Embracing transformation: Three ways to accelerate commitment and renew solidarity towards the 2030 Agenda

2023 marks the half time goal post on the SDG journey toward 2030. However, seven years before the deadline we are far from the halfway mark. On the contrary, the world is seriously off track with regards to the ambitions it set itself in 2015. In fact, as the UN Secretary General outlines in his Special Edition of the SDG Progress report, only 12 per cent of the targets for which we have data are on track, close to half are moderately or severely off track, and one in three are either not advancing or have regressed below the 2015 baseline.

Does this mean that the SDGs are meaningless and should be abandoned as a framework for progress? Absolutely not.

We are at a crucial juncture for the future of humanity. We cannot afford losing hope and giving in to defeatist narratives, encouraging people to navel gaze and withdraw from the world. On the contrary, this is a moment in time that calls for our resilience and redoubled effort, as well as the courage to identify obstacles and bottlenecks, and speak out to address them.

Why are we off track and what needs to change?

We started into the new framework in 2015 with an amazing global commitment towards sustainable development everywhere in the world and for all. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which encompasses the Paris Agreement for Climate Change and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development,  de facto categorizes every country in the world as a developing country. In fact, “no country is yet convincingly able to meet a set of basic human needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use,” as the Global Sustainable Development Report in 2019 put it. The agenda asks to “transform our world” and puts forward a ‘nested’ vision of the three dimensions of sustainable development with a regenerative and distributive economy at the service of people, within planetary boundaries. The agenda sets out a vision for the medium and long term, emphasizing the need to focus on impact beyond short term interventions which are often driven by electoral cycles. It also redefines partnerships and means of implementation, highlighting that knowledge and innovation sit everywhere and new ideas are increasingly coming from low- and middle-income countries, which leapfrog towards new solutions, backed by young populations, ready to embrace change and opportunity. The agenda also establishes the need for a just transition, addressing current and historic inequalities within and between countries, thus emphasizing that sustainable development extends far beyond technical cooperation, and is ultimately a political endeavour, which requires the world’s commitment to face unfair systemic relations between groups of people and entire nations. The agenda also demands that countries address negative spillovers that stem from domestic efforts to ensure wellbeing within their boundaries, and that they face historic legacies, especially when it comes to resource extraction, trade, technology transfer and financing of the agenda.

However, over the last seven years, efforts to address the 17 goal areas have remained largely disjointed despite the increased awareness and lip service paid to the 2030 Agenda. A recent study on the political impact of the goals found indeed that the changes have been “largely discursive, affecting the way actors understand and communicate about sustainable development.” However, “more profound normative and institutional impact, from legislative action to changing resource allocation, remains rare”. The authors conclude “that the scientific evidence suggests only limited transformative political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals thus far.”

While awareness about the goals has increased and the notion of sustainable development has gained traction, many efforts have remained in the realm of ‘business as usual’ when it comes to interventions within different sectors.  The 2030 Agenda demands focusing on synergies across sectors, yet our systems are still mainly set up for sector-specific interventions, designed by area-specific experts.

However, the awareness has grown that interventions in one area will invariably have an effect on other issues and that the identification of synergies and the management of tradeoffs can provide for more efficient and effective solutions. The climate crisis has heightened the understanding of the connections between every aspect of human life and the effects in terms of climate change. For example, discussions about food security in light of a growing world population, invariably demand to look at the linkages between agriculture and land use change to increase the food that is available, with subsequent possible biodiversity loss and CO2-equivalent emissions and their effect on climate change.

While the Covid-19 pandemic has seriously thrown off development progress and severely increased inequalities, it served as a case in point when it comes to understanding cross-sector systemic connections between a public health issue with essentially every aspect of human life from education, employment and livelihoods to opportunity and rights. The pandemic as well as the effects of climate change have also underlined time and again that risks are distributed unevenly and those affected most by negative effects of systemic crisis are often those who contributed least to them or have no ability to find private solutions to protect themselves from the consequences.

Overall, this challenges the way we develop sector-specific expertise, design policies and communicate about progress. It demands new capabilities to manage and communicate long-term transformation. An understanding of systemic connections also demands renewed solidarity within and between countries to address risks and threats to human wellbeing and the planet.

So asking again – in light of all these shortcomings in addressing the goals, have they outgrown themselves and we should now focus on some kind of new framework, looking at a horizon of 2050?

While the focus toward 2050 is helpful to ascertain the longer-term ambition for humanity and build scenarios for a desirable future, at the halfway point we should concentrate our focus on accelerating efforts and renewing commitment toward the essence of our collective commitment by 2030 instead.

To do so, countries could rally around three approaches:

Embrace transformation and focus efforts

We must make the best possible use of the limited means we possess. The Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) 2023, which will be officially launched during the SDG Summit in September 2023, endorses the six entry points for transformation, which the 2019 edition of the report had already presented. Investing in those areas and activating different levers to accelerate transformation is likely to reap benefits across all goal areas. Entry points include “investing in human wellbeing and capabilities”, “sustainable and just economies”, “sustainable food systems and healthy nutrition”, “energy decarbonization and universal access”, “urban and peri-urban development”, as well as a focus on “global environmental commons.”

At the same time, we must be cognizant that every change process goes through different stages, whether at a micro or macro level. In fact, the GSDR proposes a framework to look at phases of transformation in order to identify old paradigms in decline, while focusing on ways to accelerate the advent of new and more sustainable paradigms. It demands that we consciously accompany the transition from one to the other, clearly identifying detractors, losers and winners and designing strategies to manage the transition without leaving a part of the population behind.

