Only 16% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are on track to be fully implemented by 2030, the United Nations has acknowledged in its annual Sustainable Development Report. It warned that none of the 17 SDGs will be met by the target date of 2030, and some SDGs are reversing progress.
The report, highlighting the performance of the UN’s 193 member states in implementing the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), noted that five SDGs which have seen a steady “reversal of progress” or decline in recent years are:
- lowering the obesity rate (SDG2),
- freedom of the press (SDG 16),
- protecting endangered species (SDG 15), and
- increasing life expectancy at birth (SDG 3).
Moreover, the deadline of 2030 will likely need to be extended to the year 2050, it said.
Although most of the news in the report is grim, there are a few bright areas. For instance, the Nordic countries (particularly Finland, Sweden, and Denmark) are global leaders in making progress toward achieving their SDG goals. Likewise, members of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), as well as BRICS+ nations (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE), are all outpacing the world average in making strides toward implementing all of the SDGs.
Source: Sustainable Development Report
“The large majority of countries are supportive of collaborating in order to achieve the SDGs, but there are a number of great powers that do not want to play by the rules of the game,” said Guillaume Lafrotune, Vice President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and lead author of the report.
The report ranked countries on their willingness to cooperate with UN institutions, and the United States was in last place.
According to this year’s report, the biggest challenge toward implementing the SDGs is a lack of long-term investments, which will require a complete reformation of the global financial architecture. The world’s poorest countries are drowning in debt at the same time that they are unable to access affordable long-term sources of funding so that they can make the necessary investments to achieve their SDGs.
New and effective multilateralism
The report makes it clear that meeting the SDGs cannot be accomplished as long as they are addressed primarily on a country-by-country basis. The overarching goals of the SDGs require that nations work under the tutelage of the United Nations in order to protect the environment, transition to sustainable energy systems, and ensure peace and security, to say nothing of an urgent need to avoid the downsides of “runaway technologies” such as AI or the ability to create new biological pathogens.
As such, the UN considers sustainable development as a long-term investment and management challenge, requiring less individual sovereignty over decision-making and financing and more collaborative, multilateral efforts. The UN believes this can only be accomplished by creating a new system of Global Financial Architecture (GFA) in which capital can be easily mobilized from sources of abundance (primarily the private sector) to be invested in low-income and lower-middle-income regions. And the only way to create this GFA will be to create new institutions and implement a global taxation system. Otherwise, individual nations will struggle to make piecemeal progress toward achieving the SDGs.
The current system of individual nations leading the implementation of the SDGs has left at least one billion people trapped in deep poverty, billions more facing serious material deprivation, ever-worsening large-scale environmental crises, and deep divisions amongst the major powers. Only when national governments can rise to the challenge of integrating with the UN’s development strategies and (new) institutional structures can the SDGs ever be accomplished.
The SDGs are the continuation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), first conceived of in the year 2000 with a target date of 2015. Like the SDGs, which the UN admits will not be achieved on time, the MDGs fell well short of their target. The UN report blames this failure on four primary reasons:
- limited progress on transitioning to zero-carbon energy
- a failure to reform the GFA to free up long-term sources of affordable capital for poorer nations
- ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East (because they hamper global cooperation)
- the undermining of the SDGs as a worthwhile goal because of attacks by powerful lobbies, increasing social polarization, and a lack of empowered civil society organizations and academic institutions.
SDG progress – breakdown
A snapshot of the past year’s global progress (or lack thereof) toward achieving SDGs:
- No Poverty – Stagnant
- Zero Hunger – Stagnant
- Good Health – Moderately improving
- Quality Education – Stagnant
- Gender Equality – Moderately Improving
- Clean Water – Stagnant
- Clean Energy – Moderately improving
- Decent Work – Stagnant
- Industry Innovation – Moderately improving
- Reduced Inequalities – (data not available)
- Sustainable Communities – Stagnating
- Responsible Production – Stagnating
- Climate Action – Stagnating
- Life Below Water – Stagnating
- Life on Land – Stagnating
- Peace and Justice – Stagnating
- Partnerships – Stagnating
Source: Sustainable Development Report
As to be expected, high-income countries are making the greatest amount of progress on achieving the SDGs, although it is worth noting that not one has yet accomplished 90% or more of its targets with just six years left to go. Low-income countries have seen a slight reversal of progress since 2022 and are, on average, only slightly over 50% in achieving their SDG targets. Low-income countries are now, on average, more than 15 percentage points behind wealthy nations.
The countries with the top 10 highest SDG scores
- Finland – (86.4)
- Sweden – (85.7)
- Denmark – (85)
- Germany – (83.4)
- France – (82.8
- Austria – (82.5)
- Norway – (82.2)
- Croatia – (82.2)
- UK – (82.2)
- Poland – (81.7)
The 10 countries with the lowest SDG scores
- South Sudan – (40.1)
- Central African Republic – (44.2)
- Chad – (45.1)
- Somalia – (45.4)
- Yemen – (46.9)
- Afghanistan – (48.2)
- Democratic Republic of Congo – (48.7)
- Niger – (49.9)
- Sudan – (49.9)
- Madagascar – (51.2)
The Sustainable Development Report from the UN has been published every year since 2016 following the adoption of the SDGs by member states in 2015. The principal authors of this year’s report were Gujillaume Lafortune (VP of Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)), Jeffrey Sachs, and Grayson Fuller (manager of the SDSN). The SDSN represents more than 2,000 universities, think tanks, national laboratories, and other organizations.
