Reflections on the SDG Summit and the 2023 High Level Week at the UN
Steve Nation
Every year, when a new session of the General Assembly opens in September, the UN becomes a focus of global attention as Heads of State stand before the world body to declare their government’s perspective on current issues.
This year’s high-level events began with the all-important SDG Summit – an attempt to generate political leadership from governments to “recharge momentum” and “accelerate actions” designed to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The need is great as the promise and hope embodied in the Goals is “in deep peril.“ After some progress in the early years of the Goals, multiple global crises have reversed progress in key areas and today only 15% of the Goals’ targets are on track to be achieved by 2030.
Strong Presence of Developing States
While several of the most powerful governments were not represented by Heads of State (including four of the five Permanent members of the Security Council and major G20 countries like India, Indonesia and Mexico), this had the effect of creating an atmosphere in the Hall that was dominated by the presence of leaders from a large number of developing states. One commentator even noted that the first two-thirds of US President Biden’s speech to the General Assembly “directly addressed the concerns of the developing world in ways that I have not seen in 18 years of covering this confab”.
The governments of Ireland and Qatar led months of negotiations leading up to the Summit that culminated in a final Political Declaration. The Declaration represents a clear statement of purpose and vision. As Simone Galimberti, co-founder of a non-profit organization promoting social inclusion in Nepal writes, the final declaration agreed upon “contains some bold language that truly makes an attempt at securing the international community’s steadfast leadership towards the Agenda 2030.” Practical achievements, strongly pushed for by the UN, included an SDG Stimulus Plan to “massively increase financing for developing countries’ investments in SDG projects.” Yet, as Galimberti also points out, several practical proposals (like the 2020 proposal for a New Social Contract) pushed by the Secretary-General and supported by a number of countries from the south, were omitted from the final declaration”. And, “unfortunately, the number of $ 500 billion annually proposed by Mr. Guterres [for the Stimulus Plan] did not make the final cut.”
Time to Invest in Development at Scale
In his closing remarks to the Summit the Secretary-General referred to the Political Declaration as a: “development to-do list”, noting that “this is not just homework. This is hope work … We have a rescue plan before us in the Political Declaration. Now is the time to lift the Declaration’s words off the page and invest in development at scale like never before. Now is the time to go back to your countries and get to work on the policies, budgets and investments needed to achieve the SDGs.”
It should come as no surprise that this Summit did not produce any dramatic changes of policy from governments that are struggling to chart a way through a period of intense international division, partisanship and competition. As Galimberti writes, “After all, at the United Nations everything that sounds too political (and truly transformative) is going to be strongly pushed back by the member states, especially those which have their own ‘unique’ understanding of democracy and human rights.”
Focusing Will Energy
Yet there are other ways of looking at the significance and impact of the SDG Summit than the policies of governments. The attention of World Goodwill’s supporters during the event was largely concentrated through a Cycle of Conferences visualization seeking to plant seeds of living will energy into the thinking underlying the Summit. And this invites us to look at the event in terms of its impact on, not just the will to make progress on the SDGs, but on a deeper will to develop policies grounded in, and inspired by, a recognition of the unity of all life and motivated by an urgent need to develop economic systems that value sharing and simplicity.
Building this sort of shared will requires that not only governments, but all people of concern, re-examine the role they are playing in helping to shape the newly interdependent world. Within countries a major international conference, like the SDG Summit, generates dialogue and debate as different stake-holder groups prepare for the big international event. And these provoke some deep thinking, alongside the usual politicking. The build-up to the Summit involved a wide range of local and national government agencies, politicians, academic and professional groups, the business community, educators and all manner of civil society associations, movements, and groups from every part of the world. Surveys (like the Stimson Institute’s Global Governance Survey) were organized and Reports (like the Future of International Cooperation Report 2023) released. Preparatory national and regional conferences were held. All through this process, forces advocating for the status quo rub up against forces inspired by a vision of ending poverty, protecting human rights, preserving biodiversity, and fostering a healthy natural environment. This is how we can see humanity’s visionary will quietly maturing. It is often un-noticed, yet it grows in terms of an intuitive sense of where the world is headed amongst deeper thinkers and servers from all sectors, professions, disciplines and spiritualties and how this shapes the sense of purpose guiding their lives; and it also grows in terms of a more youthful and necessary sense of urgency to act and organize in ways that express a sense of responsibility for the good of the whole.
UN as Facilitator
The UN plays a role of facilitating, prodding and stimulating the will of governments to build a better world. It was significant that, in facilitating the Summit and the week’s various events, the week was designed to begin with a series of events and consultations with civil society. As the Secretary-General stated during one of these events: “It’s not governments that will deliver the SDGs, it is society as a whole that will deliver the SDGs, and if society cannot express itself then there is no way the SDGs can be achieved.”
Nowhere was this process of a major international conference becoming a focal point for the building of will more evident during the SDG Summit than in some of the side events preceding the Summit and accompanying the Summit (including the SDG Action Weekend and the UN Global Compact Leaders’ Summit) and throughout the High-Level Week.
A Panel Discussion at UN HQ organized by The Coalition for the UN We Need (C4UN), From the SDG Summit to the Summit of the Future: Building the UN We Need, clearly set out to nurture a purposeful orientation towards a hopeful future. Eleven participants represented a range of interests and groups. They included: Maher Nasser of the UN’s Department of Global Communications; Maria Fernanda Espinosa, a former President of the General Assembly who now heads an association of Global Women Leaders; Arancha González Laya, the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs who is a former Government Minister of Spain; Paul Divakar Namala, the Convenor (from India) of the Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent; and Tawanda Mutasah from Oxfam America. The UN web TV broadcast of the discussion is well worth watching (start at 21:20).
