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"We must safeguard the future of our planet and the future of younger generations," said Angela Merkel in her two-minute video message. „This task should be the highest priority for us all”, she said. The occasion for the Chancellor's appeal was the SDG Moment, an event launched by the United Nations in 2020, which took place this year on the 20th of September. The event is designed as a virtual meeting of heads of state and government.

The aim of the SDG Moment is to reinforce the continued relevance of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and build momentum in advance of major summits – currently also against the background of the pandemic and its consequences. In her welcome address, Angela Merkel emphasised: "We, the international community and the United Nations, must now do our utmost to work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.“ She called on the audience to continue to work together to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Neither helpless nor hopeless

UN Secretary-General António Guterres had already stressed in his opening speech of the SDG Moment that the world had never faced such a challenge. It would be easy to lose hope. But people are neither hopeless nor helpless, he said, there is a path to recovery with the 2030 Agenda – "if we choose to take it".

In addition, Guterres had published the long-awaited report "Our Common Agenda" a few days before. The report emphasises the challenges of multiple crises and is a call for a new global solidarity and a strengthening of multilateralism. It provides concrete recommendations for action on how the global community should adapt its global governance to emerge from the crisis.

The SDG moment also marked the start of the 76th United Nations General Assembly. More than 30 participating heads of state and government shared their statements via pre-recorded video messages – with the exception of Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, who joined in live.

German Chancellor Merkel was joined by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, a second representative of a G20 nation and also an important climate financier. He emphasised that the Covid-19- pandemic has had a severe impact on various SDG areas. To achieve the SDGs by 2030, he said, all countries need to develop creative strategies and work together to accelerate their efforts. "As a country that attaches great importance to multilateralism, Japan is determined to lead the efforts of the international community to achieve the SDGs," Suga said.

A to-do list for the planet

Suga called for equitable access to vaccines and other tools in the fight against infectious disease – this was "essential". It is also crucial to build a more resilient global health system to prepare for future crises. Lastly, he emphasised gender equality, which promotes innovation and drives social transformation: "The SDGs are the compass to overcome the current crisis."

The SDG moment was also closely watched because it came just weeks before the COP26 international climate conference in Glasgow in late October/early November, for which Angela Merkel announced an "ambitious target" in her video message. "It is clearer than ever that we must implement the 2030 Agenda more swiftly," she said. "We will not be able to make up for our shortcomings now in a few years down the line."

Berlin, 15 July 2021 – Today, the German Government presents its second Voluntary National Review (VNR) on Germany's sustainable development policy at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) at the United Nations. The report takes stock of Germany's sustainable development policy, based on its own national indicators for sustainable development. It identifies priorities for action to ensure that Germany achieves the goals it has set itself and thus makes an ambitious contribution to achieving the Global Goals.

The Chairman of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE), Dr Werner Schnappauf, welcomes the fact that the Federal Government focuses on six major transformation challenges in its VNR report. "We consider it necessary to re-arrange Germany's entire sustainable development policy-making along these six transformation areas to set clear political priorities. It requires joint and inter-ministerial coordination efforts by all ministries. This is where I see large potential for the incoming federal government in the years to come."

Prof. Dr. Imme Scholz, Deputy Chair of the Council, adds: "The pandemic is massively exacerbating global inequality. The HLPF has persuasively demonstrated that solidarity and cohesion of the global community will be the yardsticks of achieving the SDGs in the coming years. In order for the countries of the global South to be able to tackle their transformation challenges alongside the pandemic, we must strengthen international cooperation immediately and at an immense scale."

Council member Prof. Dr. Cornelia Füllkrug-Weitzel, former President of Brot für die Welt (“Bread for the World”), comments: "In the report, the German government self-critically acknowledges implementation deficits. We observe a neglect of the negative effects that Germany has on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in the Global South countries. The perspective of the German Sustainability Strategy must therefore be expanded immediately to include the international spillover effects of German consumption, German production and German trade policy."

Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, also a Council member and former Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, identifies room for adjustments at the United Nations themselves. "We consider the current HLPF to be too weak and hence developed a proposal for a strong UN Council for Sustainable Development. The Corona pandemic has set the global community back severely in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Overcoming the pandemic and making substantial progress in sustainable development can only succeed with structural reforms at UN and national levels and a strong mobilisation of new financial resources for transformation in the Global South."

At the initiative of the RNE and in the run-up to the HLPF, the German Federal Government announced that it would launch a systematic follow-up process with all stakeholders after the VNR presentation in New York today. This process should evaluate the national and international reactions to the German Voluntary National Review as well as good practices from other countries. In the Council’s view such a systematic dialogue can close the publicly acknowledged gaps in action in the forthcoming legislative period.

Further information:

German VNR report

RNE recommendation “A sustainable recovery from the coronavirus crisis”

RNE Policy paper "Reform options for effective UN sustainable development governance"

COVID-19 has had the world on tenterhooks for months. Some states seem to have contained the pandemic, while others are desperately fighting the virus as their infection rates soar. Yet others are already in the midst of a second wave. Most countries in the Global South imposed lockdowns very early on and are now dealing with the pandemic’s devastating indirect social and economic consequences. Coronavirus is battering the community of states at a time when it needs to be focusing all of its energy on achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN). By 2030, hunger and poverty should be eliminated around the world, climate protection targets should be reached, education should be accessible for all, and gender equality should be achieved.

Between 7 and 16 July, state representatives and experts – primarily from non-governmental organisations – met at the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The annual event is the United Nations’ most important platform for reviewing progress in implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the run-up to 2030. This year’s forum focused on initiating a decade of action in which the implementation of the SDGs should be accelerated. The meetings were held virtually this year to prevent spreading coronavirus. Experts believe that this also made the forum more inclusive: the virtual format enabled a large number of players to take part who would otherwise have been unable to attend due to the expense associated with travelling to New York.

47 states presented their voluntary national reviews (VNR) setting out their progress with regard to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Coronavirus dominated the debates concerning action plans and the way in which the international community of states can respond to the pandemic while remaining on course for 2030.

COVID-19 thwarts the fight against poverty

There is great concern that the progress made to date will be undone by the spread of coronavirus. In particular, the number of people living in poverty is expected to rise. Experts in development policy and healthcare expect the impact of the pandemic to be visible for generations to come. Measures to restrict the spread of COVID-19 and long-term development plans must go hand in hand to end poverty and hunger around the world, urged delegates at the UN forum. Efforts to ensure access to good healthcare, protection from fatal diseases, and high-quality education must be stepped up, they said. Cristina Duarte, the UN’s Special Advisor on Africa, emphasised that cooperation and dialogue between various stakeholders were needed to achieve this. “It is time political decision-makers set priorities for the development of humanity.”

In her contribution to the UN forum, Imme Scholz, member of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE) and Acting Director of the German Development Institute (DIE), highlighted the direct link between tackling poverty and protecting the climate.

As the population grows, emissions of carbon dioxide also increase. At the same time, a large number of people are living in poverty. To become more sustainable, rich states need to reduce their consumerism and switch to recycling or renewables, said Scholz.

An analysis by the German Development Institute examined 53 developing countries. Although 70 per cent of these states improved their poverty rates within a 15-year period (2000 to 2015), this was done at the expense of climate protection. Uruguay and Costa Rica achieved the best results. Both countries focused on education and health programmes, as well as investing in renewable energies. Scholz called for others to follow these examples to avoid pitching poverty eradication against climate protection in the 21st century. There is a risk of precisely this happening: due to a lack of consensus among the states, there will be no political declaration by the HLPF this year. This means that there may be no declaration on the 2030 Agenda – in the UN’s 75th anniversary year. That would be a sorry sign for multilateralism.

