Questions of suitability: The Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Purpose

To stimulate critical thought, to challenge how speech-language pathologists (SLPs) achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in supporting people with swallowing/communication disabilities, using a critical, political conscientisation approach.

Result

We generate data from our professional and personal experiences interpreted through a decolonial lens to demonstrate how Eurocentric attitudes and practices are at the core of SLPs’ knowledge base. We highlight risks associated with SLPs’ uncritical use of human rights, the bases of the SDGs.

Conclusion

While SDGs are useful, SLPs should take the first steps of becoming politically conscientised to consider whiteness, to ensure that deimperialisation and decolonisation are tightly woven into our sustainable development work. This commentary paper focusses on the SDGs a whole.

Keywords:

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• communication disability
• swallowing disability
• indigeneity
• decolonisation
• political conscientisation

Introduction

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015) provided the world with a reference point that in and of itself represents a tremendous achievement. Unlike the ineffective Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), SDGs provided governments with an instrument to enable political gravitas to work towards the 17 goals, plotted against a 15 year period and imagined via 169 targets. One example is the grand ambition of eradicating poverty and hunger, that was translated in targets such as the halving of poverty (SDG 1), as per national definitions, by 2030, and addressing stunting in children under five years, by 2025. Unlike the MDGs, the SDGs focus the global collective on reducing inequalities between Majority and Minority World countries, across the rich and poor. Significantly, the world’s governments and peoples alike celebrate the intimate intertwining of the progressive realisation of human rights, with sustainability goals to address hunger, poverty, livelihoods, health and peace.

Contextualising speech-language pathology in world events and onto-epistemological differences

The question “ko wai koe?” in the Māori language can be translated to “who are you?” It can also be read as “what waters are you?” or “you are water”. This parallel linguistic relationship represents the interconnectedness and interdependence of humans and the natural world in language and being. We are wai/water, and wai/water is us (Phillips, 2019). This example is one of the many ways that Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand connect with language uniquely. Language carries people’s lived realities (ontologies) and their truths/beliefs (epistemologies) of how they come to know the world. For Māori, their onto-epistemology focuses the indistinguishable relationship of the human and natural worlds (Ngata, 2018).

Waiora is one of the many words for wellbeing in te reo Māori (the Māori language). Waiora refers to a sense of wellness across physical, spiritual, emotional, environmental and collective domains. Wellbeing in a Māori context does not separate physical from mental health, as good health is the interaction of all domains (Durie, 2003). Furthermore, linguistic- and bio-diversity are inseparable (Skerrett & Ritchie, 2020). Wellness, including cultural and linguistic reclamation in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand cannot exist in a mono-lingual and Eurocentric space as wellness for Māori looks beyond the physical markers of health. Sustainability of language and culture are, therefore, inseparable, as both are required for Māori wellbeing (Quigan, Gaffney & Si’ilata, 2021).

The summer of 2021/2022 saw the highest number of drownings in Aotearoa/New Zealand in over 40 years (https://watersafety.org.nz/drowning%20statistics); 2021 was also one of the hottest years on record (Fedaef, 2022). While New Zealanders flocked to the beaches, swimming pools and rivers for a reprieve from sweltering temperatures, the Minister of Climate Change implored world leaders to “act right now” to reduce emissions. The sense of urgency to act has since grown although climate discourse continues to position humans as autonomous beings separate from the environment. Such positionality allows humans to speak for the environment, save the environment. That is one way of viewing the world: the world is ours and we live in it. Māori’s understanding of humanity’s place in the word is that humans are not separate from the environment. This view of reality would argue that the earth does not need our sympathy. We are the environment and we live with it is an Indigenous peoples’ understanding. Aligned with DePuy et al. (2022), we consider the broader difference between Indigenous peoples’ onto-epistemologies (theories of knowing and of being) and the Eurocentric colonial separation of self from place/environment. We ask: how suitable are the SDGs towards addressing sustainable development regarding Indigenous peoples?

To illustrate this point, iwi (tribes) and hapu (subtribes) continue to be left out of environmental planning in places like Ahimate in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Ahimate is a popular swimming spot where multiple drownings have recently occurred (Ensor, 2022). In 2021, the signage and amenities were upgraded, but without partnership with iwi and hapu, information about the meaning of the name. Ahimate can be loosely translated to “calm death”. The water can appear calm on top, but the currents can drag people under (Madden-Smith, 2022). Pūrakau (stories) have traditionally shared critical information about a place. The loss of language does not simply signal the loss of words and vocabulary. It is a loss of identity of who we are. Today, Māori are overrepresented in drowning statistics, despite having cultural connection to water (https://watersafety.org.nz/drowning%20statistics). Māori are also overrepresented when it comes to other disparities including poverty, education success and wellbeing indicators.

