The Critical Role Of Digital Technologies In Achieving The UN Sustainable Development Goals

On 17 September, the Imternational Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Development Programme ( 联合国开发计划署 ) and partners convened for?#SDG Digital?at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

As part of our work helping to drive positive change thorough digital technologies, and as a strategist advising organisations on digital transformation for sustainable development, AndAnotherDay | Innovation Designed To Help? was invited to New York to hear what has been done, and what is to be achieved to help reach the UNDP’s targets.

Ahead of New York Climate week and the 8th anniversary of the UN General Assembly adopting the 2030 Development Agenda, this important gathering convened experts from around the world to focus on scaling digital solutions aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through new high-impact initiatives.

What Are The UN SDGs?

On 25 September 2015, the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda titled "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development." This agenda has 92 paragraphs. Paragraph 59 outlines the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the associated 169 targets and 232 indicators.

The 17 Sustainable Goals are:

1. No Poverty - End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. Zero Hunger - End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
3. Good Health and Well-Being - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
4. Quality Education - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
5. Gender Equality - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6. Clean Water and Sanitation - Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
7. Affordable and Clean Energy - Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation.
10. Reduced Inequalities - Reduce income inequality within and among countries.
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
12. Responsible Consumption and Production - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
13. Climate Action - Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
14. Life Below Water - Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
15. Life On Land - Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
17. Partnerships for the Goals - Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.

?These can in turn be grouped in five pillars:

1. People - Ending poverty and hunger while ensuring health, education, equality, and inclusion (SDGs 1-6).
2. Planet - Urgent action on climate change and protecting ocean and land ecosystems (SDGs 12-15).
3. Prosperity - Fostering decent economic growth and work, industry, and innovation, reducing inequality (SDGs 7-11).
4. Peace - Promoting just, peaceful, and inclusive societies and institutions (SDG 16).
5. Partnership - Revitalising global solidarity for sustainable development (SDG 17).

This 5P framework provides a useful categorisation for the 17 goals and gives a sense of the comprehensive and interconnected nature of the SDG agenda. The idea is that progress on all 5 pillars in an integrated way is needed to truly achieve sustainable development. The SDGs provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and in the future.

Are The SDGs On Track?

We are now at midway point between when the SDGs were adopted and the 2030 goal. The SDGs are off target, and some are reversing. There has been good progress in some areas like reducing extreme poverty, improving access to electricity, and increasing representation of women in government. However, we are not on track to achieve many of the goals.

• Hunger is on the rise again globally after years of decline.
• Lack of access to clean water and sanitation remains a huge issue.
• The pace of progress towards quality education and gender equality goals is too slow.
• Climate change mitigation efforts are insufficient to limit global warming to 1.5C or even 2C based on current NDC pledges under the Paris Agreement.
• Biodiversity loss continues at alarming rates.
• Economic growth is not yet decoupled from environmental degradation.
• Global partnerships and cooperation to achieve the SDGs have been impacted by rising economic headwinds and geo-political tensions.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has stalled or reversed progress on most goals and widened inequalities between and within nations.

Accelerated progress is needed on most SDGs to have a chance of achieving them by 2030. Much greater commitment and action is urgently required by countries, businesses, and civil society to put the world on a truly sustainable path.

But the glass is half full.

This is the moment to take stock of achievements, gaps, and opportunities, catalyse action, and step-up digital support for the 2030 Agenda.

17 Goal, 17 Digital Solutions: Digital’s Greatest Test

Digital technologies are key to achieving the UN SDGs through a people-centred digital future.

As part of the?SDG Action Weekend, the event focused on bringing digital SDG solutions to scale, including through new?High Impact Initiatives?for sustainable, inclusive digital transformation.

Globally, there are a lack of digital skills, with 2.6 billion people (1/3 of the world's population) who are unconnected. By getting more people online through a programme of Global Digital Transformation, providing prosperity, health information, and education can be shared making sure that nobody is left behind.

Bridging the digital divide must be one of our highest priorities. While there is strong vision and ample talent to drive this transformation inclusively, progress needs to accelerate dramatically to match the urgency we face. Technology must be developed and governed responsibly, prioritising benefits for society over profits. With ethical frameworks and partnerships between government, industry and civil society, we can steer technology to empower people everywhere, rather than deepen divides. The time for bold leadership and cooperation is now, if we hope to leverage these tools for the greater good while protecting the vulnerable.

