Global Development Goals

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, that if we reduce the number of goals and the number of tasks, we may be in danger of losing some very important principles. I also agree with him on the need to tackle inequality, as a fan of the Equality Trust, and on the proposition that he carefully enunciated that unequal societies are not happy societies. Many of the evils that we suffer in the developed world are a product of our failure to tackle inequalities in our own society.

I also regret that, although the Secretary-General refers to this in his report, The Road to Dignity by 2030, published last week, there is an omission in the main goals, and even in the subsidiary tasks that are set out before us in the SDGs, of any reference to the greatest threat to the objectives of ending poverty, addressing climate change and keeping the rise in global temperature below 2 degrees centigrade, which is the inexorable rise in the number of human beings. I do not see any explicit recognition of that in the Secretary-General’s report.

In the draft sustainable development goals, also published last week by the UN open working group, goal 13 is to take,

“urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”.

This is recognised as the primary responsibility of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and I think there needs to be stronger linkage between the two strategies. Is it really possible to achieve 7% GDP growth in the least developed countries, and should we not distinguish between growth that requires consumption of energy, such as manned space travel or Formula 1 or nice garden bridges over the River Thames, and beneficial growth, such as the development of tidal power which could provide 42% of Scotland’s electricity?

On the continued growth of the human race, goal 3.7 calls for,

“universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes”.

If we coupled that with goal 5, which aims to:

“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”,

women would have the right to control their own fertility, and have access to the means of doing so. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said, 225 million women in the world do not have access to the means of controlling their own fertility. I am very glad to see that that is part of the new SDGs. In the developed world people have control of their own fertility. The problem is that there are religious and cultural obstacles to women’s equality in sub-Saharan Africa and the Islamic world that will not be easily overcome. There is good evidence to show that as women get better educated they will begin to take control of their own fertility, but where there is a long history of male dominance, that is not going to be easy to achieve.

I entirely agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, when he said that conflict prevents any meaningful development. The emergence of extremist organisations such as al-Shabaab, AQAP, the Daesh and Boko Haram should be recognised explicitly as a major obstacle to women’s emancipation. Former members of the Secretary-General’s high-level panel, in an open letter in September, stressed:

“Freedom from fear and violence is the most basic human entitlement, and people demand peace and good governance as a core component of their well-being, not an optional extra”.

The nearest we get to this is goal 16, calling for “peaceful and inclusive societies”, but the language does not spell it out. The necessity of combating ideologies of hatred, murder and the subjection of women, and blasphemously claiming to be the true voice of Islam, needs to be on the final version of the SDGs presented to the General Assembly for approval next September.

My grandfather, who was born in 1834, had 12 children. They had large families in the 19th century because they expected high infant mortality. That is no doubt one of the factors behind the huge birth rates today in many less developed countries. But we know what needs to be done to complete the reduction by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, in the under-five mortality rate—goal 4 of the MDGs—in the countries that have not got there and to take the process much further. The WHO recommends 11 antigens for universal infant use and this should be incorporated in the post-2015 agenda.

That goal should be achievable even for the poorest countries with the help of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, to which I am proud to say this country is one of the largest contributors. But can my noble friend explain why in the five years 2011 to 2016 we contributed £1.3 billion, and now that has been reduced to £1 billion in the next funding round for the years 2016 to 2020? If I may refer to the previous debate, the Chancellor has had no difficulty in signing up to the renewal of the contribution to the former fund for AIDS, TB and malaria, so he ought to be able to do the same for GAVI.

I note that Germany, Canada, Norway and the Netherlands have all announced larger increases in the pledges they intend to make at the replenishment conference chaired by Chancellor Merkel in January. Are we really going to be the only country to give less this time, when the Secretary of State says:

“Investing in immunisation is one of the most cost-effective ways of saving lives and improving living standards, health and the global economy”?

The APPG on Child Health and Vaccine Preventable Diseases, of which I am co-chair, would like to see in the next 15 years the adoption of a more holistic approach to child health, integrating the vaccination programmes with the delivery of the WASH agenda for clean water, sanitation and hygiene, where there is still huge potential for disease prevention. Half the girls who drop out of school in sub-Saharan Africa do so because WASH is not provided. Many more drop out or miss school when they reach the age of menstruation for the same reason. We would like to see hygiene added to goal 6. This would be the place to refer to the co-ordination of the delivery of the WHO antigens with the WASH programme.

We also believe that there is tremendous potential in product development partnerships. I mentioned in the previous debate the example of GSK’s development, with the help of the Gates Foundation and many others in the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, of the world’s first anti-malaria drug RTS,S. In phase three trials, the drug reduced incidence of the disease by a quarter in six to 12 week-old infants at first vaccination, and by half in young children aged five to 17 months at first vaccination. In July, GSK sought an opinion from the European Medicines Agency on the quality, safety and efficiency of the drug. Assuming that the reply is positive, the WHO is likely to issue a policy recommendation before the end of next year, allowing African countries to develop schedules for the delivery of RTS,S and for their national regulatory agencies to consider applications from the manufacturers. Children could receive the vaccine by 2016, saving hundreds of lives.

There is broad reference to multi-stakeholder partnerships at the very end of the open working group’s draft list of sustainable development goals. My final plea to my noble friend, when she comes to wind up, is whether DfID would consider proposing that a reference to PDPs, which have such enormous potential, be added to goal 17 as a shining example of what these partnerships can achieve.