What does this have to do with speech-language pathology you might ask? In recognising inequities, the United Nations recognise set the 2030 agenda for sustainable development as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet” (United Nations, 2015) through 17 SDGs. They acknowledge that ending poverty and other deprivations must be strategised and implemented alongside plans to improve health, education and wellbeing, while also tackling climate change and preserving the world’s oceans and forests. The motivational forces of the SDGs echo those of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who are motivated to make positive changes to redress disparities. However, what if the onto-epistemological standpoint for SLPs is “the world is ours and we live in it”? Can SLPs engage with the SDGs by resisting further replication of neo-colonialism? Here, neo-colonial is understood as the continued colonial influence via economic, linguistic, cultural and political thought on the ex-colonies (e.g. Spain, Portugal, France, England (United Kingdom), Netherlands, Russia, Germany); and is regarded as an extension/continuation of imperialism which is the idea/epistemology on which colonialism is built (Nkrumah, 1968). For SLPs, neo-colonialism would present as uncritical traditional practices presented in new ways. We are not arguing that there is one correct way, one onto-epistemology or that SLPs must adopt Indigenous peoples’ world view. We argue that there cannot be space for only one knowledge system, or an ignorance that other onto-epistemologies exist.

SDGs and neo-colonialism

Since inception, the SDGs have been critiqued for insufficient and poorly timed targets such as the eradication of poverty (including extreme poverty) by 2030. Many people in the world may not live to see zero poverty by 2030, a likelihood exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19. Consider, for example, those in sub-Saharan Africa, whose chances of seeing 2030 are compromised because of poor life expectancy and impact of climate change as determined by structures/policies at national governance and international levels, including informal structures like the G20 (Bicaba, Brixiová, & Ncube, 2017). The United Nations birthed sustainable development without critically positioning how especially modern colonisation produced an unsustainable world (Pogge & Sengupta, 2016). As a neo-colonial organ, the United Nations has been critiqued for supporting economically developed/rich countries like the United Kingdom, and those in Europe, North America and Australasia for continuing to benefit from wealth built on colonisation and slavery. For example, Resolution 3201, the Declaration on the Establishment of the New International Economic Order (NIEO, United Nations, 1974) was proposed by recent post colonies (developing economies) and was adopted by United Nations General Assembly. The NIEO proposed economic growth in economically developing, mainly recently colonised, countries. Gaining little traction, Resolution 3201 was followed with the Declaration on the Right to Development (United Nations, 1986), that focussed economic, social, cultural and political development caused by human violations, racism and the legacy of colonisation.

At the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, the United Nations recognised that colonial structures persist in inequities in global development. Despite this, 17 years later, when 133 out of 193 countries voted for the United Nations General Assembly’s Resolution 73/240: Towards a New International Economic Order, economically developed/rich countries, notably G8 countries, voted against it. This, and similar United Nations countries voting patterns, serves to illustrate how the SDGs are tied into a global enterprise that continue to favour rich United Nations member states. How governments interact with the United Nations is intimately connected to why SLPs, especially those from rich countries, are empowered to engage sustainable development. SDG engagement may be mapped against how speech-language pathology practitioner communities in the Majority World countries are represented in deliberations with SDGs. The purpose of this paper to challenge how SLPs achieve SDGs in supporting people with swallowing/communication disabilities; using a critical, political conscientisation approach.

The United Nations’ instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, United Nations, 1948), and it core meme of human rights as embedded in the SDGs, serve as the moral and practical rationale by practitioners to work in international, global health, humanitarian aid, study abroad programs and practice with Indigenous people, Black and other ethnic minorities, refugees and migrants. Mainly (but not exclusively) White, Eurocentric practitioners schooled in/via Minority World SLP programs strive to improve black, brown and other colonised peoples’ communication and/or swallowing abilities - perpetuating the neo-colonial project.

SDGs, human rights and people with communication and/or swallowing disabilities

The UDHR (United Nations, 1948) has popularised a version of human existence that values individualism; for example, Article 1 which states that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and cross references “everyone” and “no-one” to focus individual rights across articles. The UDHR is flawed as it does not focus on collectives of people, like Palestinian, Jewish (Dolinger, 2016) or Indigenous peoples. Critically, the UDHR does not construct the human via others’ worldviews; for example, uBuntu that foregrounds collective responsibilities, not rights with its declaration “I am because you are”. So the UDHR asserts that to be human in the world one must have rights, and that these rights should be secured legally (Shivji, 1990; Sinha, 1981). This notion of rights and the human being must be considered with Fanon’s (1963) notion of the non-being, where being Black means being relegated to a state of non-being and dehumanisation. In a colonised world, the creation of colonised natives as sub-human by settlers/colonisers should lead us to question the universal validity of human rights. Human rights, considered de rigueur for SLPs especially in the last few decades, ought to be critically evaluated for what/how they may be applied by the profession. Readers may consider individual rights that are legally enforced, are what we all desire, that this view is incontestable, even odd to suggest otherwise. Therein lies the power of hegemony. Human rights are naturalised as “normal” so that a Western, Eurocentric value system about human existence is what SLPs assume as universal. Despite subjugation and colonial practices, European ideologies about being human/free triumphed to define the UDHR, “…the result of Western European History and a product of Western axiological tradition” (Sinha, 1981, p. 76). Since 1948, the notion of what it means to be human, and to have rights, has been contested by cultural relativists, who promote that the use (and abuse) of human rights is contextually interpreted, while universalists believe that the “…same legal enforcement of human rights exist everywhere” (Le, 2016, p. 203).

