For the past decade, the annual UN General Assembly has brought the world together in a rare show of unity to promote the ambitious but elusive Sustainable Development Goals. Last month, however, the air in New York was thick with anxiety and apprehension as leaders gathered for global talks.
The world in 2025, after all, is very different from 2015, when the SDGs were unanimously adopted by 193 countries as the centrepiece of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Back then, global governance was still defined by the United States-led unipolar order. In the years since, progress has been eroded by a series of systemic shocks – the pandemic, rise in global conflicts, economic volatility and the climate crisis. Looking back at this year’s events, it becomes clear that geopolitical tensions have further stalled the development agenda.
There is little doubt that to tackle poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all, the world must work together.
The United States has declared the SDGs to be “adverse to the rights and interests of Americans,” demanding an “overdue course correction on gender and climate ideology” in the goals. It was a setback that is both unexpected and disproportionate.
This followed the decision in January to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in one of the most rapid and consequential donor exits in history. In an own goal of sorts, the United States, traditionally the largest donor to the United Nations, initiated a withdrawal from the UN system. Faced with drastic budget cuts and major disruptions to services, multiple agencies and programs are struggling to continue, including the World Health Organisation, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, the UN Relief and Works Agency, the UN Human Rights Council, the United Nations Population Fund, and the World Food Program.
Europe, too, has pivoted from development towards securitisation, with donor countries including Germany, France and Belgium scaling back development assistance to prioritise defence spending. The United Kingdom has done likewise.
The 17 SDG goals succeeded the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight objectives adopted by the UN in 2000 as the first comprehensive global governance framework for sustainable development.
The MDGs were considered too narrowly focused on poverty reduction and implementation in developing countries. The SDGs, unlike the MDGs, apply universally to all UN member states and encompass 169 interconnected targets, ranging from ending poverty and other deprivations to strategies for improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth, while tackling climate change. Together, the MDGs and the SDGs represent what has been described as “governance through goals”, an approach based on non-binding commitments that offer flexibility to countries to set up their own frameworks for sustainable development.
Developing countries, which are bearing the brunt of escalating climate change, rising political and economic uncertainty, and stagnant global trade, are facing a widening SDG financing gap.
Broad in scope and high in ambition, the SDGs have been criticised for being overly aspirational, making them difficult to achieve. Many advocate for a narrower agenda or setting priorities within the SDG framework. With five years to go, this year’s report on the SDGs reflects halting progress, with only 18% of the SDGs on track, nearly half progressing too slowly, and close to a fifth even regressing below the 2015 level. Although the report shows a modest track record on eradicating global poverty, which is only 1.5 percentage points less than in 2015 and predicted to stagnate by 2030, there are areas of progress in the last decade, such as substantial decreases in under-five and maternal deaths, reductions in HIV/AIDS and malaria mortality rates, improvement in the share of women in national parliaments, increases in social protection, access to safe drinking water, sanitation and basic hygiene services.
Aside from debate on the progress and challenges in achieving the goals, there is little doubt that to tackle poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all, the world must work together. A global framework, like the SDGs, is a requisite, especially for the developing world, which faces greater development deficits.
Developing countries, which are bearing the brunt of escalating climate change, rising political and economic uncertainty, and stagnant global trade, are facing a widening SDG financing gap, which reached $4 trillion this year. Since 2020, higher borrowing costs have pushed developing countries into deeper debt, with global public debt reaching a record $102 trillion in 2024. This has further constrained these countries from investing in sustainable development, making the SDGs even more unattainable.
There are many ways the framework for SDGs can be made responsive; for instance, countries can be supported in sequencing goals based on national capacity and context, progress can be linked to incentives like access to financing or partnerships, along with a greater push towards localisation and context-specific targets.
The current crisis in development presents an opportunity for developing countries, which have long advocated for multilateral reform, to take the lead in shaping the future of global sustainability governance. By forging coalitions based on shared experiences and challenges, and focusing on a combination of innovative financing, localisation of solutions, and regional cooperation, developing countries can steer the SDG agenda.
