Sustainable Development Goals and a Better World

In 2015, the United Nations unveiled its Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, which are 17 interlinked objectives meant to light the way to a future of prosperity for humanity and well-being for the planet. All 193 UN members committed to working toward achieving the objectives by 2030. Throughout 2023, GrantStation will be spotlighting the SDGs by examining the initiative and the roles that can be taken in collaboratively addressing its objectives, helping network nonprofits into existing efforts to achieve its goals, and assessing what our Members are doing around the issues.

The 17 SDGs are no poverty; zero hunger; good health and well-being; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation; affordable and clean energy; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation, and infrastructure; reduced inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water; life on land; peace, justice, and strong institutions; and partnerships for the goals. GrantStation supports these ideas, and through the articles offered over the course of this year, we seek to provide informative and analytical discussion on the goals.

Let's start by acknowledging that the SDGs face tests. Legally speaking, they aren't binding. Economically and politically, hopes for a green future must confront the power of fossil fuel companies, whose subsidies from global governments tripled to $531 billion between 2020 and 2021. Logistically, achieving no poverty and zero hunger on a warring and economically unequal planet where population recently passed 8 billion is a staggering challenge. Goals centered on equality face social resistance in high- and low-income countries alike from those who don't want an inequitable status quo to change. We'll discuss these and other hurdles in more detail as the year progresses.

The History of the Sustainable Development Goals

The seeds of the Sustainable Development Goals germinated within a previous UN initiative—the eight development goals established at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in the year 2000. These global objectives, known as the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, were to be met by 2015. A key element of implementation was the finance ministers of the G8 countries agreeing in 2005 to provide sufficient funds to the African Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank to achieve the cancellation of $40 to $55 billion in debt owed by poor countries. Those countries were then to redirect cash to health, education, and poverty programs.

While most of the targets were not reached, many gaps were narrowed. The goals that were fully achieved were those aimed at lessening poverty and malaria, increasing water access, and reducing gender disparities in education. The goals that were missed by wide margins were those dealing with reversing the degradation of environmental resources and reducing biodiversity loss. In terms of meeting goals, it's worth noting here that some experts dispute the very nature of the UN's metrics. For example, the UN's extreme poverty target of $1.25 a day is inadequate, according to many observers, to avoid malnutrition and early death.

In any case, with the 2015 MDG deadline having been reached, the UN agreed upon the SDGs as successor goals, and set 2030 as a deadline. The blueprint for achieving these began with pledges from world governments to “secure greater leadership, more resources and smarter solutions, embedding the needed transitions [into] policies, budgets, institutions, and regulatory frameworks” at all levels, and “mobilizing people, civil society, the media, the private sector, unions, academia, and other stakeholders to generate an unstoppable movement pushing for the required transformations.”

Several years later, in September 2019, the UN called for a Decade of Action to meet the 2030 deadline. But right on the heels of that announcement COVID-19 struck, and by early 2020 had become a pandemic. During the global health emergency, throughout which leaders were exhorting citizens toward shared sacrifice, the overwhelming majority of governments cut their health, education, and social protection spending, according to a report by Oxfam, and 95% of countries froze or lowered tax rates for the rich and corporations.

In the U.S., even as pandemic deaths surpassed 1 million, American billionaires saw their combined wealth rise 58%. That was $1.7 trillion, or, to give it the epic scale it truly deserves, $1.7 million multiplied by one million. COVID-19 was a disastrous setback on almost every front the SDGs have targeted. It sent at least 70 million people into poverty. Nevertheless, the SDG framework remains a bold and grand vision of improved lives for billions of people, and for the moment, the 2030 deadline remains, though many of the 17 goals could be missed. “It would be easy to lose hope,” UN Secretary General António Guterres commented in September about the setbacks of recent years. “But we are not hopeless. Or helpless. We have a path to recovery. If we choose to take it.”

What Happens Next

The UN's SDG website outlines the next steps: “While the SDGs are not legally binding, governments are expected to take ownership and establish national frameworks for the achievement of the 17 Goals. Countries have the primary responsibility for follow-up and review of the progress made in implementing the Goals, which will require quality, accessible, and timely data collection. Regional follow-up and review will be based on national-level analyses and contribute to follow-up and review at the global level.”

Later this year, the UN will hold its second SDG Summit in New York City, at which world leaders and country representatives will review the 17 goals. The agenda will include discussions of how governments are responding to the interlinked crises facing the world and “the deterioration of key social, economic and environmental indicators,” with a focus on basic needs. The summit will also include international organizations, the private sector, civil society, women, youth, and other stakeholders, who will all have a seat at the table with heads of state and high-ranking officials.

The SDGs cannot be achieved without strategic involvement and on-the-ground assistance from the nonprofit community. In times of need, governments always look in this direction for help, and the globe-spanning blueprint of change being championed by the UN is no different. Hard work requires both energy and experience. The nonprofit community has long been a wellspring of the first, and a crucible for gaining the second. It is also a sphere of endeavor that typically embraces values such as social responsibility, consensus building, and collective action—all important ingredients in empowering the type of change the SDGs seek.

Working toward the SDGs even on local and state levels can make a difference. And beyond striving for the goals directly, activism and advocacy in support of their ideas—and in support of functional democracy broadly—could be crucial. 2023 and 2024 will see 90 national elections take place across the planet, including in the United States, making the next two years pivotal in terms of whether governments will engage with the UN in good faith, or move toward isolationism. The possibility of a making a better world may hang in the balance.