2024 SDG Reports Reveal Progress, Problems & Potential
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The Latest Data on Advancing the Global Goals
The 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA79) provided an opportunity for world leaders to report on the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Following are the key reports released during Global Goals Week 2024 that both assess progress and lay the foundation for future advancements. Read on for our brief overviews of each and dig into the reports to learn more.
Our Key Takeaway
The SDGs address complex, interconnected global challenges. Recent reports focus on the root causes that either hinder progress — like disease, a a warming planet, and conflict — or that boost it — like empowering women, improving child nutrition, advancing climate action, and leveraging technology. Streamlining interventions and simplifying messaging is crucial given the SDGs’ wide-ranging scope. However, there’s no silver bullet. It will take a deliberate and coordinated effort by all sectors and at all levels — from local practitioners to global governing bodies — to truly accelerate progress towards achieving the Global Goals.
Check out our additional coverage of the Top AI Reports Shaping the SDG Agenda: AI Insights from Global Goals Week 2024.
At the much-hyped Summit of the Future, world leaders adopted a Pact for the Future that includes a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations. This comprehensive framework aims to address long-term global challenges and enhance international cooperation.
The Pact covers a wide range of issues, including peace and security, sustainable development, climate change, digital cooperation, human rights, gender equality, and youth engagement. One of the standout features is the commitment to reform the UN Security Council to make it more representative and effective. This includes addressing the historical under-representation of Africa and other regions, which could lead to more equitable global governance.
The inclusion of the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations highlights the Pact’s future-oriented approach. These documents aim to ensure that technological advancements benefit all and that future generations are considered in today’s policy decisions. It also includes significant commitments to nuclear disarmament and the prevention of an arms race in outer space, which are crucial for maintaining long-term peace and security.
However, the ultimate test of the Pact’s legitimacy and effectiveness will depend on its implementation, strong political will, adequate resource allocation, and inclusive representation of less powerful nations. Ensuring that all member states comply with the commitments and take concrete actions will be crucial for its success. If these challenges can be overcome, the Pact has the potential to create a more sustainable, just, and peaceful global order.
The UN Secretariat’s annual report showcases the priorities and key accomplishments of the broader UN family, with over 100 bodies and organizations, including some 30 agencies, funds, and programs. The UN’s 2023 expenditures totaled approximately $15 billion, reflecting a slight increase from the previous year. The total assistance provided by the UN system exceeded $60 billion.
Priority areas include:
Key achievements include providing food assistance to 152 million people, gaining access to safe water for 36 million people, and vaccinating 133 million children against measles. These accomplishments highlight the UN’s commitment to addressing global challenges and improving the lives of vulnerable populations worldwide.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation published its annual Goalkeepers report with this headline:
The world’s worst child health crisis is malnutrition. Climate change is making it even harder to solve. To protect the world’s children from hunger’s worst effects, we must invest in global health.
Child mortality decreased by 50% from 2000 to 2020, with fewer than 5 million children dying annually. The world also saw significant reductions in infectious diseases, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
However, the period from 2020 to 2025 has seen a troubling rise in child malnutrition rates, largely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Climate change is projected to increase malnutrition, with an estimated 40 million additional children stunted and 28 million wasted by 2050.
The 2024 Goalkeepers report aims to raise awareness and promote innovative solutions to address this critical global issue and its long-term health, education, and economic impacts. Undernutrition leads to an estimated annual loss of $3 trillion in productivity. Malnutrition results in children completing fewer years of schooling and earning 10% less over their lifetimes.
The Foundation proposes the following innovative solutions:
The World Statistics Pocketbook is an annual compilation of key economic, social and environmental indicators, presented in one-page profiles and selected from the wealth of international statistical information compiled regularly by the Statistics Division and the Population Division of the United Nations, the statistical services of the United Nations specialized agencies and other international organizations and institutions.
This year’s edition, the 48th in the series:
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The Results Report highlights the significant strides the Global Fund partnership made in the fight against HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria in 2023.
Since 2002, this partnership has reduced the combined death rate from AIDS, TB and malaria by 61% and saved 65 million lives.
In 2023, Global Fund programs helped put more people on antiretroviral treatment for HIV than ever before, treated more people with TB than ever before, and distributed a record number of mosquito nets to prevent malaria.
The end of AIDS as a public health threat is within reach. The outlook for TB is improving after registering a complete recovery from the impact of COVID-19 in 2023, but the world is still off track to meet the targets to end both TB and malaria as public health threats by 2030.
To combat these intractable health challenges, the Global Fund invests in building strong health and community systems, mitigating the impact of today’s global crises. It also supports countries and communities to advance human rights and gender equality in healthcare access.
This report is a multi-organization high-level compilation of the latest weather, climate, water and related environmental and social sciences for the future.
The report also underscores the necessity of transdisciplinary approaches that help apply science and technology in local contexts and boost their impact by embracing diverse knowledge, perspectives and experiences to co-develop and implement solutions. While significant gaps and challenges remain, enhanced collaboration across scales is essential to harness the full potential of weather, climate, water and related environmental and social sciences to ensure that their benefits are accessible to all.
The report spotlights the Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative, which aims to protect everyone on earth from hazardous weather, water, or climate events by ensuring life-saving early warning systems are in place by the end of 2027. This initiative leverages AI, space-based earth observations, and immersive technologies to enhance weather forecasting and decision-making. It emphasizes participatory engagement methods, such as citizen science, to co-develop locally relevant solutions.
Gender equality is far from being a reality. With only six years remaining until the 2030 deadline, not a single indicator for Goal 5 has been fully achieved.
The latest edition of the UN Women’s annual publication highlights current gender equality trends and gaps, which show that the world is still falling short on its commitments to women and girls.
Ending extreme poverty among women could take 137 more years at the current rate of change.
The report calls attention to proven solutions that benefit women, girls, and ultimately entire societies. It provides numerous facts demonstrating that investing in women’s rights is a pathway to sustainable development. It also highlights the interconnections between the UN-identified six investment pathways for revitalizing SDG implementation (known as the Six Transitions) and gender equality.
Social protection is vital for shielding the vulnerable from the climate crisis. The ILO’s latest report highlights progress since 2015, showing how social protection aids in climate adaptation.
Key takeaways:
Global Status: More than half of the population has some form of social protection, yet 3.8 billion remain unprotected. The report urges closing these gaps and aligning protection with climate goals to support a just transition. Expanding social protection is essential for driving climate action and securing a sustainable future.
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Disclaimer: This article uses various LLMs to edit and proof-read. All content for the article was hand-curated and checked for quality.