An extraordinary story of how the system came to be

What do governments really need to do to make sustainable development progress? A global assessment of the GSDR report and recommendations for the UN General Assembly in New York City

Global leaders must act now to remove roadblocks and accelerate progress. This is the focus of our Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), launched this week, ahead of the SDG Summit in New York City under the auspices of the UN General Assembly. This independent scientific assessment, made every four years, involved global consultations to collect perspectives across regions and synthesize scientific evidence from across disciplines. It has been peer reviewed by a group of 104 researchers who are experts in many different areas.

Although global and regional crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have played a part in that, our analysis shows that the lack of headway is largely a direct result of inaction by governments. Weak administrative capacities and insufficient financial resources can hamper progress. It is hard to shift lifestyles to sustainable patterns because of the habits and lifestyles promoted by marketing campaigns. Fossil fuel infrastructure has generated resistance from vested interests and made climate action politically sensitive.

Researchers need to look at feedbacks, synergies and trade-offs to help inform coherent strategies that are best use of available resources. For example, investments in health and education can improve economic productivity and growth, people’s incomes and government revenue, yet they could also increase consumption and thus resource demand, environmental degradation and pollution, as well as exacerbating inequalities. Equitable energy transition programmes seek to reduce emissions, provide energy security, access and affordability, and create jobs, but they also need to navigate risks in land use and supply chains.

It may be more politically feasible to use net-zero emissions in Switzerland and Singapore than in Australia and many Middle Eastern countries. Governments of LMICs might be ready to support a clean-energy transition if it provides better access to cheap power, but might lack the finance, supporting infrastructure or institutions needed to make it happen.

To shift the societies towards a diet that is also healthy for the planet, one way would be for governments to invest first in R&D to develop cost-effective alternative foods, and then use public money to buy them. They should use market interventions and taxes to quickly scale up adoption.

Research on positive tipping points should also be harnessed and expanded. Investment incentives have been flipped to favor low-carbon energy as a result of solar and wind reaching price-parity with fossil-fuel energy. Less is known about tipping points in other sectors. Factors beyond cost should be better understood in order to make solutions more attractive and user-friendly.

There will be ongoing obstacles to change. If there’s not enough infrastructure or policy support, the rise of electric vehicles might stall. More-stringent policies such as phasing out fossil-fuel cars or coal-fired power stations can face resistance from powerful interest groups. It is possible for new technologies and practices to have advantages and disadvantages in one area. In some communities, the decline of jobs in fossil-fuel sectors can affect livelihoods as a consequence of the mining of critical minerals for batteries.

Social policies should be scaled up for human-development goals. By the year 2030, more people could be out of poverty and less could be starving, with the aid of increased funding for public health, social welfare, education, R&D and infrastructure.

For example, researchers can help to enhance accountability by providing systematic and empirical insights on the design of effective national accountability mechanisms. They are highly context specific, but can be used to evaluate the adequacy of implementation and give recommendations. Countries could also embed the goals in legislation or include them in the mandates for existing independent and ongoing reporting institutions and initiatives.

For example, national supreme audit institutions in the Netherlands, Lithuania and Tanzania have evaluated and provided recommendations to their governments on preparedness for implementing the SDGs. Finland uses several mechanisms to increase accountability, including a national multi-stakeholder sustainable-development commission and an annual citizens’ panel on sustainable development, and is developing an approach to apply the SDGs to all relevant national audits. Popularizing the goals can also increase government interest and social accountability.

Jolly has worked with many UN agencies, notably the children’s agency UNICEF and the UN Development Programme. He was part of the team that co-edited the UN Intellectual History Project, which included 17 volumes on how the research and analysis driven UN policymaking and how the researchers hit obstacles that were not necessarily political.

There are two examples of policy influenced by knowledge. The first is the UN’s role in creating the System of National Accounts (SNA), which this year celebrates its 70th anniversary. To create an international standard for measuring economies large and small, the UN needed to bring together disparate work on economic indicators. Its most famous measure is gross domestic product (GDP) — one number that influences national economic policies, financial markets, political careers and more.

The HDI ranked countries by income, education, and life expectancy. To do well in the HDI, nations needed to invest in things beyond those fuelling growth, such as education and health care. The HDI is now well established; Jolly eventually took over from Haq as director of its annual report in 1996. The HDI did not dethrone GDP as the originators intended. Members of the SNA team at the time did not take kindly to an upstart indicator, he told Nature.

Hq persuaded the UN that it had to create a new indicator called the HDI, which was developed by Indian economists and other colleagues. Sen recalled that Haq said that he wanted him to help him with an index that would stand for better things.

In 1983, he and his colleagues tried to convince the international lender that these policies were hurting children. Two years later, to support their argument, UNICEF, under Jolly’s leadership, commissioned a two-volume study called Adjustment with a Human Face (published in 1987). Despite this and later evidence that adjustment programmes have no positive effects on growth, and can even hamper it (see go.nature.com/3p7jazj), the UN economists failed to sway their counterparts.

Caballero and Londoño’s Redefining Development picks up the baton from the designers of these earlier indicators. Theirs is a remarkable story of how two representatives of Colombia’s government created the conditions for the SDGs as a set of universal indicators for all countries; and how they achieved this against the odds and despite a mountain of political pressure from more powerful nations. Few outside of a small circle of experts know of their story.

But they persevered, identifying other officials who they could work with and building coalitions to support their objectives. Some politicians demanded political oversight of the scientific work that would be needed to define the goals and targets, but the Colombian team stood firm, insisting on a participatory process that would be led by experts.

The UNEP and environment ministries all around the world were created due to the success of Maurice Strong, a Canadian diplomat who chaired the 1972 Stockholm environment conference. In her 2021. book, The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution, Maria Ivanova summarizes Strong’s approach to diplomacy as never to confront, but to co-opt, never to bully but to equivocate, and never to yield.

Both books demonstrate the roles of individuals and teams in creating change. They show how the interplay of ideas and inspiration from people, as well as evidence from research and building coalitions, are necessary to create change.

With the SDGs nowhere near to being achieved, the other lesson that UN delegates must take with them is to prepare their political strategy now, because evidence on its own is unlikely to change minds.