Artificial intelligence holds tremendous promise. AI applications are already demonstrating impact by forecasting potential disease outbreaks earlier, enabling rapid response. But we have only scratched the surface of AI's potential, if developed and governed responsibly and ethically. With prudent oversight and priorities directed towards the public good, AI could accelerate discoveries and solutions to our greatest scientific, social and environmental challenges - from eradicating disease to predicting climate impacts to personalising education. Realising these benefits starts with cultivating and investing in AI talent globally, while focusing on rights, transparency and accountability. If harnessed carefully, AI may profoundly improve life for all people and our planet.

By placing practical digital innovation at the forefront of the SDGs we will make a more just, sustainable, and prosperous world to live in where its more inclusive and responsible for all its citizens.

The Internet of Things and proliferation of sensors are generating vast troves of data with immense potential to inform solutions to our sustainability challenges. But we are only beginning to tap into this promise. Real-time environmental monitoring via remote sensing allows more targeted, responsive conservation and climate action. As IoT capabilities grow more sophisticated and widespread, the insights extracted through analytics and AI could revolutionise environmental management across domains from agriculture to infrastructure to disaster response. But to responsibly harness the power of data, we need coordinated governance that ensures transparency, privacy, and benefit sharing, while prioritising sustainability. If developed thoughtfully, data-driven technologies could profoundly accelerate knowledge and progress towards the SDGs.?

Pillar 1: People

Digital to serve people – for the good of all

Targeted digital solutions are already improving livelihoods and access to services for underserved groups in impactful ways:

1. Smallholder farmers across sub-Saharan Africa are leveraging mobile technology to check market prices and boost incomes. Initiatives like Jiva are connecting 525 million smallholders to precision agriculture resources, helping the poorest rise out of poverty.
2. During COVID-19, digital access enabled continued remote education for many - but stark inequities remain. Innovative non-profits like Khan Academy and atingi.org are working to close this homework gap through free online courses.

Yet 10% of the global population still lives in extreme poverty. Eradicating this must be among our highest aims.

To achieve universal digital access critical for enabling progress, we must connect 1 million more people daily until 2030 - a monumental but imperative task. Along with expanding connectivity, success requires:

1. Massive investment in digital infrastructure, especially in developing contexts.
2. Ubiquitous smartphone ownership putting information and services at people's fingertips.
3. Inclusive platforms targeting needs like healthcare, education and financial services.

With focused collaboration guided by moral clarity, digital transformation can uplift billions worldwide.

Pillar 2: Planet

Digital technologies are catalysing breakthroughs in environmental monitoring and protection:

AI-enabled analysis of camera footage allows targeted response to pollution hotspots in waterways, accelerating clean-up with organisations like Gybe pioneering water quality management platforms using real-time sensor data.

Geospatial analytics helps prioritise action - for example, identifying that 93% of river plastic emanates from just 10 large Asian rivers.

In the rainforest, Rainforest Connection (RFCx) filters out animal sounds using AI, leaving only human activities like illegal logging detectable in acoustic recordings.

Such innovations demonstrate how thoughtfully applied technology can empower conservation at scale. With radical advances in sensors, satellites, drones, machine learning and more, we are gaining granular insight into ecosystem dynamics in real time.

Equipped with this intelligence, we can rapidly detect and address threats in diverse contexts from wildlife trafficking to deforestation. Our collective responsibility is to direct these capabilities towards the profound planetary stewardship challenges we face.

Pillar 3: Prosperity

Digital connectivity should be a basic service and it is directly related to a county’s prosperity. Those who have invested in digital have advanced by more than 40% over those who haven’t. The sharing of technologies can help developing countries leapfrog to meet the levels of those in the developed world.

Food waste and security is still one of the biggest issues on our planet. The 930,000,000 tonnes of food that goes to waste every year impacts and limits decent growth in our unjust society.

You can’t have prosperity without a decent, global education system. Giga is a 联合国儿童基金会 -ITU initiative to connect every school to the Internet and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. They map schools’ Internet access in real time, creates models for innovative financing, and supports governments contracting for connectivity. This is done with a team of 20 developers in Barcelona who are building an open-source platform.

Supply chain information can become more transparent and be more readily available to consumers. Open Supply Hub has developed a tool to prove the legalities of activities such as fishing and mining, without revealing sensitive information (such as locations) to competitors. This is all available in real-time and shareable via distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain. Coffee supply chains can be subjective, so Nespresso UK ?has started to utilise it to trace the source of their beans where coffee growers take a photo of handwritten notes directly into an App which is then processed using AI and uploaded to blockchain, which then produces a QR that code.

Pillar 4: Peace?

The digital age presents profound opportunities to advance peace and justice - but also complex risks.

Online disinformation and opaque AI are engendering distrust. Media manipulation and “deepfakes” allow dangerous untruths to spread virally. Online harassment silences marginalised voices.