Since sustainable development demands contextualized solutions, there are no recipes that could be followed. However, we can and must learn from concrete approaches and experiences. The high-level political forum (HLPF) with the presentation of Voluntary National and increasingly also Voluntary Local reports is an important forum to assess progress. However, beyond the success stories, we must increase a culture of sharing failures and difficulties and ways to overcome them, if we are to truly learn from each other.

Increased focus must also be given to approaches to SDG Integration, policy coherence for sustainable development and systemic approaches, strengthening opportunities to share and access practices, frameworks and case stories. The Integrated Policy Practitioners network is one place where such exchanges are taking place.

Overall, in order to steer this transformation, the world community needs capable and accountable administrations and civil servants, truly committed to the public good. This also requires a renewed focus on governance, anti-corruption and a rights-based agenda.

Ensure a just transition

Recent years have witnessed an erosion of trust in governments around the world, along with rising populism. Some of it may have been triggered by or amplified through social media mechanisms and digital communication, which spreads negative and sensationalist news more than other information – whether through the logic of algorithms meant to increase attention span and exposure to advertisements or whether through more malicious intent. At the same time, much frustration and anger is the result of  increasing inequalities within and between countries and a growing sense of exclusion and lack of fairness in terms of access to opportunities and progress. This includes inequalities and injustices based on socio-economic status, as well as inequalities driven by gender, ethnicity, race, ability or sexual orientation.

As a follow up to the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, the UN Secretary General summarized the need to strengthen social cohesion through two calls to action for countries to recommit to the 2030 Agenda as Our Common Agenda, demanding the world community to “re-embrace global solidarity and find new ways to work together for the common good”, and to “renew the social contract between governments and their people and within societies, so as to rebuild trust and embrace a comprehensive vision of human rights.” He emphasized that “people need to see results reflected in their daily lives.” 

This also means that we must rethink the very notion of progress and how it is measured. Over the last years, various efforts have been made to go beyond GDP as a measure of progress and wellbeing and to measure the ‘sweet spot” i.e. the ability of countries to achieve a decent standard of life for all, without overshooting on planetary boundaries. One example is the planetary pressures adjusted Human Development Index (PHDI), put forward by the Human Development Report Office, which deducts a factor related to the pressure on natural resources from a country’s human development index. It essentially shows that countries with a higher human development index weigh much more strongly on planetary resources than most countries with a lower human development index. This means that the current trajectories of high-income countries are unsuitable and unsustainable and cannot serve as examples to countries who aspire to higher standards of living. The global challenge remains to identify country contextual pathways towards high human development, without overusing natural resources.

Engage all actors and build their capacities

While governments are ultimately accountable for SDG achievement, they can’t achieve the goals alone. A whole-of-society effort is needed. To activate all of society there needs to be a genuine recognition of the meaningful role that the various actors can play and the importance of their perspective. In order to devise meaningful sustainable solutions, governments must get much better in integrating the perspective of all members of society, including those who are typically less engaged and heard in discussions about the future of the country and ways to ensure wellbeing for all. This includes young people, indigenous populations and minorities, people with a migratory background, people living in remote areas, and people who have had less access to education, always ensuring equal participation of women and men in all deliberations.

For this engagement to be meaningful, it must however go beyond the tick-box exercise of consultation. Meaningful participation must entail a connection between the deliberations and the decisions made. The actors involved must also feel able and empowered to bring in their perspective. In fact, the upcoming GSDR 2023 has added a new lever that must be activated in order to accelerate the necessary transformations: capacity building. The Report identifies five areas that require specific capacities for enabling and navigating transitions. First, the area of strategic direction and foresight, which includes the need for capacities related to visioning for the long-term and engaging actors to create ownership; second, the area of innovation and the generation of new alternatives, which includes the ability to scale and replicate solutions over time, as well as the provision of protected and informal spaces to nurture innovation; third, orchestration, engagement and negotiation, which includes coordination across actors, sectors and scales, the ability to take a systems approach and to ability to foster political willingness and public awareness for change, as well as the ability to manage conflicts. The fourth area relates to identifying and overcoming impediments, which demands to recognize unsustainable trajectories, diagnose system lock-ins and undesired effects and finally the area of learning and resilience, which includes the capacities to generate knowledge about system dynamics and feedback and the ability to strengthen institutional networks, monitoring and continuous learning.

Specific capacities required vary from context to context and based on the phases of transformation. Overall, sustainable development must be seen as a goal and a means to achieve it at the same time.  We must rebuild societal consensus for the world we want to live in. Despite all disincentives and negative developments, we cannot leave the planet to the particular interests of a small minority. This not only requires bold action and renewed commitment from governments around the world. It also demands every individual to revisit their particular privilege and agency and renew our individual commitment towards people and planet, playing our part humbly and honestly, whether at home, in our communities or at work.

To conclude with the words of the UN Secretary General in his Special progress Report:

“In moments of severe challenge, humanity has always come through. Now is another of those moments. The SDG Summit, in September 2023, must signal a genuine turning point. It must mobilize the political commitment and breakthroughs our world desperately needs. It must right the historic injustices at the core of the international financial system to give the most vulnerable countries and people a fair chance at a better future. It must deliver a Rescue Plan for People and Planet.”