The SDGs continue to attract negative and positive commentary in almost equal measure

The SDGs suffer from a problem of scale – or rather of how to mesh two scales, the grand and the miniature. The breadth of their vision, not to mention the prescriptive language they and their targets are couched in can be daunting for the ordinary mortal. For the small NGO, community foundation or local government official, coming up against the SDGs must feel like someone who lives in a small apartment contemplating the Empire State Building: you might find the architecture breathtaking, but you’d struggle to see how you could live and work there. And yet, as the contributors to this special feature write and as the UN itself is acutely aware, ‘the creativity, know-how, technology and financial resources from all of society is necessary to achieve the SDGs in every context’ and ‘while the SDGs are global, their achievement will depend on our ability to make them a reality in our cities and regions’. As the contributors also show, it’s a struggle.

Perhaps worse still, there are some who see the SDGs as misconceived or irrelevant. For some, they impose a conceptual straitjacket, not very different from the one they have worn throughout the history of ‘development’. One African foundation finds ‘the SDGs reflecting the Global North concepts and definitions of development. They basically frame development in their thinking and ways of working, which advance their interests and agendas.’

We’re roughly halfway through the allotted span of the 2030 Development Agenda. Ambivalence about the goals remains and will very likely become more marked as we near 2030 and goals are not met.

So the goals continue to divide opinion, producing a mixture of optimism and scepticism. At one extreme, they impose a template based on the assumptions and preconceptions of the developed countries, without regard for particular circumstances. They oblige NGOs willy-nilly to make their projects conform to the pattern the goals lay down. At the other extreme, they are helping an assortment of actors align their activities in pursuit of highly desirable aims. Generally speaking, the contributors to this special feature are aware of this divide, though generally looking to the positive elements of the goals.

Time is moving rapidly on. ‘We don’t have a second to lose! We must rally our forces and react to the crises currently piling up!’ as Maimunah Mohd Sharif, executive director of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) reminded the Council of Europe’s conference of regional and local authorities earlier this year. We’re roughly halfway through the allotted span of the 2030 Development Agenda. Ambivalence about the goals remains and will very likely become more marked as we near 2030 and goals are not met.

How should we think about them? Neither friends nor enemies seem entirely resolved about this question. The UK’s All-party Parliamentary Group for the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development talks of the SDGs as a ‘roadmap for recovery’ from the pandemic. The metaphor seems inappropriate. Roadmaps conventionally show… well – roads. The SDGs offer a set of destinations, but not much information about how to get there. As the lead article in this feature remarks, not achieving the goals is not necessarily grounds for despair. Maybe we should see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty, and start looking for ways to top it up with something everyone feels happy to drink.

Andrew Milner is special feature editor of Alliance magazine