By Andrew Griffiths, Sightsavers, former co-chair of Beyond 2015, Leo Williams, Conscious Consultants, former Director of Beyond 2015, and Aissata Ndiaye, Senior Policy Adviser, Inclusion and Disability, Sightsavers

There are five years left of SDG implementation, and the UN has outlined only 17% of targets are on course to be achieved by 2030. Although there are real success stories, and doom-laden analyses of the SDGs are not justified, it is fair to say that when we worked on the development of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs through the Beyond 2015 campaign, we would have hoped for more progress by now.

That said, the SDGs are our best articulation about what development justice looks like, and each target represents a change that needs to happen for a fairer, more sustainable world. Not throwing the world’s resources behind achieving the SDGs is a missed opportunity.

Yet, whilst targets and indicators are important, they are not the only metrics of success for the SDGs. This was why, when we worked on the SDGs, Beyond 2015 developed resources on the vision, purpose, values, and criteria we wanted to see in the new development agenda, all of which are critical in underpinning any specific goals or targets. The SDGs have always also been about the normative shifts they represent. “Norms and normative effects are critical to the implementation of the SDGs, influencing how goals are prioritized, interpreted and enacted across different governance levels, both explicitly and implicitly,” a recent publication notes. “The strongest impact of the SDGs has certainly been in the way they have changed people’s cognitive mechanisms towards a universal ideal.”

Another way of articulating this is that the SDGs have always been about defining what globally accepted good outcomes look like, even if the world fails to achieve them. This is important especially when the world is not on track to achieve the SDGs, because it gives us a set of universally accepted standards we can say governments around the world have failed to live up to but should be trying to achieve. This is as helpful now as it has ever been – and something that SDG-naysayers have never really understood.

The 2030 Agenda itself set out the normative framework by articulating the three core principles of sustainable development: that they are universal and are relevant to every country, community, and person; that they are indivisible – impossible to achieve in isolation; and that no one should be left behind in their implementation. These three principles are the core of sustainable development.

We see evidence of these normative shifts throughout the world. For universality, in the Southwest of France, young teens are learning about the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs in schools, particularly linked with lessons and projects around environmental protection. This is clear evidence of the trickle-down effect – the SDGs have made their way from the annals of New York to local schools in tiny villages in France. The SDGs are now taught to children across the world, who now share a language of sustainable development. This in itself is a big success. If the SDGs were simply a set of technical targets for bureaucrats, there is simply no way this would happen. This galvanizing normative power is important and must not be lost in the transition to a post-2030 framework.

For indivisibility, Sightsavers India has worked with partners to give access to eye health services for over 500,000 truck drivers, ensuring they have the eye care they need, but also improving road safety as a result. There are countless examples of this normative principle in action: addressing the effects of climate change (SDG 13) positively impact access to arable land for farmers (SDG 2); ensuring better access to justice (SDG 16) leads to more stable jobs (SDG 8); and access to clean sanitation (SDG 6) affects access to education for girls (SDGs 4 and 5).

The leave no one behind principle has become one of the important rallying cries of those fighting inequality. It is important because it is about progress, about everyone benefiting from sustainable development. It is about focusing on fighting discrimination and inequalities (often multiple and intersecting) that undermine the agency of people as holders of rights. The principle has pushed the UN and many governments to adopt a human rights approach to data, generating evidence that goes beyond gender, geography, and age to include all grounds of discrimination prohibited under international law, ensuring that all forms of discrimination and other root causes of inequalities are identified and addressed.

We need to ensure that any conversations about either the legacy of the 2030 Agenda or what comes next look beyond the disappointing progress on target implementation and take these normative successes into account.

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This is the first of the authors’ two articles focusing on the normative legacy of the 2030 Agenda in post-2030 sustainable development.