The UN’s Summit of the Future (SOTF) and its resulting Pact for the Future (PFF) is a high-profile vessel for a wide range of aspirations for the UN and multilateralism. This is abundantly evident on the question of sustainable development where progress has stalled or even gone into reverse. Expectations for how much the SOTF/PFF can do on mobilizing resources and will to address gaps in human development must be tempered and anchored in a realistic way ahead.
The world set an ambitious goal in 2015 to build on the successful realization of the Millenium Development Goals with a more far reaching and complex agenda through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With approximately six years remaining the chances of achieving those goals seems increasingly remote due to conflicts, climate insecurity, pandemics and a diminishment of political will and leadership. Only an estimated 15% of measurable SDG targets are on track and twice as many are making no or even reverse progress. The 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report estimates that financing gaps have grown from around $2.5 trillion before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to around $4 trillion in 2024. The financing challenges are particularly apparent for less developed countries, due to high levels of debt, increased costs and shrinking access to markets and financing. While the stark reality of the financing shortfalls has shifted the prevailing narrative toward new and creative thinking of financing alternatives, the global economic headwinds – lower growth, higher inflation – threaten to overwhelm. The core challenge is either to reaffirm and reenergize existing global commitments and meet these agreed goals or start a process of reimagining and developing a set of revised goals.
Draft versions of the PFF clearly double down on the goals as they now stand and excoriate the international community to find the resources – and the will – to meet the SDG targets. The third revised version of the PFF (Rev 3), released late August 2024, notes that realization of the SDGs is in “peril.” Building on earlier draft versions, Rev 3 urges a closing in the funding gap, and highlights the importance of the existing multilateral trading system, inclusion, and peace and justice, and the environment. The trend in language from the zero to the third draft has become more specific but less ambitious in many locations. It also pays closer attention to the social implications of development as the G77 group of developing nations and others have sought to assert their voices and focus more on the consequences of inadequate financing such as poverty and food insecurity. The language has also sharpened on the importance of addressing the planet’s poorest populations. The placement and prominence of human rights within the economic development framework has also undergone some shifts in the progress of the versions, with certain strictures softened while links to related issues, especially for women and girls, have been highlighted. Some specifics have also been added to the section on Climate Change, including a price tag for an aspirational $100 billion goal as a floor for a new collective set of national goals, as well as more detailed references to clean energy and different kinds of catalytic financing. Civil society groups, however, have called the revised language “weak and unclear.”
Follow through after the Summit will be critical both for signaling and achieving real progress. The PFF draft language looks ahead to “securing an ambitious outcome” at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), scheduled to take place in June 2025 in Spain and is charged by UN member states to address financing challenges “in the context of the urgent need to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the achievement of the SDGs and to support reform of the international financial architecture.” What the evolution of the PFF language underscores is that further reforms, necessarily involving both public and private sectors, must be tailored, ambitious and will be enormously challenging.
Another important strand of SOTF follow up in this area will be the second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2) slated to take place in November 2025 in Doha, Qatar. It will seek to advance the inclusion agenda for social development and justice. It will build on the 1995 Copenhagen Declaration where UN member states reaffirmed that “economic development, social development and environmental protection are interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development.” As a counterweight to the appropriate current emphasis on financing, the WSSD2 will seek to keep the importance of poverty eradication, reduction of inequality, promotion of full employment and social inclusion front and center.
Both the FfD4 and the WSSD2 will be essential to envisioning a plausible trajectory for truly sustainable development plans after 2030. The PFF draft language provides some guidance in this respect as it urges consideration of “how we will advance sustainable development by 2030 and beyond.” Yet it is hard to escape the reality that progress on the SDGs has gone in reverse. Key therefore will be to contemplate a new metric for successful sustainable development that both accepts the current financing reality while also responding to evolving attitudes on the actual goals of sustainable development. The first step will be for SOTF/PFF to provide the necessary momentum and visibility.
