THE TRICONTINENTAL
As progressive governments take office in the Global South, now more than ever there is a burning need for a new development theory that can fulfil the Promethean aspirations of the darker nations.
Around the world, progressive governments have taken office, yet they do not have a clear strategy to rebuild their societies from the detritus of neoliberalism. These governments, in countries such as Honduras, Senegal, and Sri Lanka, articulate clear critiques of the International Monetary Fund’s debt-austerity regime, but they often lack a concrete policy programme capable of decisively moving beyond it. Unable to develop a policy that fully breaks from neoliberalism, many of these progressive governments slip back into neoliberal immobility.
International institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), have also been unable to chart an alternative framework. One notable attempt dates to 2000, when the UN inaugurated a process of highlighting outcome-based goals for development with the establishment of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focused on issues such as poverty and education.1 The MDGs were succeeded by seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, which are supposed to be met by 2030. However, like the MDGs, the SDGs merely outline a broad set of goals that are toothless, ineffectual, and lack an underlying theory or programme.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the SDGs are ‘moderately to severely off track’ as a 2023 UN report noted, a failure that it attributes to developments such as the Third Great Depression (2007–2008), COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, and genocide against the Palestinian people. More specifically, only 12% of the 140 targets are on track, 50% moderately or severely off track, and 30% either stagnated or regressed.2
Those who defend the SDGs’ methodology argue that the solution to improving their success is to increase funding for development. However, this approach ignores the reality that funding from the Western-dominated financial system is simply not available. As it stands, there is a $4 trillion yearly shortfall of funds needed for the SDG targets to be met by 2030.3 The 1970 pledge by Global North countries to spend 0.7% of their Gross National Income (GNI) on Official Development Assistance (i.e. foreign aid) – and therefore toward the SDGs programme – has not been met: in 2023, the United States spent a mere 0.24% of its GNI on development assistance, France spent 0.5%, and the United Kingdom 0.58% (this is in contrast to the 2014 pledge by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members to increase their spend on war making to 2% of Gross Domestic Product).4 Furthermore, countries in the Global South that align their development plans with the SDGs are more likely to attract international aid, loans, and foreign direct investment tied to development projects, including lending initiatives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Yet these lending initiatives are often conditioned on those countries adopting ‘free market reforms’ (including austerity policies, deregulation, and government downsizing). So, poorer nations are ‘incentivised’ (i.e., coerced) to take on more debt or to open their economies to Western financiers in order to meet SDG targets and attract investment for development. And since there is no theory underlying SDGs and the only way to finance their progress is by taking on debt, in practice SDGs are used more as sticks than carrots. This actuality goes against SDG 17.4, which is to ‘assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief, and debt restructuring’.5 In other words, the SDG framework is not merely limited by a lack of funding, as its proponents argue, but by a world order and development programme that seeks to keep the South underdeveloped and by the lack of an alternative development theory and programme for the Global South that is able to overcome this reality.
As early as 2018, three years after the SDGs were outlined and adopted by every member of the United Nations, IMF Deputy Managing Director Tao Zhang wrote that 40% of low-income countries were in high risk of debt distress – up from 26% in 2015, when the SDGs were adopted – and therefore could not service their debt.6 Further, the UN’s Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2024 showed that the median debt service burden for the poorest developing countries rose to 12% in 2023, ‘the highest level since 2000’.7
The Tricontinental for more