The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) has published its annual global assessment of SDG progress, which reveals that none of the 17 SDGs are on track to be achieved by 2030. The report offers recommendations for the Summit of the Future (SoF) to upgrade the UN to achieve sustainable development, summarized by the five Ps – People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnerships.

Themed, ‘The SDGs and the UN Summit of the Future,’ the ninth edition of the Sustainable Development Report presents five main findings:

• Globally, only 16% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030, with the remaining 84% showing limited progress or its reversal.
• The pace of progress varies widely across country groups. Nordic countries continue to be in the lead. BRICS countries – Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa – are showing strong progress. (The report also features average results and country profiles for the BRICS+ countries (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)), following the bloc’s 2023 invitation to incorporate them in the alliance.) Poor and vulnerable nations are lagging far behind.
• Long-term investment remaining a challenge for sustainable development, there is an urgent need to reform the global financial architecture.
• Global challenges call for global cooperation. The report’s Index of countries’ support to UN-based multilateralism (UN-Mi) ranks Barbados the highest and the US the lowest in their commitment to UN-based multilateralism.
• Food- and land systems-related SDG targets are “particularly off-track.” FABLE pathways (Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy) outlined in the report seek to support sustainable food and land systems.

As a contribution to the upcoming Summit of the Future, the report formulates recommendations that align with the five sections of the Pact for the Future: sustainable development and financing for development (FfD); international peace and security; science, technology, and innovation (STI) and digital cooperation; youth and future generations; and transforming global governance.

Among the recommendations are five complementary strategies to reform the global financial architecture:

• Increase the scale of financing from official sources, including bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) and multilateral financial institutions (MFIs), including multilateral development banks (MDBs);
• Increase the scale and performance of mission-oriented and fit-for-purpose national development banks to provide long-term financing to achieve the SDGs;
• Institute global taxation on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, air and sea travel, and financial transactions, among other examples, “to mobilize sufficient global resources to provide the necessary global public goods”;
• Reform the private capital markets and their regulation, including the system of credit ratings, in support of larger private flows of capital to low-income countries (LICs) and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs); and
• Restructure existing debts, including debt-for-SDG swaps, debt-for-Nature swaps, lower interest rates, and longer maturities that align with “the time horizon to achieve sustainable development.”

The report’s SDG Index and Dashboards rank the performance of all UN Member States on the SDGs, as well as their positive and negative spillover effects on other countries’ abilities to achieve the SDGs. As with the 2023 ranking of countries’ overall performance on the SDGs, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark emerge at the top. Sierra Leone, Madagascar, and Zambia cause the most positive and the least negative spillover effects.

SDSN launched the report in Paris, France, on 17 June 2024. First published in 2016, the Sustainable Development Report, led by SDSN’s President Jeffrey Sachs, provides data to track and rank the performance of all UN Member States on the 17 SDGs.

The report is one of several SDG assessments released each year in the lead-up to the annual UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The UN Secretary-General’s SDG Progress Report and the Sustainable Development Goals Report by the UN Statistics Division (forthcoming) will also inform HLPF deliberations. This year’s assessments will also support the Summit of the Future in September. [Publication: Sustainable Development Report 2024: The SDGs and the UN Summit of the Future] [Online Report] [SDSN Press Release]