The task remains huge. Although the past 15years have seen big reductions in the number of people living in poverty, over 800 million people still cannot meet their most basic needs.
The new goals cast a wider net than their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There are targets for action on the environment, especially climate change – recognising that poverty and environmental damage are intrinsically linked. Human rights and access to justice are prominent.
Crucially, the goals see jobs - the opportunity to earn a living - as a necessary part of poverty reduction. This is something people in developing countries themselves are asking for. The results of the Myworld consultation (which helped inform the design of the goals) show that people in low income countries see better job opportunities as one of their top three priorities, alongside health and education. Strikingly, jobs even rank above access to food.
So if jobs are at the heart of poverty reduction, where will they come from? Of course, most of the money in the world moves around through trade and private finance. Whereas aid flows reach hundreds of millions of pounds annually, trade is measured in the trillions. Making just some of this cash work harder for the poorest would be transformational.
Perhaps this is why politicians are cosying up to the business community. Alongside the main summit, side events in New York will host leaders from many multinational companies in discussions about the role of business in delivering the goals. Indeed, businesses have been at the heart of consultations since the process kicked off three years ago.
But what do our politicians actually want from business? Is there simply an assumption that trade and investment in developing countries are a priori good things for poverty reduction? If the only discussion is about ways to encourage business to invest more in developing countries, surely business would be keen to do that anyway.
Instead, the discussion has to be about how business uses its power and influence, and the impact this has on poverty reduction, human rights, and sustainability; to challenge behaviour that undermines it, and incentivise change for the better.
For example, what is the responsibility of business in delivering “better jobs”? Decent work means a number of things. It means terms and conditions that give job security, safety and dignity at work. If, for example, you are a female worker on a tea plantation, it includes the right to a fair employment contract, the right to join a trade union, to maternity leave, and to be free from sexual harassment. It includes the right to protection from harmful chemicals used as pesticides or fertiliser. And, of course, it means a living wage: a wage that allows you to meet the needs of your family, send your children to school, live in a good quality home, and put some savings by for the future.
Similarly, if you are a smallholder coffee or banana farmer, it means earning enough money from your annual crop to do all of the above, and to secure a sustainable business for the future.
Sadly, our experience in Fairtrade is that for hundreds of thousands of farmers and workers around the world, “decent work”, when understood like this, is not the reality.
At its heart, the problem is economic.
While you’d be hard pushed to find anyone at all that defended poor salaries, a poor environmental record or failures to act on human rights, it is not at all hard to find people who will tell you that such changes are unaffordable, or difficult to achieve given the need to turn a profit in competitive markets with low margins, or that bad practice from unscrupulous competitors is dragging down those who want to do the right thing.
So meeting the new global targets on decent work cannot just be about more investment and more exports. The challenge to business must include delivering prices that meet the real costs of sustainable production, and delivering a genuine living wage. It also means moving towards more respectful trading relationships that give farmers and workers stability and security for the long term.
As Fairtrade’s work in setting living wage benchmarks shows, the true costs of production can be much higher than the prices currently paid. But we can’t end poverty for the farmers and workers who supply our markets if we don’t pay fair prices.
Meanwhile, the challenge to governments like the UK is to incentivise business to do the right thing. Sometimes, as with the Modern Slavery Bill, a big stick will be needed to stamp out unacceptable abuses. In addition, government also needs to get creative and find ways to reward businesses which go further to address the sustainable development goals, for example in trade policy, public procurement policies, company reporting, or the tax system.
None of this is easy, and a lot is politically difficult. There’s a big risk that lip service is paid, while business as usual continues. We’ll need to see a tough action plan, both internationally, and here in the UK, that compels both government and business to act.
The SDGs are an opportunity to meet the aspirations of hundreds of millions for a decent job. But if they are to deliver, we’ve got to keep the pressure on.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by Fairtrade Foundation, sponsor of the spotlight on commodities series