Vulnerable health systems

COVID-19 showed how susceptible health systems are, all around the world. Vulnerable groups in particular – especially children, women, elderly people and the disabled – were not protected sufficiently, said Githinji Gitahi, Global CEO of AMREF Health Africa, an organisation dedicated to improving healthcare on the African continent. Gitahi called for not just general health systems to be strengthened, but also individual communities and prevention programmes. “Health starts at home,” said Gitahi.

The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015. They now form the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and can be traced back to the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro 1992. The goals apply equally to all states around the world and give equal weight to the three aspects of sustainability, i.e. social, economic and environmental considerations. In Germany, the National Sustainable Development Strategy is the framework for implementation of the Agenda.

In September, the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE) will discuss the state of implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in an online forum with RNE members and other experts. Germany is expected to publish its voluntary national review with respect to the 2030 Agenda in the coming year. Furthermore, the German Sustainable Development Strategy is currently being revised, with the RNE recommending that it should also include Germany taking greater international responsibility for global sustainability policy.

How is progress being made with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) around the world – who monitors them in the individual countries, and who advises political leaders on their implementation? It is virtually impossible to give a universal answer to this question, says Dr Hannah Janetschek, Project Manager for International Partnerships at the office of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE). However, sustainable development advisory councils and similar organisations which are working to implement the 2030 Agenda at national level play an important role.

For this reason, from 17 to 20 February, the Global Forum for National SDG Advisory Bodies will meet in the Colombian capital of Bogotá for the first time. The network was established last September at the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Summit in New York. “The actors involved are incredibly diverse,” says Janetschek. There are approximately 70 participants in all. Only about a quarter come from Europe or North America, with the remainder hailing from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

The network is particularly important for developing and emerging countries. While Europe has had a network of sustainability bodies – the EEAC (European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils) – for quite some time, similar organisations have only been set up in many other countries since the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda in 2015. Implementation of the Agenda is currently proving difficult, as the UN pointed out last year. This is primarily due to the global crisis of multilateralism. The network sets out to counter this by advocating partnerships for progress. “We cannot overload advisory councils and other sustainability actors in autocratic countries with a democratisation mandate, but they can of course still make valuable contributions towards fostering sustainable development within these societies,” says Janetschek.

With this in mind, the aim is to take concrete steps to strengthen organisations and enable projects to be implemented. “As of result of the Voluntary National Reviews introduced by the United Nations, numerous ‘SDG Units’ have been created in recent years which are either very close to or part of their respective governments. This begs the question of how these can be incorporated into the institutional sustainability architecture of the respective countries as constructive advisory bodies to support implementation of the SDGs long-term,” Janetschek explains. In other countries, she adds, the opposite applies, with political leaders barely aware of the multi-stakeholder platforms for sustainable development which have emerged from civil society. There, the question is how to establish them permanently as sustainability advisory councils.

Diversity is fruitful

The Forum describes its members as generating a wide range of knowledge stemming from their extensive experience of promoting sustainable development, which is shared and built upon between the individual countries and institutions. The actors’ diversity is precisely what makes the dialogue so fruitful. For example, Vietnam’s business council has been holding a National Conference on Sustainable Development since 2018, which is also attended by high-ranking politicians such as the deputy prime minister. Meanwhile, in South Africa, an alliance has formed between civil society and trade unions which were involved in producing the country’s first Voluntary National Review (VNR) on implementation of the SDGs. The review was differentiated. Although it cited progress in gender equality, for instance, with 41 per cent of members of parliament being female in 2016, the country remains blighted by substantial social inequality and violence against women.

One of the objectives of the inauguration meeting in Bogotá is to now reinforce a multi-stakeholder approach in other countries of the kind which is currently being established in South Africa. This means that sustainability advisory councils should comprise as many actors as possible as this is the only way to promote dialogue within the societies. The advisory councils or similar bodies should neither nod through the government’s agenda nor limit themselves to strong criticism from civil society. Instead, the objective is to foster constructive participation and measures to bring about sustainable development.

