly mention this in Goal 17 and its targets. Another step is necessary to mobilize additional financial resources in a fair way: the taxation of “public bads”, such as emissions from cli- mate-damaging aviation, and luxury products which cause tremendous ecological and social damage, such as resource intensive forms of tourism.
Trade
While rightly emphasising the need for preferential rules for least developed countries, the targets in the trade-section of SDG 17 focus mainly on trade liberalization. The 2030 Agenda focuses on multilateral trade systems. However, current reality has already moved a long way from this rhetoric. Countries especially in the old “West” are develop- ing bilateral or regional trade agreements in which governments from the South have a limited or no say.
Target 17.11 focuses on increasing exports from developing countries – especially least developed countries. For tourism this would mean to concentrate on international tourism. This neither reflects the low contribution of international tourism to reducing poverty and inequalities nor the dramatic contribution of aviation-based tourism to climate change. In the context of the SDGs, there is a need to carefully assess if international tourism may be a ‘dangerous option’ for a country, because of the high vulnerability of international tourism to shocks, such as terrorism, conflicts, epidemics, or natural disasters. In addition, the export orientation ignores the advantages of domestic tourism and the value it could potentially add to a sustainable development of destinations.
Systemic issues
Goal 17 fails to clearly describe the frameworks under which systemic issues could be tackled. Climate change, debt, financial, energy and food crises, which have been caused and compounded by the policies and practices of many governments in both rich and poor countries, and the blanket privileges gained by big domestic and transnational business have caused increasing social polarization between peoples and states.
The dominant development approach over the last decades – based on the deregulation of markets, increasing power of multinational corporations, unaccountable multilateral institutions and trade liberalisation – has failed in its aims to meet the needs and rights of all citizens. This has led to a hollowing out of democratic accountability as elites make decisions and implement policies with little or no scrutiny from citizens, creating the conditions for poverty, inequality, environmental devastation and growing social unrest. There is a deeply felt need for new people-centred policies and practices.