What's in the way of achieving the SDGs? We asked the experts

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, were adopted in 2015 during the 70th United Nations General Assembly as a “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity” and a blueprint for a sustainable world to be achieved by 2030. Having passed the halfway point of implementation, serious doubts linger regarding the attainability of these targets. This fall, we asked prominent figures in the global development community what they believed was the biggest challenge to meeting the SDGs. The urgent need for finance Several identified the lack of financing as a key barrier to tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. Renowned chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés pointed out that while high-profile pledges are often made during major global summits, governments and corporations frequently fail to follow through with financial commitments. “We made a lot of promises, but [there’s] not enough money behind those promises. … If the governments don't make the right monetary commitments to solve the problems they are promising they want to solve, at the end, we see what we find. “[I]n this global climate change crisis, we are facing people that are contributing the least to the global climate crisis are the people that are suffering the most. Therefore, we cannot be talking about hunger without bringing those that are hungry to the table. We cannot be talking about poverty without bringing people that are poor to the table. And sometimes this is what happens. We need to start giving more voice to the voiceless.” According to Woochong Um, the CEO of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, or GEAPP, one way to increase funding is by mobilizing private capital. “The greatest challenge in achieving SDGs is mobilizing financing to be channeled to developing countries to go from billions into trillions. And that needs to happen really fast, otherwise we're gonna hit a tipping point. So from GEAPP's perspective, we need to play a role in mobilizing huge amounts of resources from philanthropy so that we can deploy our flexible capital with a higher risk appetite, to be able to encourage the private sector to unlock their resources into the developing country space.” And to truly revolutionize food systems, Alvaro Lario, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, stressed that official development assistance alone is not enough: “I think the key part that we always bring up is actually finance and financing. So we have the SDGs, but we also need to finance a lot of these transitions. As the [U.N.] secretary-general has pointed out, one of the transitions for us is the financing of food systems. Food systems can really transform a lot of the rural areas where poverty is concentrated. And what we would like to see is how we can also bring the private sector, especially the local private sector, to support them. “It's clear that official development assistance will not be enough, so we need to make sure to have the mechanisms to also de-risk, to blend finance and to bring that private sector, local private sector, local banks, local financial institutions to support in this transition of food systems, which could be a game changer in terms of hunger, in terms of poverty, in terms of rural jobs. “Just to give you one figure in Africa: In 2015, there were $35 billion of food imports. This next year, we are projecting $110 billion of food imports. Imagine the number of jobs that we could create if we were able to produce locally, transform a lot of these products, just in Africa. It will be a total game changer.” ‘It's not [just] about the money’ As well as highlighting the need for political commitment and funding to achieve the SDGs by 2030, Save the Children International CEO Inger Ashing stressed the importance of coordinating efforts among different partners. “There is not enough political commitment and not enough funding. I do think that we have seen a positive result [during the U.N. General Assembly] with a Pact for the Future. But we need to ensure that there are proper implementation plans behind it, that there is enough funding, and that we are partnering and coordinating our efforts across the different stakeholders to ensure that we are driving the change that we want to see for children and other groups.” Amandeep Singh Gill, the United Nations secretary-general's envoy on technology, also noted that attempts to meet the SDG targets are “fragmented.” “We need to align efforts from the community level to the national level to the international level, reduce the friction, reduce the friction in terms of people's participation and commitment. So that's the biggest challenge. Of course, we talk about resources, but I think this is equally important.” Changing the perspective Lutz Hegemann, president of global health and sustainability at Novartis, proposed that we change the way we approach the SDGs, especially when it comes to overcoming challenges linked to health. “We have to reframe the whole discussion about health that we are not looking at it as an expense item, but into an investment into our future, investment into prosperity. And of course, that's not something that the private sector can drive, but we need politicians, we need decision-makers, policymakers, to adopt that frame. And I think there are enough cases to show that every dollar invested in health care yields a tremendous return on investment, probably more than and I think that is a reframing that needs to happen.” While progress towards the SDGs has been slow, there’s still cause for hope, noted Dorothy McAuliffe, U.S. special representative for global partnerships. “I think the opportunity is around science and technology and how we can utilize the advances in science and tech to help us reach some of these goals quicker — whether we're talking about climate, food security, so many of the challenges that we are facing. Secretary [Antony] Blinken made a big announcement [during UNGA] with the top companies in the world who are focused on AI and the ways they made commitments to some SDGs. It was a very big event, and very powerful in the sense that technology is powerful, and in the right hands and with the right guardrails and the right vision, we have real opportunities to help a local farmer get his or her product to market, get fintech into the hands of more people, get energy into more homes across the continent and other places in the developing world. So I'm not discouraged. I think that there is just continuing to be great focus, and we have to keep working at it.” When asked about the challenges of meeting the SDGs, Degan Ali, the executive director of Adeso, argued that these challenges are deeply intertwined with global power dynamics. “I prefer terms like decolonization because it censors everything in recognition of a very colonial architecture — whether it's the financial architecture, the global governance architecture, and how the U.N. is just so still controlled by five countries who are the winners of World War II. … All of these things are still very colonial, and unless we fix the foundational architecture issues, we're really not going to have any meaningful transitions or SDGs.” Disenfranchised youth and lack of accountability Andrés also pointed out that young people are increasingly disillusioned with politics and the lack of accountability for failing to meet the SDGs. “I think we've seen the young people of the world are very disenfranchised with leadership. It is why we don't see more young people in politics or trying to be in places of power. Everybody claps, and when the clap slows down and is forgotten, everybody forgot the promises. I think, in a way, many of the promises of the U.N. over time, they've not been accomplished. “What we need to make sure is that the promise is made. I was very young when they promised that they will end child hunger. The promise was made to the air like we're gonna achieve this by the year 2000. I don't remember anybody resigning or getting fired for being far away from achieving that. … We're learning that good intentions are not good enough, and doing good and promising good is not good enough. … And overall, we need to make sure that promises made have to be promises kept. If not, young people will keep being disenfranchised. They will not be joining politics and the world will not be a better place, because we will have people that they are almost giving up on. “But I do believe, and I'm hopeful, that these are love amazing young people willing to take action, but we need to make sure that we meet them. We need to give more room to the young people to be the agents of change and giving them the support.”