Agenda 2030 for sustainable global development was set by the United Nations in 2015. This happened after three years of deliberation among leaders from government, industry and society that began with the Rio+20 conference in 2012, UN (United Nations). The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets (UN 2015) are intended to achieve sustainable development by 2030. Recent progress reports show that many targets and goals are not being met due to the COVID-19 pandemic, violent conflict, climate change (UN 2022; 2023), and financial challenges including underinvestment, falling GDP, increasing investment risk, inflation, and massive debt burden (UN 2024). The UN states that “we cannot persist with a morally bankrupt financial system” which also presents developing countries with considerable barriers to achieving sustainable development goals (UN 2023).
Major transformations in the relationships between developed and developing countries, and between humans and nature, are required to enable global society to achieve the UN’s SDGs. The goals represent a complicated array of ambitions that interact in complex ways. Some goals are complementary and can work in tandem to produce results, other goals are conflicting and require negotiation to find a workable compromise. The complex interactions between the SDGs were not recognized until a group of systems scientists analysed the relationship between some of the goals and targets and how they affected sustainable development in Sweden (Weitz, et al., 2018). These are not widely acknowledged, either, and meaningful transformation is unlikely to occur until they are. Factors such as uncertainty and risk, predictive limitations, siloed approaches, fragmentation, and short-term thinking contribute to this challenge.
Addressing the relationship between the developed and underdeveloped world requires that both sides recognize the exploitative nature of the relationship itself. The origins of this relationship began with the “discovery” of the Americas and Asia in the 15th century by European explorers, funded by merchants seeking to expand their interests in trade, and still exists, in an ever increasingly exploitative nature, in the present day. This created the foundation for the way that globalization and industrialization developed, based on the exploitation of people and nature, and how each system continues to operate in the 21st century (Lewis & Maslin, 2018). The billions of dollars that flow south as development assistance and investment are insignificant compared to the trillions of dollars of economic benefit that flow north (Hickel, 2017). The basic requirements of food, water, health, and education necessary to reduce poverty cannot be provided if this inequality is maintained. There is no incentive for industrial societies to change this relationship.
Climate change is arguably the most pressing global environmental problem, and it will affect food and water security, human and environmental health, and lead to flooding of low-lying islands and coastlines. The recent warming data from Copernicus shows that global temperatures from May 2023 to April 2024 were 1.6oC above the pre-industrial average (Copernicus 2024) and it seems likely that the world will be somewhere between 2 to 3o C warmer by 2100. Despite the rapid increase in global temperatures and impending massive economic impacts, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not meeting the targets necessary to stay under 2oC (UNEP 2023). As with the UNSDG’s, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) agreements are non-binding. The use of fossil fuels will continue to rise as countries compete to maintain economic growth on a shrinking resource base (Hagens, 2020). UNSDG 8 aims to “sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances”, which assumes that infinite economic growth is possible on a finite plant and conflicts with climate change and biodiversity goals.
The current approach to sustainable development is not working and there is little indication of any change in approach by global leadership. The existing global governance structures are designed to maintain economic growth while attempting to treat symptoms such as biodiversity loss and climate change with technology and financial market solutions. The idea that the UNSDGs are complex and that the consequences of unbridled economic growth are systemic problems that cannot be treated effectively with simple economic and technological solutions is new. People are resistant to change and tend to think about short-term problems rather than take a long-term view to consider changes that accumulate over time. A systems perspective on sustainability issues recognizes that humans are part of nature and that living bioeconomic systems behave unpredictably. Managing unpredictability is difficult for decision-makers, influenced by 300 years of deterministic science, to believe that problems have simple causes and can be fixed with simple solutions. Political leaders think in terms of election cycles, and they are unlikely to change unless there is strong public pressure for them to do so. Global corporations may be aware of the social and ecological costs of their business, but these are not included in cost-benefit analysis and corporate decisions are influenced by market trends and the need to make a profit for shareholders.
Changes to how people approach sustainability will come from innovators who recognize the environmental degradation caused by the current human-nature relationship and seek alternatives that deliver human well-being while working to restore the ability of nature to maintain a stable environment.
References
Copernicus 2024 Monthly Climate Bulletin for April. https://climate.copernicus.eu/april-2024-11th-consecutive-warmest-month-globally?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=li&utm_id=news-cb-2404
Hagens, N. 2020. Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism Ecological Economics 169 106520 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106520
Hickel, J. The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. W.W. Norton, New York.
Lewis, S. and M. Maslin. 2018. The Human Planet: How we Created the Anthropocene. Yale University Press.
United Nations 2012 The Future We Want: Outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development https://sdgs.un.org/sites/default/files/publications/733FutureWeWant.pdf
United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for sustainable development (A/RES/70/1). New York, NY: UN General Assembly. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda
United Nations Environment Program 2023 Broken Record: Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again). Nairobi. https://doi.org/10.59117/20.500.11822/43922
United Nations 2024 United Nations, Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, Financing for Sustainable Development: Financing for Development at a Crossroads. Available from: https://developmentfinance.un.org/fsdr2024.
Weitz, N., H.Carlsen, M. Nilsson, & K. Skånberg. 2018. Towards systemic and contextual priority setting for implementing the 2030 Agenda. Sustain Sci 13:531–548. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-017-0470-0
