Read and reflect: Development finance

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Financing sustainable development (Dan Banik) 

Readings:

• United Nations (2015) Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development. 

Reflection:

• How and to what extent does the Addis Ababa Action Plan (AAAP) help facilitate the achievement of the SDGs?
• Have major donors aligned their aid and trade policies closely with the AAAP's recommendations? If so, how? If not, why? 

Continue the conversation on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Please use the hashtag #UiOSDG if you wish to respond to or reflect on any of the issues raised in the lectures.

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Domestic resource mobilization (Dan Banik) 

Readings:

• UN Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development (2020) Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2020.
• United Nations (2018) "The Role of Taxation and Domestic Resource Mobilization in the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals", Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters.
• World Bank resource page: Domestic Resource Mobilization

Reflection:

• Discuss the most important constraints that low-income countries face in mobilizing domestic resources?
• How can digital technology help reduce tax evasion?

Continue the conversation on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Please use the hashtag #UiOSDG if you wish to respond to or reflect on any of the issues raised in the lectures.

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Foreign aid and international development cooperation (Dan Banik) 

Readings:

• Chasukwa M. and Banik, D. (2019) “Bypassing Government: Aid Effectiveness and Malawi’s Local Development Fund”, Politics and Governance, 7(2): 103–116.
• UN Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development (2020) Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2020.

Reflection:

• How important is foreign aid in the SDG era?
• Compare traditional foreign aid from Europe and North America with South-South Cooperation.

Continue the conversation on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Please use the hashtag #UiOSDG if you wish to respond to or reflect on any of the issues raised in the lectures.

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Trade and debt sustainability (Dan Banik) 

Readings:

• United Nations (2015) Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development. 
• UN Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development (2020) Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2020.
• Gaspar, V. et al. (2019) "Fiscal Policy and Development: Human, Social, and Physical Investments for the SDGs”, IMF Discussion Paper.
• Donald, K. (2019) "Unsustainable? The IMF’s approach to the Sustainable Development Goals", brettonwoodsproject.org.

Reflection:

• How will trade tensions between the United States and China affect international trade?
• What should Malawi do to reduce its commodity dependency?

Continue the conversation on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Please use the hashtag #UiOSDG if you wish to respond to or reflect on any of the issues raised in the lectures.

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CSR and the SDGs: Converging narratives (Kaja Elise Gresko)

Readings:

• Gresko, K.E. (2016) CSR with Chinese characteristics: On a silk road to convergence?, University of Oslo. For a general overview of CSR concepts and theories, see especially "Ch. 2: Theoretical perspectives" (p. 16 -32). 

Reflection:

• Is corporate social responsibility (CSR) a useful concept for companies to approach sustainable development?

Continue the conversation on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Please use the hashtag #UiOSDG if you wish to respond to or reflect on any of the issues raised in the lectures.

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Business and the SDGs (Kaja Elise Gresko)

Readings:

• Barkemeyer et al. (2014) “What Happened to the ‘Development’ in Sustainable Development? Business Guidelines Two Decades after Brundtland”, Sustainable Development 22: 15-32.
• Business and Sustainable Development Commission (2017) Better Business, Better World: Executive Summary, 1-15.
• Gresko, K. E. and Banik, D. (2018) "Business and the SDGs: From rainbow washing to reality", Oslo SDG Blog. 
• Jones, E. (2019) “Rethinking Greenwashing: Corporate Discourse, Unethical Practice, and the Unmet Potential of Ethical Consumerism”, Sociological Perspectives 62(5): 1-27. Requires institutional log-in. 
• Kamphof, R. & Melissen, J. (2018) “SDGs, Foreign Ministries and the Art of Partnering with the Private Sector”, Global Policy 9(3): 327-335. Requires institutional log-in. 
• Mawdsley, E. (2018) “From Billions to Trillions: Financing the SDGs in a World ‘Beyond Aid’”, Dialogues in Human Geography 8(2): 191-195.
• OECD (2018), Global Outlook on Financing for Sustainable Development 2019: Time to Face the Challenge, OECD Publishing, Paris.
• PwC (2019) SDG Challenge 2019: Creating a strategy for a better world.
• Scheyvens, R., G. Banks & E. Hughes (2016) “The Private Sector and the SDGs: The Need to Move Beyond ‘Business as Usual”, Sustainable Development 24: 371-382. Requires institutional log-in. 

Reflection:

• Do you think active involvement of the private sector in the 2030 Agenda is a necessary means to achieve sustainable development, or does it contribute to perpetuating many of the global challenges that the SDGs aim to solve? 

• Much of the rhetoric encouraging private sector engagement with the SDGs frames global challenges as business opportunities and rests on the business case for the SDGs. Do you think this framing can be problematic? If so, how? 

Continue the conversation on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Please use the hashtag #UiOSDG if you wish to respond to or reflect on any of the issues raised in the lectures.