In concrete terms, the meeting in Bogotá could give rise to the first partnerships between countries, for example on projects to establish renewable energies or to examine how cities and local governments can produce sustainability plans. Another point is set to address the question of how individual countries can have their sustainability policy scrutinised independently, for instance via peer review processes. By the end of the meeting, a work programme covering the period to the end of 2021 should have been agreed.

Ms Caballero, today the Sustainable Development Goals are a worldwide guideline for development in all countries. A lot of people don’t know that the whole idea came from Colombia. And it all started in January 2011 in a hotel in Bogotá when you worked as Director for Economic, Social and Environmental Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia.

Paula Caballero: Back then, we started to gather a few people to brainstorm about what we were going to do for the Rio+20 summit in the following year …

… which was after 1992 and 2002 the third international conference on sustainable development.

Paula Caballero: Exactly. Patti Londoño had just become Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. The UN had an agenda for what should happen 20 years after the first so-called Earth Summit. But that was not something to inspire anybody. The focus was on something called green economy, a concept around which there was a lot of controversy so there were pointless discussions and fights about what that meant.

And you wanted something different?

Paula Caballero: We thought: this is terrible; it would kill the whole Rio agenda. Something huge has to happen, as we are in such a global crisis. Rio+20 had to be a galvanising and inspiring moment. So we needed to come up with an amazing agenda. I asked Patti for permission and called colleagues from across government, and I brainstormed in the ministry. As I saw it, the only thing that had worked so far in galvanising development was the Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs, that went up to 2015. They were a metric people were able to get and relate to. But it was also a pro-poor agenda, a minimalist agenda. It said that development is only for developing countries. Given the scale of global crises, we needed an agenda for everybody

And you suddenly had this moment where you thought: development should be for the whole world?

Paula Caballero: I thought the MDGs had worked; you can touch them, you can feel them, but they had nothing to do with the economy or environment, for example. So I thought: why don’t we propose the real agenda, the big agenda with all the stuff that has to be done for everybody? In that first meeting, we tentatively called them global environment objectives. But after I proposed the idea to Patti, we thought it better to change them to SDGs.

To Sustainable Development Goals?

Paula Caballero: Yes.

Patti Londoño: I told Paula to go write up the idea.

Paula Caballero: So I said to her that it’s just an idea, maybe a crazy idea. But Patti said, no: write it down. It was a Friday, so I wrote it over the weekend. After that, every time I had to go to New York for other negotiations, I used the time to promote the idea. There was the little Vienna Café in the UN building which I called my office. Every time I was in New York, I would sit there and talk to anybody who would come about the SDGs. Mostly, the first reaction was: this is a crazy idea. We already have the MDGs. The agenda for the next Rio conference has been defined in a UN resolution. You can’t change that. And what do you mean it’s for everybody? For all countries? Developed countries don’t have these problems. And most important, people were asking: why Colombia? Why is Colombia proposing a global agenda?

How important was the fact that the SDGs came from a developing country?

Paula Caballero: Very important. The old MDGs were very much a top-down approach: developed countries provided money and developing countries had to act. But in a globalised world, we have huge problems, caused by everybody, for example, take overconsumption. But development was understood as something that doesn’t happen to a developed country. It was a very patriarchic mindset. Proposing a global development agenda – it didn’t fit in. That was a paradigm shift no one was prepared to agree to at the beginning.

It seems you were angry about that global patriarchy.

Paula Caballero: No, not angry. Passionate.

We can certainly say you talked really passionately about it. Did other developing countries share that feeling?

Paula Caballero: Oh no, most developing countries were, at the beginning, completely opposed to my idea. They were terrified because the official development aid was structured around the MDGs. They funded government programmes to do with health or education. Even big foundations that supported the MDGs were vehemently opposed. But to Colombia, the MDGs were really important. Our proposal was not against the MDGs. It said that we needed to build on the MDG experience to create a radically new framework. But everyone was used to the MDGs. For example, for the bilateral system, it was a very nice thing: for rich countries, it was a simple agenda to fund with straightforward clear targets; it was a done deal. And then Colombia came along and said: let’s replace it with an incredible agenda that truly reflects the complexity of development. Many in both developing and developed countries thought that the SDGs would derail the whole development agenda.

