Halfway - but 'Mightily Struggling' toward the SDG Goals
The 2030 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) opened with macro views on the state of efforts to realize the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Delegates then turned to an in-depth review of SDG 17 on partnerships, through the lenses of finance, and of science, technology and innovation.
So, the first of two gatherings - targeting the SDGs - opened on July 10th. This HLPF will continue under UN ECOSOC leadership thru July 19th. This year - and because we have reached the halfway point in the global effort to achieve the SDGs and Agenda 2030 - a Leaders’ Summit will take place at the UN on September 18th and 19th.
The Global Summitry Project (GSP) has ‘had a bead’ on these global efforts for some time. As part of the research focus at the GSP, we have initiated a Global Summitry e-Journal Special Issue: ‘Strengthening Global Governance by Strengthening the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’.
We have raised the question of progress of the SDGs before here at Substack and will likely do so again as we approach the HLPF Summit this coming fall. Let’s recall the focus on the SDGs. The SDGs were passed unanimously at the UN General Assembly in 2015. Agenda 2030, as it was called at the UN, identified 17 goals, 169 targets and at least 241 indicators.
These goals, targets and indicators, unlike the earlier Millennium Development Goals - the MDGs - were designed to apply not just to developing countries but to all countries, whether developing or developed. Agenda 2030 was not then just a classic development effort. This effort, was, and is, a global project for all states. Achieving the SDGs is about securing global development and achieving global sustainability for all - developing, emerging market and developed economies, Global North, Global South - all. Her are the goals:
Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Goal 2: Zero Hunger
Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Goal 4: Quality Education
Goal 5: Gender Equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all
Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy
Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth: Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all
Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities: Reduce inequality within and among countries
Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
Goal 13: Climate Action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
Goal 14: Life Below Water: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources
Goal 15: Life on Land: Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss
Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
The predecessor MDGs, according to Bjorn Lomborg, the current head of the Danish think tank, Copenhagen Consensus Center, in his most recent research Best Things First, saw real progress in the series of limited MDG goals. As Lomborg saw it: “The resulting plan was short and powerful: Eight goals and 18 specific targets” (9).
1. to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger;
2. to achieve global primary education;
3. to empower women and promote gender equality;
4. to reduce child mortality;
5. to promote maternal health;
6. to fight malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases;
7. to promote environmental sustainability; and
8. to develop a universal partnership for development.
Lomberg, however, is quite skeptical of the newer SDG effort. As he describes it, progress is nowhere apparent in the effort to achieve the SDGs:
we see no speed-up around 2015. From 2010 to 2019, progress in the areas that the SDGs are meant to tackle was progressing at about the same rate every year. In other words, we were literally doing just as well on the SDGs before we even came up with them as we did after they existed. (34-35)
Reflections on the SDGs are appropriate in this current year. The UN Secretary-General has called for the HLPF Summit, as noted before, for this coming September 2023. The Secretary General has called the HLPF Summit the “centerpiece moment of 2023”.
Reflections on SDG progress are not positive. One examination underscores this: the Research Report recently released by the respected German think tank, SWP in its Report 7, “Country-level politics around the SDGs”. Marianne Beisheim the editor of this Report makes clear the gap between UN member aspirations and achievements to date:
Despite all the talk about the SDGs, the added value of the SDGs in most policy domains remains unclear as the principles of the 2030 Agenda hardly ever shape policies and measures, and therefore cannot contribute to making them more transformative and geared towards systemic change, integrated and coherent, inclusive and participatory, while leaving no one behind. Hence, in line with other assessments, we diagnose a significant gap between talk and transformative action.(13) … While the SDG architecture at the national level often looks impressive, its political relevance tends to be rather low. And, as other studies have found, even new national institutions set up for SDG implementation tend to “reproduce existing structures and priorities”. But they do also create spaces for civil society participation – even if this is often selective and state-controlled. The more autocratic the political system, the worse this is. (14)
Notwithstanding the lofty aspirations set out by national governments in 2015 most are failing to grasp an ‘SDG roadmap’. Take the U.S. for example. The Biden Administration almost never refers to the SDGs and certainly doesn’t invoke SDG goals when describing budget and expenditure policies. It doesn’t raise it when advocating for a ‘green transition’. The U.S. is one of only a handful of states that has never produced a Voluntary National Review, or VNR. If such a leading state ignores Agenda 2030, it is not difficult to understand the lack of policy expression and any calculus of what has been achieved,or what needs to be achieved by all. What then does this suggest for Leaders’ discussions and international and national efforts to gather public support for policies to reach the goals.
What then should Leaders do? Lomborg describes one approach that he believes is preferable:
Building on our previous project for the start of the SDGs, we have investigated more than 100 potentially great policies to find the very best solutions. Now that we’re at halftime but nowhere near halfway, we need to focus first on the very best policies. We have to do the Best Things First. (34-35)
Whether Lomborg’s approach is ‘the’, or ‘a’ solution remains an open question which we intend to research and analyze further at the GSP with the Special Issue of Global Summitry, as I noted earlier . There we intend to explore where Agenda 2030 is, and how, or whether, we can achieve them. If not what is an appropriate alternate path forward. Can we see a possible revision and slimming of the goals at the Summit? Can we see the UN members setting out interim targets for at least some of the goals to generate some energy and enthusiasm in reach the goals? Or, do we see the UN members ‘doggedly’ retaining the goals and targets?
We will follow the efforts.