Opinion: Hanging by a thread — turning our world toward 2030

Progress on sustainable development: too many years, too many conferences, too many speeches. Some moments resonate more than others though. Four years ago at a meeting in Fiji, I was listening to remarks by the then-Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama. He spoke of the traditional Fijian magimagi, or coconut fiber rope, and he described how the alchemy of the ocean and the stress of the sea can bind individual strands to give strength rather than cause decay. These individual elements twist together to form something collective, creating a form that is strong enough to endure. This could describe what has been underway since 2015, with the adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Seventeen strands began to twist together and could become the rope to which we cling and pull ourselves to safety. We have just passed the halfway mark in our 15-year plan to transform our world. I was privileged to have played a role both in the agreement that was struck in 2015, as Ireland and Kenya co-facilitated negotiations on what would become the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and in the recent negotiations on the SDG Summit political declaration, adopted by consensus at the United Nations this September under the excellent leadership of Ambassador Fergal Mythen, the permanent representative of Ireland to the U.N. and Ambassador Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al-Thani, the permanent representative of Qatar to the U.N. Back in 2015, the SDGs were an agenda of hope, a vision for a future that we could manifest through cooperation and solidarity. COVID-19, climate change, and conflict have since blown us off course, asserting the power of reality over ambition. The global response to the pandemic showed that self-interest continues to win out over the common good. There is a weakening of our conception of shared humanity, a tragic “othering,” as evinced by events now unfolding in Gaza and Israel, Sudan, or Ukraine. There are currently at least 362 million people globally in need of humanitarian assistance, which shows us that hope alone is not enough and aspiration is not a strategy. The last eight years have given time for reflection. The SDGs as a tool for structural change Our world is rife with inequality, poverty, and hunger. Billions are denied a quality education. New technologies increase exclusion rather than lessen it. Economic models enrich the few rather than the many. The pursuit of prosperity in the short term ignores how actions today damage our world and impact tomorrow. Understanding the 2030 Agenda not as a series of optimistic objectives, but instead as a coherent manifesto for structural change, as a bleak diagnosis with a grueling course of treatment, could be a more useful way of interpreting the 2015 agreement. It is vital that we understand what has happened to the SDGs over the last eight years. Thankfully, there is a huge amount of data to draw from, and we know what isn’t working. Last month saw the launch of the Global Sustainable Development Report. This is issued every four years and is a science-based deep dive into where we are and how we can get to where we want to go. The report makes grim reading but does identify scenarios where the SDGs can be progressed. The GSDR embraces the 2030 Agenda as an interconnected system rather than a series of linear targets. Understanding the linkages between the SDGs based on context, and allowing for the interplay that can produce synergies while accounting for trade-offs and spillovers, can move the world from commitment to action. The report identifies actions for transformation that could significantly accelerate SDG achievement. But this means turning away from business-as-usual strategies and an approach of “the same, but more,” instead working cohesively across government, business, science and technology, and individual and collective action. The answers are there, we must take the right turn. The SDG political declaration shows the way The SDG political declaration adopted last month is an attempt to move the tiller — to turn our world toward 2030. While in some ways the most important achievement of the political declaration is the clear reaffirmation by all U.N. members of the continued validity of the 2030 Agenda, the majority of the document is made up of concrete actions — not of iterative language restating development principles. Admittedly, some are recommitments of previously made pledges, such as in relation to official development assistance or developments at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change or Convention on Biological Diversity. But there are new elements that chime with the transformative actions called for in the GSDR: the integration of the SDGs into national policy frameworks; exploring measures of progress that go beyond the narrow barometer of gross domestic product; and harnessing data to track progress on implementing the SDGs while analyzing interlinkages across the SDGs, including the implications of synergies and trade-offs. The declaration commits not just to leaving no one behind, but actually identifying those who have been. We cannot reach the furthest behind first if they are invisible to us. What’s more, the SDG declaration breaks new ground on financing. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has done much to draw attention to the structural flaws in our international financial architecture — identifying the role it plays in slowing the necessary SDG transformations. Over months of difficult negotiations, consensus was found on committing to advancing the secretary-general’s SDG stimulus proposal to tackle the high cost of debt, enhance support to low- and middle-income countries, and massively scale up financing for development — potentially generating $500 billion annually to accelerate action for the SDGs. In the SDG political declaration, leaders are calling for the rechannelling of Special Drawing Rights and to explore ways for future SDR allocations to benefit countries most in need. Perhaps most significantly, U.N. member states have declared support for reform of the international financial architecture, including both international financial institutions and multilateral development banks. We can provide the fiscal and policy elbow room needed by the most vulnerable countries to implement the 2030 Agenda, realizing its potential to bring prosperity and sustained peace. We need to take action now to save the SDGs, and the political declaration shows the way. Future development summits This ambitious SDG declaration is only a few weeks old, but the process leading up to it has already added momentum to related discussions in the Group of 20 leading economies and during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings, which have just concluded in Marrakech, Morocco. Next year’s Summit of the Future will provide a forum for deeper discussions that can give further form to the commitments made at the SDG Summit. The coming years also include the World Social Summit and the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, both slated to take place in 2025. The next and final SDG Summit will be in 2027. By then, course correction will be too late. We must start turning our world now. This brings me back to the words I heard in Fiji and the magimagi, intertwined coconut fibers which grow stronger as they are exposed to the elements. I sense that in the eight years since 2015, individual strands have become taut and bound together, weathered by change and setbacks but developing a new and necessary coherence as a result. The slender threads have wound together, creating a cord that could be strong enough to endure.