{"id":292,"date":"2023-07-17T08:48:59","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T07:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/?p=292"},"modified":"2023-07-17T11:04:59","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T10:04:59","slug":"what-is-the-future-of-the-sustainable-development-goals-to-and-beyond-2030","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/2023\/07\/17\/what-is-the-future-of-the-sustainable-development-goals-to-and-beyond-2030\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the future of the Sustainable Development Goals to and beyond 2030?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yixian Sun, Nicki Schantz, Edoardo Eichberg, Taimiya Khalid and Michael Bloomfield report proceedings from an Earth Systems Governance (ESG) workshop on meeting SDG goal. A modified version of this post was originally published on the <\/strong>ESG website<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n

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On 5 June 2023, the Earth System Governance Research Centre Bath<\/a> organised a workshop in Bath to discuss the future of the SDGs. In collaboration with the ESG Taskforce on the SDGs.<\/a> This hybrid event gathered over 40 experts on the SDGs \u2013 including both researchers and practitioners from various organisations and countries including Utrecht University, Radboud University, University of Oslo, University of A Coruna, Warwick University, Australian National University, Lund University, UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Bath and North East Somerset and Bristol City Councils, Action for Sustainable Development, Brookings Institute, Chatham House, Ideas and Action for Public Good and International Institute for Sustainable Development. Participants discussed key challenges in SDG implementation and goal-based governance approaches and brainstormed policy recommendations to governments and the United Nations.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Prof Frank Biermann<\/a> (Utrecht University) presented key findings on the SDG impact assessment<\/a> led by the GlobalGoals project published in 2022. These indicate that the impact of the SDGs remains largely discursive and has limited transformational effect. He encouraged participants to identify actions and reforms needed for SDG implementation towards and beyond 2030. Prof Jonathan Dawes<\/a> (University of Bath) introduced his research on network analysis of SDG interlinkages. He showed that there are natural linkages amongst certain SDGs, underscoring that his findings provide a backdrop for rich discussion and raised several questions on policy interventions including which goals should be\u00a0 promoted further given their co-benefits and identifying pathways to steer interlinkages among the goals in the next seven years to ensure achievement of the 2030 Agenda.<\/p>\n

During the world caf\u00e9, participants discussed a range of problems related to goal-based governance and challenges to SDG implementation. There is agreement that the SDGs provide a critical and needed framework and meaningfully outline what sustainable development looks like. However, not much seems to have happened on the ground, so a reality check is needed to assess what has prevented the goals from being more impactful. Some called for a radical simplification focusing on \u2018people, prosperity, planet, peace and partnerships\u2019, while others highlighted the lack of political will across governments in truly implementing the SDGs. Many participants also highlighted the need of greater monitoring and accountability mechanisms for SDG implementation as actors tend to \u2018cherry pick\u2019 the goals that can be more easily achieved and institutions dealing with different goals often work in a siloed way. A more critical view that emerged in the discussion is that the SDGs only reinforce the status quo without challenging the conventional business models causing many global crises.<\/p>\n

Two presentations focused on the challenges of implementing the SDGs at different levels and identified policy recommendations towards and after 2030. Prof Pamela Chasek<\/a> (Manhattan College) discussed the challenges of implementing the SDGs amidst a period of global crises, outlining how the global pandemic, Ukraine war, and existential threat of climate change have held back progress on the SDGs. She suggested that the SDGs are not an agenda to be accomplished by governments alone, so public awareness of and support for the SDG implementation is crucial.<\/p>\n

Dr Aurelie Charles<\/a> (University of Bath) used the case of Bath to discuss various challenges of implementing the SDGs at the local level. She shared her experience of working with local stakeholders to develop a Doughnut Economics Framework developed by Kate Raworth to support SDG implementation. Representatives from Bath and Bristol councils also shared their views on SDG implementation and the usefulness of the Doughnut framework.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Over the rest of the workshop, participants formed breakout groups to consider policy recommendations up to and after 2030. The recommendations identified focus on several key themes including i) reforming the UN High Level Political Forum and voluntary national reviews to enhance accountability ii) empowering subnational actors for local implementation iii) making innovative financial mechanisms to support global public goods iv) providing support to collect more accurate data on goals and targets, and v) reconsidering priorities of different countries and regions. Looking ahead, participants pointed to several directions for the goal-based governance approach in the post-2030 era such as reframing the SDGs as \u2018sustainability transition goals\u2019, renegotiating goals and targets by taking into account differing needs of high- and low- income countries and the decolonisation agenda, and leveraging technological advancement and digitization to promote sustainable development.<\/p>\n

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This event at Bath created an opportunity for ESG researchers and related practitioners to take stock of key challenges to SDG implementation and identify actions needed to achieve the 2030 Agenda in the next seven years and beyond. The ESG Taskforce on the SDGs will use the insights generated from this workshop to refine its research agenda and make policy recommendations to the SDG summit in September 2023. While the impacts of the SDGs remained limited in the first half of the 2030 Agenda, it is not too late for governments and other actors to take immediate action to accelerate SDG implementation across different scales and levels. Transformational change is possible only if new momentum can be generated with broader support across the globe and society.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Acknowledgements<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The workshop received financial support from the Internationalisation Fund of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences<\/a> and administrative support from the Department of Social and Policy Sciences<\/a> at the University of Bath.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On the ESG Taskforce on the SDGs<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The Taskforce were launched in 2021 to provide a platform for promoting research on the SDGs. It includes around 100 scholars from more than 30 countries. If you are interested in joining the ESG Taskforce on the SDGs, please contact SDG@earthsystemgovernance.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More information on the Taskforce<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Yixian Sun, Nicki Schantz, Edoardo Eichberg, Taimiya Khalid and Michael Bloomfield report proceedings from an Earth Systems Governance (ESG) workshop on meeting SDG goal. A modified version of this post was originally published on the ESG website. \u00a0   On...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1760,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4Pxr-4I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1760"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}