Speech-language pathology has done harm to Indigenous peoples with communication and/or swallowing difficulties by performing what is onto-epistemologically a Eurocentric clinical diagnostic and treatment practice. These practices assumes political neutrality while perpetuating racism, sexism, ableism and other forms of discrimination as a normative (Pillay & Kathard, 2015, 2018; Pillay, et al., 1997). Furthermore, SLPs are not immune from colonially associated processes like global commercialism and cultural imperialism. Commercially, individualised, personal health care models (clinics, hospitals, rehabilitation centres) are promoted as globally desirable, supported with evidence based practice to demonstrate success at especially impairment based medicalised rehabilitation. Culturally, language (e.g. English) and associated “norms” of development operate as imperial claims in what is defined as an expert practice. These knowledge bases (evidence) and practices that enable clinical processes like assessment, diagnoses and classification of communication and language disabilities are essentially rooted to a canon that represents whiteness, viz. Western, Eurocentric and monolingual cultures. So when SLPs argue for human rights, for access, equity and so forth; they do so from an onto-epistemological bases that is mismatched to Indigenous peoples’ world views. This maintains a settler-native relationship as re-presented via the colonial SLP and native/Indigenous client; one which deliberately excludes marginalised peoples (aka Others) in favour of known colonial interpretations of what communication means, how people connect to the climate, including waters and lands in the world.

The need for political conscientisation

The process of decolonisation refers to the undoing of not just the physical forms of colonisation (like occupation of lands, governance) but the remedying of the enduring psychological and cultural impact of colonisation. Therefore, Fanon (1963), Biko (2004), Thiong’o (1986) and many others have highlighted that decolonising the mind is the greatest job for both settler/coloniser and the colonised natives. It may strike one as obvious to point out that SLPs know and practice a colonial profession but may be necessary to do so when SLPs engage sustainable development, human rights and similar emancipatory ideologies. It is at moments like these when it becomes all too easy to bypass the proposal by Fanon, Biko, Thiong’o and others to decolonise the mind. For colonisers, and people of settler or colonising cultures (e.g. Minority World SLPs), the flipside of decolonisation, viz. deimperialisation should be considered. Deimperialisation is the work done by colonisers/people of settler or colonising cultures to recognise their power/imperialism. How have SLPs in Minority World fared in deimperialisation? How have they invested in interrogating themselves as a race gender, of their membership of colonial settler cultures? So, the essence of what SLPs represent remains uncontested when, for example, speech-language pathology programs are replicated by colonial settler cultures for Indigenous Peoples. A significant danger of this practice is that Indigenous peoples who take on this practice now have another lens to see themselves as deficit, further adding pathology to their Blackness. For the clinician who does not see colour or racism, there is an erasure of Blackness, replaced with pathology. Indeed, the very notion of speech-language pathology can never be suitable for colonised peoples because it is wholly colonial in imagination and shape. It is this that must be addressed as SLPs work with sustainable development.

SLPs’ practices are transforming, including work from colleagues in New Zealand (e.g. Boynton, 2021), South Africa (e.g. Abrahams et al., 2019), Australia (e.g. Gilroy et al., 2018) and Canada (e.g. Ball & Lewis, 2011) that represents examples of engaging decolonial inspired thinking regarding indigeneity, race, gender, class and other factors that impact the profession’s practices. However, what we are arguing for here, is for a political conscientisation to prevent the uncritical engagement with SDGs to avoid our arrival at a place where, after much hard work, we have re-invented or replicated a limiting practice which continues to favour neo-colonial values.

Summary and conclusion

While SDGs are useful for human rights and people with communication and/or swallowing disabilities in an inequitable world, when we engage them, we must consider the utility value of the SDGs through a questioning of their coloniality. Our profession must take the first steps to become politically conscious (Kathard & Pillay, 2013) through ensuring that deimperialisation and decolonisation are tightly woven into our sustainable development work. It starts with knowing our history and being aware of knowledge sources and systems outside of an SLP's orbit.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.