The UN recently met in New York for the SDG Summit, meant to mark the beginning of a new phase of accelerated progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Building on that momentum, the UN will convene a Summit of the Future in September 2024, with the aim of breathing new life into the multilateral system so that it can deliver on the promises of the United Nations Charter and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Against this backdrop, this session aims to stimulate new ideas about how to accelerate the achievement of those goals. Over the past few weeks, innovative thinkers in policy, business, civil society, and research have been invited to share their insights about how to strengthen global sustainability transitions (Share your insights here! [1]).This session begins with a summary of those insights, followed by selection of questions/topics for discussion as proposed by the organizers and the participants. The questions/topics are voted on and the most popular questions/topics are assigned tables. The rest of the session involves small group discussions in the style of a World Café [2].
Building on systems thinking, and calls for transformation frameworks such as the Global Sustainable Development Report (2019, 2023), we hope that our survey and this session will contribute new concrete insights about which systems changes are necessary for accelerating global sustainability transitions, how those changes interact, and how to initiate and guide them.
We encourage participants to reflect on changes in politics, economics, society (including health and demographics), technology, the environment, law, ethics, or culture that could strengthen or weaken global sustainability transitions, and how to address them. For example: Maximum wage policies (legal/economic changes) could help to prevent extreme income inequalities (SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities), leading to improved health and well-being (SDG 3 - Good Health & Well-being). Such policies could be introduced at multiple levels: sub-national, national, supra-national (e.g., EU), and global.
Maximum wage policies at the global level, which could help to correct extreme income inequalities among countries, might require new global institutions (political change).
Another pandemic (social/environmental changes) could reduce health and well-being (SDG 3 - Good Health & Well-being), leading to lower productivity (SDG 8 - Decent Work & Economic Growth). Improved monitoring and emergency preparedness (social/technical changes) could help to prevent future outbreaks from becoming pandemics. This session is a joint initiative of researchers at the Centre for Development and Environment, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and the Stockholm Environment Institute.
[1] https://ww2.unipark.de/uc/2030PLUS/
[2] https://theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/world-cafe-method/
