In 2015, the international community agreed to a bold and transformative plan of action to secure the rights and well-being of everyone on a healthy, thriving planet — the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Today, this promise is in peril.
We had some quick wins after the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, were adopted alongside the 2030 Agenda — in reducing poverty and child mortality, in the fight against diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, and in expanding electricity access, to name a few. But too much of this progress was fragile and most of it was too slow.
For the first time in decades, some development progress is reversing under the combined impacts of climate disasters, conflict, economic downturn, and lingering COVID-19 effects. Unless we take urgent action now, the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been. This collective failure will be felt in every country — but the burden will fall most heavily on low- and middle-income countries and the world’s poorest people.
About the author
Li Junhua
Li Junhua is the undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the secretary-general of the U.N.’s Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, in Seville, Spain, from June 30 to July 3, 2025. Information about the conference is available on the United Nations website.