We must thoughtfully govern emerging technologies or watch them undermine social cohesion. Identifying solutions will require nuance - upholding free expression while combating falsehoods which endanger the public good. Multi-stakeholder collaboration is needed to develop global digital ethics guidelines.

Technological progress cannot outpace wisdom. We must steward these tools towards empowerment, not division. With principled governance and technological safeguards, we can nurture online ecosystems where truth and civility flourish.

The path forward lies in aligning innovation with the human values of compassion and justice. If guided by ethical vision, digital transformation can help humanity progress towards shared peace and understanding.

Pillar 5: Partnerships

The only way to solve the problems and meet the UN SDGs by the deadline is to move away from isolated solutions and to share technologies, data, and discoveries. Digital companies need to work with non-technical enablers with open innovation from the private sector.

It is estimated the cost for the infrastructure alone to connect everyone online will be $400 billion. This responsibility needs to be shared by governments, non-profits, big business and SMEs to provide digital equality. Companies like Verizon have given $3 billion to help, but Governments need to subsidise to poorest people to close the connectivity gap.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is a brilliant initiate which will be the backbone of digital transformation. It will revolutionise the world by rapidly connecting people to government services. Each country can have its own version but underpinned by International Standards ( ISO - International Organization for Standardization ) for transparency, and safeguarding.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)

Digital public infrastructure (which the UK is consider and early pioneer) is described as a set of shared digital systems that should be secure and interoperable. They are being built on open standards and specifications to deliver and provide equitable access to public and private services at societal scale and are governed by applicable legal frameworks and enabling rules to drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust, and competition and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. As infrastructure, they cut through the siloed approach of designing and implementing digital solutions with interoperable, society-scale programmes that shift innovation and competition to activities that take place atop it.

The scale and scope of digital transformation globally necessitates DPI approaches to maximise the opportunities to accelerate the SDGs and reduce the risks that digital technologies bring. The conventional approach is to create specific solutions to specific problems that work in specific contexts only. An alternative approach is to think ‘DPI’ – a combination of the right technology architecture, transparent, accountable, and participatory governance-enabling local digital ecosystems to drive sustainable innovation and scale.

With a DPI approach, countries can advance a range of development objectives and respond better during crisis. Although each piece of DPI can have impact on its own, the interaction of this infrastructure can unlock the most significant impacts in countries and across the SDGs. DPI can accelerate global economic growth, support the transition to sustainable and green economies, and grow accessibility and public trust in institutions.

In line with UNDP’s whole-of-society approach to digital transformation, the solution is working towards building an inclusive and rights-based DPI focuses on:

1. Building partnerships & alliances
2. Delivering government support
3. Catalysing population-scale technology
4. Shaping local digital ecosystems
5. Advocating for human rights and safeguards
6. Facilitating research & learning exchanges

DPI is being developed on an open architecture for equal access and best practices that puts people first and is underpinned by the universal safeguards framework (DPI-safeguards.org) and strong design principles that are more than a set of guidelines. They are a wealth of knowledge as a point of reference on how to address the digital divide.

Alongside DPI Safeguards, CODES has been set up. CODES (Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability) is a global community which commits to meaningful, bankable, and sustainable DPI blueprints to be scaled globally whilst ensuring data quality, accessibility and interoperability in maintained.

Financing is going to be the main thing holding back us delivering DPI. It needs a more ambitious, innovative funding solution to drive the most impact along with mapping and analytics to ensure investment is going into the correct areas. Investing in large scale project such as international undersea cables as digital backbones will need collaboration from all players.

DPI features don’t need to be long drawn out lengthy development programme taking years to produce. During the pandemic, Togo built a digital cash transfer platform to allow pay-outs to all adults, using AI to identify the recipients in just 10 days!

This Moment Calls For Decisive Leadership

The coming decade represents digital technology's greatest test. With vision, leadership, global cooperation and principled design, we have an opportunity to harness this immensely powerful tool to substantially improve billions of lives and safeguard our planetary home for posterity. But we must acknowledge the gravity of the challenges we face, and work collectively towards ethical, responsible technology deployment that leaves no one behind.

I believe the time for action is now. 2030 may feel distant but will be here faster than we realise. The SDG targets grow more pressing by the day. We need public and private sector leaders with the wisdom and courage to steer an ambitious course towards a just, inclusive and sustainable digital future, resulting in renewed prosperity, health and equilibrium for both people and planet. The SDGs represent our North Star. The digital transformation unfolding around us must be directed with utmost intention towards this shared destination.

Now is the time for action… not tomorrow, not when we restore growth to pre-pandemic levels.