Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

EDITORIAL:

When we are getting the job done, our political differences don’t matter

As a one-time executive for Habitat for Humanity, Anthony Pipa saw how the organization’s homebuilding projects for struggling families brought together Americans from across the political spectrum in support of a worthwhile cause.

“Our volunteers didn’t know each other. They didn’t know each other’s political stripe,” said Pipa, an expert on global eeconomy and development who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They just came out and they worked together to build a house — that old barn-raising ethic. Then they actually got to build a relationship and started to share. They saw they were different, but they stayed committed to helping each other and helping the person who was going to live in that house.”

Today, Pipa thinks a much more extensive form of that shoulder-to-shoulder approach offers an antidote for the nation’s increasing polarization and a way to solve some of our more persistent problems.

It involves communities first taking a bold step — adopting a wide-ranging set of development goals created by the United Nations.

Approved unanimously by the U.N.’s member states in 2015, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals include reducing poverty, homelessness and food insecurity while also boosting public safety, environmental efforts and public transportation. The goals lay out 169 specific targets to meet by 2030, such as reducing the number of people living in poverty by 50 percent and establishing sustained income growth for the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average.

The goals are breathtaking in scope, and some may wonder whether it’s feasible for communities to bite them off.

But Pipa said that while some of the plan is more applicable to developing countries, it provides “a blueprint for development of what you’d like for any country.”

“Some of these goals and targets are very applicable to the United States,” he said, such as reducing homelessness and protecting water supplies.

Pipa noted that a number of cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Orlando, Fla., have adopted all or some of the 17 goals.

“They provide a platform for people just to come together and solve problems together. And that’s what you want in a democracy,” he said. “The calls for unity are great, and it’s great to try to have people have conversations across political divides, but I feel really strongly that when people sit down and solve problems together, no matter what their political ideology, they work together.”

Certainly, Southern Nevada could benefit from working toward the goals. In a study of 100 U.S. cities, Las Vegas ranked No. 81 in terms of the metrics included in the plan. The city compared poorly in such areas as educational achievement, access to primary care physicians, poverty, sex trafficking, food security and environmentally friendly transportation. The region scored well on renewable energy and water conservation, but overall we have a lot of ground to make up.

Pipa, who helped develop the SDGs as a State Department administrator, visited Las Vegas last week to give a presentation at UNLV and speak with community leaders.

With the Trump administration treating the goals with what Pipa describes as “benign neglect as opposed to active resistance,” Las Vegas and state leaders would do well to examine them and consider joining the other cities that have adopted at least parts of the plan.

It’s more complicated than building a house — way more — and we may not hit the targets.

But the benefits for the community would be enormous, and Las Vegas could count itself among the cities that are stepping up for responsible development and progress in the leadership void left by the Trump administration.

More information is available on the Brookings Mountain West website. We’d encourage leaders — and candidates on the Nov. 6 ballot — to explore more at unlv.edu/brookingsmtnwest.