Chapter 1: SOTF & Sustainable Development
By Andrew Hyde
International & Regional Organizations
The UN’s Summit of the Future (SOTF) and its resulting Pact for the Future (PFF) is a high-profile vessel for a wide range of aspirations for the UN and multilateralism. This is abundantly evident on the question of sustainable development where progress has stalled or even gone into reverse. Expectations for how much the SOTF/PFF can do on mobilizing resources and will to address gaps in human development must be tempered and anchored in a realistic way ahead.
The world set an ambitious goal in 2015 to build on the successful realization of the Millenium Development Goals with a more far reaching and complex agenda through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With approximately six years remaining the chances of achieving those goals seems increasingly remote due to conflicts, climate insecurity, pandemics and a diminishment of political will and leadership. Only an estimated 15% of measurable SDG targets are on track and twice as many are making no or even reverse progress. The 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report estimates that financing gaps have grown from around $2.5 trillion before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to around $4 trillion in 2024. The financing challenges are particularly apparent for less developed countries, due to high levels of debt, increased costs and shrinking access to markets and financing. While the stark reality of the financing shortfalls has shifted the prevailing narrative toward new and creative thinking of financing alternatives, the global economic headwinds – lower growth, higher inflation – threaten to overwhelm. The core challenge is either to reaffirm and reenergize existing global commitments and meet these agreed goals or start a process of reimagining and developing a set of revised goals.
Draft versions of the PFF clearly double down on the goals as they now stand and excoriate the international community to find the resources – and the will – to meet the SDG targets. The third revised version of the PFF (Rev 3), released late August 2024, notes that realization of the SDGs is in “peril.” Building on earlier draft versions, Rev 3 urges a closing in the funding gap, and highlights the importance of the existing multilateral trading system, inclusion, and peace and justice, and the environment. The trend in language from the zero to the third draft has become more specific but less ambitious in many locations. It also pays closer attention to the social implications of development as the G77 group of developing nations and others have sought to assert their voices and focus more on the consequences of inadequate financing such as poverty and food insecurity. The language has also sharpened on the importance of addressing the planet’s poorest populations. The placement and prominence of human rights within the economic development framework has also undergone some shifts in the progress of the versions, with certain strictures softened while links to related issues, especially for women and girls, have been highlighted. Some specifics have also been added to the section on Climate Change, including a price tag for an aspirational $100 billion goal as a floor for a new collective set of national goals, as well as more detailed references to clean energy and different kinds of catalytic financing. Civil society groups, however, have called the revised language “weak and unclear.”
Follow through after the Summit will be critical both for signaling and achieving real progress. The PFF draft language looks ahead to “securing an ambitious outcome” at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), scheduled to take place in June 2025 in Spain and is charged by UN member states to address financing challenges “in the context of the urgent need to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the achievement of the SDGs and to support reform of the international financial architecture.” What the evolution of the PFF language underscores is that further reforms, necessarily involving both public and private sectors, must be tailored, ambitious and will be enormously challenging.
Another important strand of SOTF follow up in this area will be the second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2) slated to take place in November 2025 in Doha, Qatar. It will seek to advance the inclusion agenda for social development and justice. It will build on the 1995 Copenhagen Declaration where UN member states reaffirmed that “economic development, social development and environmental protection are interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development.” As a counterweight to the appropriate current emphasis on financing, the WSSD2 will seek to keep the importance of poverty eradication, reduction of inequality, promotion of full employment and social inclusion front and center.
Both the FfD4 and the WSSD2 will be essential to envisioning a plausible trajectory for truly sustainable development plans after 2030. The PFF draft language provides some guidance in this respect as it urges consideration of “how we will advance sustainable development by 2030 and beyond.” Yet it is hard to escape the reality that progress on the SDGs has gone in reverse. Key therefore will be to contemplate a new metric for successful sustainable development that both accepts the current financing reality while also responding to evolving attitudes on the actual goals of sustainable development. The first step will be for SOTF/PFF to provide the necessary momentum and visibility.
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