Let's focus on the best things first

The world faces many challenges, between the impacts of inflation and high-interest rates, the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical conflicts, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Amid all this, 2023 marks the halftime point for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the sprawling list of 169 ambitions in which all global leaders have promised everything to everyone.

Governments worldwide, including Ghana, have promised to end hunger, poverty and disease, and stop climate change, corruption and war while ensuring quality education and every other good thing you could imagine, including organic apples and community gardens for everyone.

Not surprisingly, the world is failing on almost every single promise.

We’re at halftime, but nowhere near halfway.

We need to do better.

Better conversation

First, we need a better conversation on priorities.

My think tank is working with governments across the world, from Uganda to Tonga and Uzbekistan, to help the national spending decisions by researching which policies deliver the biggest benefits for each cedi spent.

The starting point is a national conversation on top priorities.

Second, we need to rescue global goals and end global dithering.

As resources are scarce everywhere, we need to prioritise the best things first. 

Unfortunately, many world leaders still believe the way forward is to come to the United Nations (UN) later this year and make lofty speeches about how important it is to achieve every one of the 169 promises, and then suggest that only by aiming for the stars will we get anywhere.  

But wishful thinking won’t change the fact that there is no way we will deliver on all these promises in time. 

UN

The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, is now implausibly calling for a $500 billion annual SDG stimulus package.

That’s several times what rich countries are already spending on foreign aid.

It’s just not going to happen.

Even if taxpayers globally could be convinced to pay the requested half a trillion dollars, this would still be 20 times too little.

Achieving all the promises is estimated to cost around $15-20 trillion a year.

Currently, less than a quarter is funded and most of that spending is in rich countries, not the poor countries where development is needed the most.

This leaves an annual shortfall of $10-15 trillion, which is equivalent to the entire tax intake of $13 trillion from every government in the world.

That’s a fiscal gap that simply cannot be closed.

We need a shift from empty rhetoric and trillion-dollar promises to real and efficient, billion-dollar action.

It is time to focus our attention where it matters most.

The truth is that across the SDGs, some promises do not have cost-effective, powerful solutions.

Other promises have investments that are incredibly effective and can deliver amazing progress for a few billion dollars a year.

Education

Take the crucial SDG promise of improving education.

Research has consistently shown cheap and efficient ways to increase learning.

Tablets with educational software used just one hour a day over a year cost only $20 per student and result in learning that normally would take three years.

Semi-structured teaching plans can make teachers teach more efficiently, doubling learning outcomes each year for just $10 per student.

We could dramatically improve education for almost half a billion primary school students in the world’s poorer half for less than $10 billion annually.

This investment will generate long-term productivity increases worth $65 for each dollar spent.

Reducing hunger

Or consider the SDG promise of reducing hunger.

We need a second Green Revolution.

In the 1960s, breakthroughs created more efficient seeds that allowed farmers to produce more food at lower costs.

Now, agricultural R&D is needed desperately for the world’s poorer half.

This spending will cut malnutrition, help farmers become more productive, and drive down food costs.

Spending $5.5 billion annually could deliver an incredible return of long-term benefits worth $184 billion.

Simple measures to improve the conditions around childbirth could save the lives of 166,000 mothers and 1.2 million newborns each year, for less than $5 billion annually.

 12 powerful policies

Economists working with the Copenhagen Consensus think tank have identified 12 powerful policies that would deliver enormous benefits across the SDGs at relatively low costs.

You can read more about these in my new book Best Things First.

For a total of $35 billion annually, we could do everything listed above, plus we could avoid a million deaths from tuberculosis each year by 2030, improve land ownership records, boost trade, reduce malaria, enable more movement of skilled workers to reduce inequality, improve immunisation levels, make major inroads into child nutrition, and save 1.5 million lives from chronic diseases, such as hypertension.

In total, these policies can save 4.2 million lives each year and make the poorer world $1.1 trillion more prosperous every year.

Put in economic terms, every dollar spent will deliver an amazing $52 of social benefits.

Pursuing these 12 phenomenal investments is likely the best thing the world can do this decade.

Let’s rescue the SDG agenda and make the most of the remaining seven years.

Let’s prioritise what will deliver the most incredible benefits for the world.

 The writer is the president, Copenhagen Consensus and a visiting fellow of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.