Among the perspectives shared:
Espinosa: “During next year [in preparations for the UN Summit of the Future], I would like to see diplomacy at its best – advancing the agenda of the SDGs and the structural transformation of UN organisations in good faith, thinking of the common good, overcoming rivalries, with the capacity of building unity in diversity, and with the ability of processing dissent.”
Nasser: “There are real solutions, but they are solutions that require further action and everyone that has the capacity and knows where and how to make a difference needs to fight for it. Nothing is given out for free. Those who have privilege will want to keep it. … Our role at the UN is to facilitate. The analogy you will have next week on Monday [when the Summit opens] is that we are at half time of the SDGs. No football game is ever won in the first half. It’s always won in the second half. The team gets together in a huddle with the coach and the players to say let’s change the tactics, change defense to offense … the UN’s role is like the coach, but the players are you [civil society]. So, change the game and we will win.”
González Laya: “An important message that has to come from gatherings like this is that progress is possible … Let’s accept that progress is possible. And let’s look at where progress has been possible. Last week, for example, we just got very good news: more and more people are connected online, and we know that in the world of the 21st century, competitiveness is a function of whether or not you are connected. So lets say that progress is possible.
Namala: “There is a North in the South, there is a South in the North – and yet we talk about northern countries and those in the southern bloc. The UN needs a different architecture which brings in the southern communities or the excluded communities whether they are in the North or the South. When my country, India, and other Asian countries speak, we speak as the South but there are elites in my country who are capturing [the marginalized communities]. Somehow at the UN we need to pierce through this neutrality and see how a much broader prosperity and planetary sustainability can be advanced.”
Mutasah: “At any point in time if we are not renewing ourselves we are, in Bob Dylan’s words, “busy dying”. The reality of the global multilateral system is that it cannot cope with the poly-crisis that we face, so that we cannot continue to do what we have always been doing. So, while we are reviewing progress on the SDGs I would challenge us to think about the kinds of things that we have not done in the first half. One process issue concerns the level and nature of engagement with civil society. As long as civil society is still peripheral as a reference that we make to look good in an arena that is only about sovereign states, then we are not going to have any different outcomes.”
Civil Society Advocacy and the Transformation of the Economic and Financial System
There was further clear evidence of the Summit process contributing to the building of a shared will at a major event, ‘Enhancing Advocacy, Financing and Accountability’, when Civil Society representatives reported to senior UN officials and representatives from governments. Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications opened the gathering with the comment that the purpose of the gathering was “to explore what it will really take to turn the SDG mid-point into an SDG tipping point for change”. She was followed by Secretary-General Guterres who, speaking informally, noted that “not only are we not on track to achieve the SDGs, but we are enormously off track. And it’s very important to say two things to governments: First, there are enormous obstacles at national level, that are different from country to country, that are linked with governance, with corruption, with limits to the expression of civil society and the civic space. … The second major obstacle is the enormous injustice in the international economic and financial system. Many developing countries are immersed in debt. Many developing countries have no fiscal space to make the investments that are needed in education, in health, and security to achieve the SDGs. The international financial system is deeply unjust, deeply dysfunctional, and totally unable to provide the global safety net that is necessary for developing countries to have the chance to see the results that are essential for the SDGs to be implemented. So, there are two kinds of commitments that are fundamental to get from governments during this week. One a commitment to good governance, and to open space for civil society, and to align policies with the SDGs in every country. Second a commitment mainly by developed countries to accept that there are fundamental injustices in the financial and economic order and that we need to accept and promote effective reforms in international financial architecture.”
Summit held within the Context of a Poly-Crisis
At the same gathering Oxfam International Executive Director, Amitabh Behar, spoke of some of the UN’s great achievements: “I get goose bumps when I talk about this being the 75th year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Whenever I read it I feel that its really a powerful north star for humankind. I was in this room in 2015 when the SDGs were adopted. Its probably the most ambitious global compact that we have which looks at social, economic and environment together. Kudos for us being able to get that.” And yet, he continued this Summit is set within a particular “context of a poly-crisis: a climate emergency, a cost-of-living crisis, an inequality crisis, a crisis of democracy back-sliding. … In the last 3 years the billionaires have doubled their wealth while a huge number of the global population is not able to get food on their table. This is a time when 2/3 of the new wealth created has gone to the top 1%. In that context there are several things that could be done. For example. we are nowhere near 0.07% ODA [in 1970 a target was agreed by developed countries that they would raise official development assistance to developing countries to 0.07% of the developed countries national income]. We have spoken of $100 billion for Climate Financing every year: where is the money?.”
Strong Words from the Secretary-General
And a final, heart-felt comment from the Secretary-General: “The civil society that is here needs to take power. I am not asking you to take power violently. But it is your very strong engagement, and the use of all instruments … and of all the opportunities that exist. In the UN we are trying to create opportunities for civil society. Many member states (not all) are very reluctant to see civil society participate in the UN. They always say: “This is an inter-governmental organization.” Our belief is that this is an inter-governmental organization but it’s to the benefit of everybody that the voice of civil society is not only a voice that is heard, but it is a voice that participates in the way decisions are taken. And that is the most important change of power that we need.”