The eighth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) combines, in its targets, social, economic and environmental realities. Growth is necessary, but with quality of living and no harm to the environment. Cimar Azeredo, a Labor Market expert, works for the IBGE and is responsible for the statistics related to labor in SDG 8; João Hallak Neto, a PhD in Economics, is the researcher in charge of the themes related to economic growth. See below the interview available at Retratos Magazine no. 8, in which they tell us all the IBGE has done to monitor that SDG in Brazil.

Retratos Magazine: How has Brazil seen the issue of economic growth in terms of the preservation of both quality of life and of natural resources?

Cimar Azeredo: I find it important that this whole process has been around for almost 50 years, since 1972, after the 1st UN Conference in Stockholm to control the use of natural resources. That same year the Club of Rome released the report Limits to Growth (LTG) and made it clear that our development model was not balanced in terms of the availability of natural resources. It’s also worth mentioning the importance of the 1992 Earth Summit...I mean, a long history precedes the participation of Brazil in the SDG. Then came Rio +20, in which Brazil played an undoubtedly relevant role. Our background experience was founded on three dimensions: economic, social and environmental, and that has given us strength and made the whole project more complete. If we consider economic growth, it makes a lot of difference: we do need to create jobs, but we also need decent work and should not forget about the health of our planet. Indeed, the fact that developed countries are also part of the SDG program in the 2030 Agenda makes it more encompassing regarding sustainable, inclusive and sustained growth.

Retratos Magazine: What can we call sustainable and sustained economic growth in the Brazilian context?

João Hallak: João Hallak: Target 8.1 (that proposes at least 7 per cent gross domestic product growth per annum) is, as we see it, and as said my most specialists, a very ambitious target for Brazil and other countries. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean we should not pursue or measure that target. Sustained and sustainable economic growth is expected to reach annual positive levels and we should get close to that figure. Also important is having a stable series of positive growth rates, and, that, together with proper income distribution – as stated in SGD 1 and 0 – would contribute to the increase of the population’s welfare. Economic growth must also be sustainable, in environmental terms, for the generations to come, without depletion of our natural resources or any side effects on the biodiversity of countries, such as, for example, water contamination or excessive air pollution.

Cimar: Sustained economic growth leads to more productivity and higher levels of technological innovation. To reach that objective, it is essential to foster entrepreneurship and stimulate the creation of jobs. Brazil needs to invest in qualification and in technological occupations so as to benefit from our demographic dividend (when there are, proportionally, more persons at working age, ready to work): we have 50 million youngsters, many of them unemployed, and currently facing problems due to lack of information, of qualification and of experience. We need to use that workforce.

Retratos Magazine: What are the duties of the IBGE in the 2030 Agenda and in SDG 8?

Cimar: The IBGE has had a leading position in the 2030 Agenda since its creation, with the definition of targets and indicators, and even in the dissemination in Brazil and other Latin American countries. In SDG 8 we have Continuous PNAD as one of the main sources of information. We are talking about one of the most up-to-date surveys in the world considering standards of the International Conference of Labor Statisticians (Ciet, in Portuguese). We are a world reference and have supplied much of the demand for technical cooperation in several countries. Wec use our current PNAD as an instrument to raise information about forced labor, for example, and now intend to expand that initiative with the National Survey of Health. Brazil/IBGE will host the preparation meeting for the 20th Ciet, which have forced labor as its theme.  

Informal work, a theme that is part of SDG 8, is being investigated by the Continuous PNAD. We are also planning to expand the investigation, by introducing some questions related to individual microentrepreneurs (MEI), with the support from SEBRAE. We are also aware of the changes occurred in the International Classification of Status in Employment (CISE). We are used to short-term planning, always with a focus on crises and current economic problems. To work with such an agenda, in which economic growth is based on long-term planning, we see a change of paradigm ahead, and need to be prepared for it.

Retratos Magazine: This SDG also refers to sustainable tourism. How will data on that topic be dealt with?

João: The economic results of tourism activities, simply referred to as “Tourism GDP”, will be obtained by means of the elaboration of the Tourism Satellite Account, in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism. The account will present details about the economic activities that conduct tourism activities within the central frame of the System of National Account of Brazil. So, we need to overcome two challenges in order to obtain that indicator: to delimitate and measure tourism activities, in economic terms, and to obtain results for a subgroup, sustainable tourism. That has to do, among other things, with the development of local culture as a tourism product, still a subject of discussion in international forums in the SDG within the 2030 Agenda. We need to know what internationally established criteria will be considered before we finish the workplan for this indicator.

Retratos Magazine: Decent work is a recurrent topic in this Goal. What is it about?

Cimar: It is a central theme in this SDG. Brazil has one of the worst income distribution levels in the world; we have serious problems of entrance to the job market given one’s gender, color/race, disability.  Our surveys show that we have more than 12 million unemployed persons, most of them women, blacks or browns and youngsters. The threat of child labor, ion spite of the decrease shown in recent surveys, is still a reality in the country. Some of our children and teenagers are still subject to the worst types of work. Decent work is based on the generation of productive and quality employment, on the reach of social protectionand on the strengthening of social dialogue. That is, the promotion of decent work is not only aimed at measures to generate employment and face unemployment, but also at ways of changing types of work that generate insufficient income or that involve unhealthy, dangerous, unsafe, degrading work activities.

Retratos Magazine: The part relative to support to financial institutions and trade: what's its position within the Brazilian context? 

João: Brazil has a very well developed and comprehensive banking system, as shown in the recet reports on financial inclusion of the Central Bank of Brazil. Besides several service units apread all over the national territory, with a predominance of public banks, about 85% of the population aged 15 and over hold accounts for deposits or of financial assets ruled by the banking system. These are, in fact, the indicators selected for the monitoring of target 8.10. Full financial inclusion requires that the population have access and use - in a simple, balanced and conscious way - financial services that can promote welfare, properly and at reasonable prices. In this respect, the population's insertion in the financial system is beneficial, in the case of bank transactions among units and of the obtention of specific loans and fundings that generate investment and gains in productivity for production units. A demand that can be evaluated by means of the indicators of target 8.10, for example, is whether the increase of unemployment and of informal work has led to regression of national financial inclusion indicators.
 

More about SDG 8 can be seen at IBGE Explains