CARICOM and the Millennium Development Goals

• Author: Edwin Laurent
• Pages: 128-157

CARICOM AND THE MILLENNIUM

DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Edwin Laurent

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regard to the WTO, the possible existence of

systemic factors that can militate against the

attainment of development objectives are

considered and recommendations for policy

and institutional change and possible actions

are made.

This paper begins by assessing the relevance

of the MDGs to CARICOM and then reviews

their origins. The 1990s had witnessed

spectacular global economic progress but the

gains were not evenly spread and the turn of the

century seemed to herald a new sense of shared

human responsibility for global challenges

and an increased willingness to act collectively

to solve them. The MDGs were one of the

concrete expressions of this commitment.

In September 2000, world leaders entered

into a pact to get the world working together

to achieve the eradication of poverty and its

related ills. They also committed to improving

governance and fairness, safeguarding the

environment, improving access to education

and health, and promoting gender equality and

the empowerment of women. The following

year, the UN Secretary-General outlined a

road map that became the eight specif‌ic goals

of the MDGs to be attained by 2015.

The paper next overviews the eight MDGs

and their targets and considers CARICOM’s

progress against that of other developing

countries. It is found that performance is

commendable in most areas, but advises that

this should not be a basis for complacency.

In many instances, the levels of attainment

that would be appropriate to CARICOM

Overview

The overriding aim of governments

of most developing countries is to achieve

sustainable development. In practice, however,

the implementation and management of both

domestic and international public policy will

not automatically contribute to that goal.

The M ill enn iu m De vel op men t G oal s

(MDGs),1 devised and adopted for mobilising

international action for development, can be

a useful and convenient tool for monitoring

progress and assessing the impact of their

policies. It is true that much of the focus on

the MDGs has been on alleviating extreme

poverty and disease in the poorest countries and

CARICOM’s middle income Member States.

Despite this though, sustainable development

is their central aim so the MDGs can be used

to methodically monitor progress and critically

appraise the development impact of initiatives

and actions. In other words, assessing a

particular policy’s contribution to the Goals

can be a convenient tool of objective “results

based management” and public accountability.

An area of operation that can readily be

put to the MDG test is the region’s policy

and engagement in major international trade

negotiations. Specif‌ically, the developmental

prospects of the Doha Development

Agenda (DDA), which is the World Trade

Organisation’s (WTO’s) current round of

negotiations and the Economic Partnership

Agreement (EPA) with Europe, are assessed in

the framework of the MDGs. Specif‌ically with

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CARICOM and the Millennium Development Goals 129

and denote acceptable progress might be

substantially higher than that envisaged for

LDCs with severe economic diff‌iculties. The

utility of the MDG approach stems not so

much from the absolute levels of development

achieved, but rather, the progress made.

With the midway point to 2015 having

already passed, the paper then assesses

the global prospects for the attainment of

the MDG targets. In April 2008, the UN

General Assembly reviewed the position and

concluded that progress was lagging. Even

under the most optimistic trade and economic

growth projections to 2015, many developing

countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa,

will not generate suff‌icient income to overcome

poverty and hunger, build the required schools

and hospitals, provide medicines, etc. But why

has progress not been better? The original plan

was not mere wishful thinking, there was global

commitment to poverty alleviation and most

signif‌icantly, the “project” is still realisable.

This paper considers that lack of progress is

due in part to the inadequate implementation

of the practical measures for giving effect to

the global pact.

The requirements for accelerating

progress towards the attainment of the

MDGs are essentially expanded income and

improved management. The framers of the

MDGs envisaged two key contributors: the

substantial expansion of Aid budgets to 0.7%

of the GDP of donor countries; and that the

multilateral trading system would enable

developing countries to participate on a more

benef‌icial basis in global trade. Development

aid is, of course, the most immediate device for

increasing the availability of resources, but aid

f‌lows are in decline. Particularly at a time of

economic diff‌iculty, aid budgets are relegated

to a lower priority by domestic imperatives.

The paper recommends that as a start, donor

countries honour their commitments

to provide additional resources. It also

recommends an

operational, well constructed

and adequately funded Aid for Trade facility

that will help poor performers to achieve

international competitiveness and more

comprehensive and effective international

frameworks to address debt that constrain

economic growth. Since the immediate

prospects of the substantially expanded

inf‌lows of aid to meet income requirements

are bleak, for small open economies like those

of CARICOM, the increased income to help

achieve the Goals will have to come principally

from domestic economic growth that will

result from expanded production of goods and

services for the domestic and export markets.

Changes brought about by the WTO and the

Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with

Europe can inf‌luence both the terms of access

to the domestic market and the competition

from goods and services from abroad and the

effectiveness of the access that CARICOM

members have to overseas markets, levels

of domestic production and consequently,

earnings and employment. The paper,

therefore, reviews the region’s engagement in

key international trade negotiations.

For the trade of developing countries

to be suff‌iciently expanded to secure the

required additional income, the basis of their

participation and the sharing out of benef‌its

and obligations in the multilateral trading

system would need to be revisited and made

conducive to development, particularly of the

poorest and the most vulnerable countries.

The paper reviews what is actually being

negotiated in the DDA in order to permit

an assessment of whether the talks are likely

to result in the changes to the system that

could yield the desired development results.

It f‌inds little evidence of this and proceeds

to consider whether the problem might be

more fundamental and a result of institutional

inadequacies of the multilateral system itself.

Suggestions for approaches to reform: getting

the WTO “f‌it for purpose”, are made.

It is recognised that failure at the

multilateral level can be compensated for by

trade successes in Regional Trade Agreements