The SDGs: Our Past, Present and Future

By Gemma Tabet

Written: June 19th 2022

Theme of Issue: SDG 17, Partnership for the Goals. Here is the official UN link where you can learn more about this particular Sustainable Development Goal: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal17

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Photo from Unsplash by Claudio Schwarz

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By now we have all heard of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 17 interconnected goals created to make the future a better place, aimed to be solved by 2030 by all UN member states. The goals are made up of hundreds of targets and indicators for government, businesses and people to follow, providing a “Pathway for Humanity”- where energy and effort can be focused on issues like zero hunger, gender equality and clean water and sanitation. But when were they created? And are we any closer to solving them?

The first traces of the SDGs can be linked to the Millenium Declaration, a document released by Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the late 1990s and adopted on the 8th of September 2000. It declared the world’s intention to work against poverty and for development, with a set of shared values and a range of goals, highlighting the importance of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance or respect for one another, respect for nature and shared responsibility. The document ended with a concluding affirmation; “We therefore pledge our unstinting support for these common objectives and our determination to achieve them.” A new agenda was soon proposed under the form of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) to allow member states to uphold their promise.

These MDGs were eight goals that had very ambitious targets: halving world poverty, reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters, achieving universal primary schooling, all by 2015. They rallied world powers towards a path of global development, in a time of declining concern for international issues. Studies show the MDGs boosted aid to developing countries, access to primary education and free healthcare for children under five, but its biggest success was progress in reducing HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, forming the basis for global health institutions such as the GAVI Alliance.

But the MDGs also had a series of weaknesses caused by what many claimed to be poorly designed targets and various flaws brought by numerous factors such as: a lack of reliable data collection (some targets had little to no data while others were sourced by suspect methods), focus on specific targets, meaning other sectors had to be left behind (for example, the focus on universal primary schooling came at the expense of quality of education and involvement of girls) and finally, there were vague terms for how the goals were to be achieved. Because of these shortcomings, by 2015 it was evident that even if the MDGs had managed a list of achievements, they had not been completed.

This came as a grim realization during the 2012 “Rio +20 conference” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when scientists and researchers warned the UN member states of the urgency of a global switch to sustainable development. Here entered the idea of the SDGs or the 2030 Agenda - a commitment to finish what the MDGs had started, to improve the livelihoods of future generations.

In fact, the Sustainable Development Goals were created through the United Nation’s largest-ever participatory process, in which 10 million people worldwide were asked to express their opinions and views on the 2030 Agenda. This resulted in over 300 goals, and in the course of 3 years with intense lobbying and negotiation was reduced to 17 main goals, adopted on September 25th, 2015. They arrived along with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, and showed the world’s conviction in global cooperation for sustainable development. Not only did the SDGs cover a wide range of issues, but countries agreed on 232 indicators, which specified ideal 2030 data projections, as well as offering a measurement for SDG progress.

And so ended 2015, as the year that seemed to have solved everything. The issues were defined, the solutions were set in stone, and all that was left was achieving the goals, one by one, hand in hand with each nation. Yet, standing in 2022 with only 8 years left till the deadline, one cannot help wondering exactly how the world is doing as countries still face issues brought by the planet’s climate emergency, global humanitarian crises, rising poverty levels and severe inequalities, issues that seem to echo those faced in 2015.

But even with these impending challenges, it is important to remember the SDGs have brought fast-paced progress in almost all sectors, as shown by data collected from the United Nations and yearly SDG progress report. Over the years following their implementation, poverty has dropped, girls’ access to education has risen along with universal healthcare and more. In fact, gains in health and development mean that under-five mortality rates have fallen by more than half since 1990 along with malaria deaths. In 2019 the progress pattern was increasing, albeit slowly in many sectors and with major hitches (for example, SDG 10, Reducing Inequalities, that year saw an alarming increasing share of income to the top 1 percent). Yet a form of progress was being made, a factor that in a post-pandemic world can no longer be assured.

The 2021 and 2022 SDG progress reports show that in the last two years the world is no longer making any advancements in the SDGs. COVID-19 has slowed and is even reversing advancements in the SDGs, marking 2020 as the first year in two decades to see a rise in the global extreme poverty rate along with an increase in food insecurity and violence against women, with a study in 13 countries showing nearly 1 in 2 women report they or someone they know have experienced violence since the start of the pandemic. Furthermore, 90% of countries suffered health services disruption, and even with a temporary reduction of emissions in 2020 because of lockdown measures, greenhouse gas emissions have increased worldwide.

But the seemingly inevitable failure of meeting the 2030 deadline cannot all be blamed on COVID-19. Even without the pandemic, the world was only progressing towards completing the SDGs at a rate of 0.5 points a year, a snail-like pace that would have meant hitting the targets by 2073. This was due to a wide range of factors mainly caused by rich countries, who, instead of being on the frontlines fighting for the 2030 Agenda, were not giving enough importance to the targets, ‘greenwashing’ the media with mentions of companies moving towards sustainability when in reality they simply picked and altered the goals to fit their needs. This echoed governments’ choices to replace many SDG indicators with national proxy indicators, blocking the possibility of a common basis on which to measure global progress. Further, studies in 2019 show that collecting statistics on SDG indicators was deemed trivial by all nations, preventing international bodies to analyze key data needed to create transformative changes and solutions essential for the 2030 Agenda.

The pandemic has simply worsened an already less than ideal situation, where no government seems brave nor willing to step up and take risks for generations to come. In 2019, rich countries were among the laziest to take action (excluding a few nations, such as Norway who were on track for the 2030 Agenda), while faster improvements were seen in poorer or developing nations, which were making rapid progress even if they would never have hit the deadline.

Now, this little progress has either slowed down or been reversed completely, a trend which does not seem to be changing any time soon. But there are still eight years left. Nations should seize this opportunity to use the Sustainable Development Goals as a recovery framework, shifting to systems based on long-term thinking with circularity and sustainability at their core. Data collection should be taken more seriously, as accurate and internationally collected statistics are key to achieving the 2030 Agenda. Leaders should be pushing for a global reform that is for the SDGs and stops acting as if they are utopian, ‘unachievable’ targets. Instead, governments should begin by truly following SDG 17, and finally, show motivation and partnership for the goals.

We cannot allow the SDGs to become meaningless, empty promises. As current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres justly said, “We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do right things for the future.”