Saving the SDGs
This is a guest article contribution by Gabriella Leuthner
As the world faces cascading and interlinked global crises and conflicts, the aspirations set out in the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development are in jeopardy.
The COVID-19 pandemic is in its third year, inflation and recession expectations are on the rise, and war in Ukraine is exacerbating food, energy, humanitarian and refugee crises – all against the backdrop of a full-fledged climate emergency.
Is it possible to say the world’s path to sustainable development is still on track?
Do we need to save the SDGs?
The UN SDGs in perspective: 2022
This past July, the UN released its annual?Sustainable Development Goals Report for 2022. The findings in the report are cause for concern and abundantly clear: the SDGs are in jeopardy.
?To keep the SDGs on track, we need to meaningfully accelerate our efforts for the sake of humanity and our future.
In 2015, all UN Member Nations adopted?The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development?and its framework. Within Agenda 2030, there are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) broken into 169 targets and 232 unique indicators across five themes:?
The SDGs cover a wide variety of issues, making Agenda 2030 a holistic, universal, and comprehensive framework for countries, companies, and NGOs. The purpose of the SDGs is to tackle the world’s most pressing issues to promote social inclusion, environmental protection, and thoughtful economic growth.?
Halfway through Agenda 2030, it’s a good time to reflect on what’s worked and what hasn’t worked so far. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was behind in achieving many of the SDGs. According to the 2021 Sustainable Development Goals Report, we’ve made progress across poverty reduction, maternal and child health, access to electricity, and gender equality. Yet this progress isn’t enough to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
Looking at Goal 1, “end all poverty,” between 1990 and 2015, the rate of reduction of people living on $1.90 or less, was one percent per year. We reduced global poverty from 1.8 billion to 741 million people in 25 years.?But, between 2015 and 2017, the rate of reduction decelerated to half a percentage point per year. The UN estimated that if this decelerated rate of reduction trend continued, 600 million people would still be in poverty in 2030, far from the goal of ending all poverty.
In other areas, such as reducing inequality, reducing carbon emission, and reducing hunger, progress has?plateaued or declined.?In 2014 there were 607 million undernourished people in the world. In 2019, there were 650 million undernourished people. These are just a few examples where we’re behind in achieving the SDGs.
Now that it’s over two years since the onset of COVID-19, we have a better understanding of how it’s affected our society and our advances with the SDGs. It’s reversed significant progress in many key areas including poverty, quality education, and good health and well-being.
The UN estimates that in 2022, 75 million more people than expected will live in extreme poverty. It is also projected that over 24 million learners may not return to school because of COVID-19. We are also dealing with global macro conditions like the war in Ukraine and supply chain disruptions. Before the pandemic, we were already struggling to keep up with the SDGs. Now it’s clear that completing the SDGs by 2030 will require immense dedication from all countries, organizations, and NGOs.?
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Are the SDGs worth saving?
Even with the dismaying progress published in the most recent annual report, there’s no doubt the UN SDGs are still valuable. For one, their universal and holistic approach to sustainable development has worldwide recognition. They are widely cited by organizations to measure, track, and report their sustainability work in nearly every country on the planet.?
Ask any average person in New York City, London, Cairo, Dehli, Singapore, or Tokyo if they’ve ever heard of GRI, ISSB, or TCFD. Generally not.
But the SDGs? Everyone knows the United Nations. It’s a unifying global brand and value system.
According to a 2020 study completed by the Global Reporting Initiative, out of 200 companies, 83% of reporters stated that they support the SDGs and see the value in aligning their reports with the Goals. And over 15,000 organizations around the world have signed on to support the UN Global Compact.
The Goals have sparked serious awareness, conversation, and action on how countries and companies can move the needle and solve these complex issues. When used correctly, the SDGs are a great unifying narrative and communications framework. Because the SDGs are so broad by nature, every country and organization can find a cause that is relevant to them and their journey to becoming more sustainable.
How to improve and reform the SDGs
While the broad and universal aspects of the SDGs are beneficial, for many organizations this breadth also creates challenges.?
Many organizations and governments want to create and implement sustainability and human rights strategies. Often, there are obstacles such as lack of support from senior leadership or key stakeholders, lack of funding, lack of collaboration, and/or lack of qualified implementation experts that prevent them from completing this work. Having a framework as broad as the SDGs may feel too overwhelming and vague to many organizations and decision-makers. Tackling societal issues and reporting so holistically on social impact may be too much for some organizations to (a) try to integrate into their ESG plans or (b) accurately measure progress in the specific targets and goals.?
To be integrated more effectively into programs and decision-making, the SDGs need proactive, up-front focus, resourcing, and clarity.
Moreover, with so many goals, targets, and indicators for organizations to focus on, some end up “cherry-picking” how they want to use the goals and sway the data to highlight only the positive aspects of their progress. There have been cases of certain organizations focusing on goals that are the easiest to achieve and report on instead of focusing on goals that may be more difficult to implement but are more meaningful or impactful. By doing so, these organizations promote?a false sense of progress to their stakeholders without actually maximizing progress towards the SDGs.
Ultimately, genuine pursuit of the goals requires honesty, value alignment, and being willing to engage with difficult works, not just use the Goals to highlight reputation wins.?
Room for optimism: the future of the UN SDGs
Even with the concerning outlook from the 2022 Sustainable Development Report, there’s reason to be optimistic. The broad and holistic nature of the SDGs created tangible ways we can work toward creating a better world. While there are pros and cons to their broadness, because of their universality, there is great opportunity for countries and organizations to deepen collaborate on how we can improve our practice, integration, and implementation of the SDGs.?
We are at a very precarious point in history, where our actions over the next decade will have enormous impact in shaping the future of the next 100 years+. If nothing else, one of the reasons we need to stay unified behind the SDGs is because there is no other alternative. The UN SDGs already won the global advertising war on communicating purpose. While current global macro conditions are challenging, we need to continue to push forward and be hopeful for the future. As we begin to look beyond The 2030 Agenda, we need to acknowledge where we can grow and what we can use from the SDGs to work toward a sustainable world.
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