In the future, development will be measured by targets on emissions, trade, arms and crime, and underpinned by good governance. And we will strive for material, planetary and relational wellbeing
Read more on the future of development from Duncan Green and Jonathan Glennie
The future of development. What a title. It's fraught with hostages to fortune, bear traps and day dreams.
I pick 2030 as "the future". Partly because, 15 years after the first set of millennium development goal (MDG) targets I expect poverty (percent and numbers) in Asia to be much lower, and in Africa I expect the decline to be strong too. But partly because it is far enough away to think a bit more freely.
In 2030 the talk will be of global goods, not MDGs. Global goods will be measured by targets on emissions, trade, international finance, arms and crime, and will be underpinned by the governance to deliver them. They will apply to all countries, not just the poorer ones. They will be about stewardship of the planet and protection of global citizens from malevolence.
Instead of assistance, or even co-operation, we will be talking about urgent collective action to generate the global goods. Action will be grounded in knowledge and ideas drawn together from all parts of the globe, not just the west.
Development agencies will not be sub-components of foreign affairs allocating aid, but the building blocks of these global goods, drawing together ministries from across government. In the UK, instead of the Department for International Development, we will have a Department of Global Development, drawing on many of the other government departments.
Instead of poverty, we will focus more on wellbeing. GDP will finally be hauled off the throne and wellbeing will be measured with a composite indicator that brings together material wellbeing, planetary wellbeing and relational wellbeing.
Bilateral action will still be present (national interest will never fully align with global interest), but much more of the action will be through multilaterals. In the 2020s, spurred on by the relentless opening up of all things currently closed, we will finally tire of the current crop of unaccountable multilaterals. Citizens all over the world will demand a 2.0 version of the UN/Bretton Woods institutions or demand a new set.
The public/private action dichotomy will be supplanted by new everyday blends of public and private goods ? climate change will see the next generation of these hybrid models first emerge.
Aid as we know it will have disappeared. We will have a global goods budget. The minister in charge of this portfolio will be one of the biggest beasts in cabinets around the world.
Technology will remain necessary to global adaptation and transformation, but citizens will become better able to counterbalance corporate short-termism through the explosion in their ability to generate, access and harness information for change.
Research will still be needed. But instead of research by "us" on "them", it will be research by us on us and them, research by them on them and us, and research that is co-constructed by all to underpin actions that aim to generate global goods.
Wishful thinking? I don't think so ? we are already waking up to some of these trends. Citizen voice is expanding dramatically (think about how much the Guardian relies on citizen reporting and opinion for its development pages). We are more capable than ever of communicating the change we want to see. I hope I am around in 2030 to witness some of this. Just don't show me this blog.
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