OPINIONS
Monday, October 13, 2015 17
Development goals
» continued from page 9
an agreement between G8 nations to address MDG 4
and MDG 5 by spending $5 billion between 2010 and
2015 in order to reduce maternal, infant, and child
mortality in developing countries. This project, along
with other UN initiatives such as the Global Strategy
for Women’s and Children’s Health, were key in
achieving large strides in the health MDGs.
One can wonder whether these same large-scale
initiatives can be created for the new SDG 3, especially because much more needs to be done to fully
achieve the new targets for this goal. That is, the
global funding and financial support system may
fragment along disparate interests, preventing cooperation. After all, not all of the targets in SDG 3 are as
globally valued and prioritized in development agendas as MDG 4 and MDG 5. Certainly, not all countries
want to invest in projects to, for example, address
road traffic accidents or strengthen tobacco regulations. And creating sweeping initiatives to address
only a handful of targets out of almost two hundred,
which itself falls under just one out of seventeen
total SDGs, may raise less political capital than with
the MDGs, acting as disincentives to global political
collaboration.
These criticisms do not mean that the SDGs should
not be supported. The expanded purpose of the new
SDGs is necessary to combat the multiplicity of different problems facing the future sustainable development of the world. Certainly for the third SDG, the
new targets properly spotlight the important disease
burden of different injuries and non-communicable
disea