Lakhasly

Following the Sustainable Development Goals Summit this past September, the United Nations published a guidance paper entitled "Six Transitions," to identify critical "investment pathways" that will be key to achieving the SDGs by their target date of 2030. According to the U.N. paper, these critical pathways will have "catalytic and multiplier effects" across all the SDGs.Indeed, according to the OECD, while overall overseas development assistance grew in the five years between 2016 and 2020, bilateral assistance grew over four times faster than multilateral aid.In a new context of resurgent nationalism and renewed militarization, talk of alternate visions of global governance have fundamentally challenged globalization's liberal model, in what one recent study has termed a "contest for the future of the international order."This contest is also prompting competing development narratives to emerge, including China's recently unveiled Global Development Initiative framework.Western development budgets are shrinking as funds are diverted to military and humanitarian spending in a more fractured geopolitical environment.Aid is becoming less multilateral and more closely aligned with the national interests and domestic political priorities of donor governments.Donor countries will continue to offer development aid, and receiving countries will continue to take it, but not on the same political terms as before.

Following the Sustainable Development Goals Summit this past September, the United Nations published a guidance paper entitled "Six Transitions," to identify critical "investment pathways" that will be key to achieving the SDGs by their target date of 2030. According to the U.N. paper, these critical pathways will have "catalytic and multiplier effects" across all the SDGs.Indeed, according to the OECD, while overall overseas development assistance grew in the five years between 2016 and 2020, bilateral assistance grew over four times faster than multilateral aid.In a new context of resurgent nationalism and renewed militarization, talk of alternate visions of global governance have fundamentally challenged globalization's liberal model, in what one recent study has termed a "contest for the future of the international order." This contest is also prompting competing development narratives to emerge, including China's recently unveiled Global Development Initiative framework. Donor countries will continue to offer development aid, and receiving countries will continue to take it, but not on the same political terms as before. Western development budgets are shrinking as funds are diverted to military and humanitarian spending in a more fractured geopolitical environment. Aid is becoming less multilateral and more closely aligned with the national interests and domestic political priorities of donor governments. And as many recipient states become less trusting of liberal models and openly consider alternative narratives, development cooperation will likely be cast in a harsher, more competitive and more "bilateralized" light.Some may criticize this "depoliticization" of development assistance as a concession of fundamental norms and values, in a way that might be seen as picking sides in the geopolitical contest that is now underway. Rather, as with the climate agenda, it is about lifting the development goals above the current geopolitical fray, and thereby preserving a broad space to deliver on the social and economic needs of the world's developing economies. This needs-based, impartial approach will be especially important for the U.N.'s development work. The U.N.'s "Six Transitions" paper already hints at a narrower approach to development.In parallel, development planners also began trying to "fix failed states" by supporting constitutional reform and elections, modernization of the security and justice sectors, improved public sector management, tax administration, deregulation of markets, privatization of state assets, decentralization and financial reform. As Mark Sedra noted recently, during this period, state-building became a "sine-qua-non of the liberal peace-building project."Given the current global economic and geopolitical challenges, refocusing efforts and resources toward realizing the SDGs--a set of 17 global development goals agreed in 2015 to ensure healthier, more equitable and inclusive and environmentally sustainable conditions for all--is a positive and necessary step.Moving beyond technical cooperation, U.N. development programs now sought to deliver not only money and technical expertise to receiving countries, but also to transmit the values, norms and institutional and societal changes that would solidify peace and good governance in an emerging liberal order.But translating policy into practice will take a concerted effort to shift the mindset of a generation of U.N. planners and programmers away from ambitious aims of political transformation in countries with developing economies, toward a simpler and more humble form of support.For their part, these organizations provided a breadth of ideological messaging on political participation, social inclusion and democratic rights, and a depth of social penetration, that had not been available previously.They did so partly by globally engaging and promoting nongovernmental and civil society organizations as a pluralist alternative to traditional, state-centric cooperation.