What was your main argument for starting the ball rolling; who supported you?

Paula Caballero: My vice minister and my minister. Otherwise it would never have happened.

Patti Londoño: We gave the initiative the political support it needed. After that, it was a web of different players. We reached out to civil society and certain governments. There was a handful of western delegates that became interested in the idea and stood behind it. We called it “the secret friends of the SDGs”. This informal group came together in November 2011.

What was the first country in Europe to support you?

Paula Caballero: We went round with the proposal in the halls of the UN and cafeterias around the UN, in New York. On 27 March in 2011 we had the first SDG meeting with 20 delegates in the Colombian Mission. The delegates who came were respectful but mostly, they explained all the reasons why it could never work. The reaction was that it would not fly. It’s a long story but, in short, in July, there was a meeting in Solo, Indonesia. That was the first time that I presented the SDGs in an official UN setting. There was no discussion. I was only allowed to present it. But in the hallways, I started to meet with delegates who were getting excited about the idea because it was so tangible and compelling. Key among these was the delegation of the European Union. And they liked the idea very much. Guatemala confirmed that it wanted to support the proposal.

How did the Europeans support you?

Paula Caballero: We had to be secret friends. Because we could not say: Colombia and the EU is proposing that … It would have been dead because we first had to build up ownership by a wide range of countries. At the end of August 2011 there was an informal consultation in Brazil to prepare the Rio+20 summit. The Brazilians said anyone could present what they wanted, so I presented the SDGs. The topic hijacked the meeting completely. No one talked about anything else. But it was a confusing proposal because it was too centred on Agenda 21. So that night, I rewrote the proposal and Guatemala confirmed their endorsement. The next day, we printed out what became known as the “Colombia-Guatemala proposal”, which for many is the original SDG paper. As I said, it is a long story but the next decisive milestone was 1 November 2011. By then, we had enough support that enough countries asked the Rio+20 Secretariat to include the SDGs in the formal negotiation text. That was it! That was the moment that the SDGs formally and irrevocably became a part of Rio+20.

What does that mean for Colombia today? Is the country proud of its invention?

Paula Caballero: Oh yes, very proud. The other day, I met the president in a meeting and he said: I’m so proud of the SDGs and I have structured all my government around it. Same as the previous president. For Colombia, this is a source of great satisfaction.

Now, let’s jump to 2019. This year, it was the first meeting of heads of state to meet and talk about the SDGs since adoption in 2015. The UN Global Sustainable Development Report states that a sustainable future is still possible, but it also observes that “the progress made in the last two decades is in danger of being reversed through worsening social inequalities and potentially irreversible declines in the natural environment that sustains us.” So, where do we stand?

Patti Londoño: The SDGs are a whole new structure for governments, a framework to reorganise their national planning. Governments have been given the perfect tool to focus on advancing an integrated development agenda. And to be able to measure the impact. Of course it will take a while because governments have to adjust. But the good thing is that the SDGs are at the core of many developing programmes. All around the world. Have the SDGs failed because there is more inequality in the world? Have they failed because not all children in the world are educated? That is not the key point because transformative change takes time. But the SDGs are structuring government plans, both at national and local level, which is even more important. If you look at the national reports countries are submitting, which are voluntary, you can see the effort countries are making.

But the UN clearly said: we want to erase poverty and hunger by 2030. And looking at the current state of the world with its crisis of multilateralism and a widening income gap, it seems to be impossible to reach that target.

Paula Caballero: When we were negotiating the SDGs, there were many, many dark moments; even until the last moment, we thought we were going to lose the targets. I remember feeling absolutely desperate. Don’t think the SDGs were inevitable. We almost lost them many times. And today, the world without the SDGs would be a much darker place. And yes, it is going to be very difficult to implement them; you have the totality of what you need for deep, sustained and sustainable development in front of everybody’s faces. Whether you are a director general of a transport company, or are a mayor in a small city, or the captain of a big industry, you have to wilfully ignore the agenda because it is right in front of you, reminding everyone all the time of what needs to be tackled. Implementation is going to be at least as hard as getting them adopted. We cannot take the SDGs for granted.

What about the rise in populism?

Paula Caballero: Because so many indicators are going in the wrong direction, because we are breaching planetary boundaries, because inequality is growing, because populism is growing, the SDGs are more important than ever. With them, we have a reference against which you can measure not just direct but also indirect impacts. The SDGs are a planning tool and a mindset. We are only four years into a paradigm shift. It is not just going to happen overnight. This is actually an agenda for 2050 because the decisions we are making right now on infrastructure, on investments, on vehicle fleets and transport, on energy and food systems … those decisions are being made for the next 30 years. We are already locking in the development trajectories for the next 30 years. Right now. As I put it, “2050 is now”.

Patti Londoño: And it is important that there is a convergence between the civil sector, the economy, the private sector and international organisations for SDG implementation. Big companies, for example, are implementing the SDGs. Have you ever seen something like that before? We changed the narrative regarding how we should organise our societies.

India wants to build many coal-fired power plants to fight poverty. If we tell them to make everything solar-powered because of the climate, it might take longer. How do you deal with these trade-offs?

Paula Caballero: The real trade-off is that India is highly vulnerable. Look at the prospects for Indian agriculture with melting glaciers, erratic monsoons and land degradation. They already have one of the highest rates for farmer suicides in the world. So climate change is already impacting India.
There are a lot of trade-offs. But with climate change, the trade-offs are becoming irreversible. We need to understand this. Climate change will not only make future development goals more difficult to achieve, it will also destroy many development gains to date. Ultimately, that is the real trade-off. And the real story is: the number of coal plants India was going to build has actually gone down. And India has other more sustainable options for ensuring energy access, which are more cost-effective especially for more remote areas that are off the grid. And India knows this. They have positioned themselves as leaders in solar energy and set ambitious targets. So hopefully, India can become an example of how you can adjust to a new reality.

The US seems to be out of the game. Who is going to lead the implementation of the SDGs?

Patti Londoño: All of us. Citizens, young people and of course political leaders. The SDGs don’t come just from the top. They have been built in a very consensual manner. Unless we accept that we all need to embrace the SDGs, nothing is going to happen. I know that is difficult. It is a responsibility approach. We all have to be responsible towards ourselves, our community and our planet. Changing the patterns of consumption and production means a lot of behavioural change. The good thing is that the SDGs are a tool for people to relate to.

The next Rio summit will be in Brazil; President Jair Bolsonaro denies climate change …

Paula Caballero: … Maybe they should consider moving the next Rio summit elsewhere. But international leadership does not depend on the US: they never ratified the Kyoto Protocol or the Convention on Biodiversity , for example. And what happened with the election of Donald Trump is that civil society, the private sector, cities and local governments in the US stepped in and committed to fighting climate change. That is the kind of bottom-up approach that Patti is referring to.

Do you see the same happening in Brazil?

Paula Caballero: Yes, there is a lot of powerful activism in Brazil. But it is very difficult for them right now. And there are a lot of governments around the world that don’t share the sustainability agenda and are not fighting the planetary crisis. That’s reason for everybody else to step up. We need to help change mindsets and support local governments in implementing the SDGs. In many ways, the private sector is actually ahead and pulling governments along. This is a brave new world of diffuse leadership. We have to break out of this idea of top-down leadership. This paradigm shift demands that everyone step up.

So the SDGs may be the mindset that shapes a global society?

Paula Caballero: Yes, but we have to understand that we are not going to implement the SDGs with a business-as-usual approach.

Patti Londoño: We should not leave it to the governments. We all have to work.

Today, Paula Caballero works as Managing Director for the Lands for Life programme at the NGO Rare.
Patti Londoño is now an independent consultant for United Nations affairs.

Getting trade unions on board