The UN has released an advanced unedited version of the UN Secretary-General’s report, underscoring that “[a] confluence of catastrophic events has put the world in a perpetual crisis mode.” The report puts forward an organizing framework centered around six transitions to enable the effective delivery of sustainable, resilient, and innovative high-impact solutions to achieve the SDGs by 2030.

The report titled, ‘Reinforcing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and eradicating poverty in times of multiple crises: The effective delivery of sustainable, resilient and innovative solutions,’ focuses on the theme of the 2024 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). It will inform discussions during HLPF 2024 in July.

The report notes that multiple, intersecting crises have led to major setbacks to developing countries’ efforts to eradicate poverty and end hunger, increased inequality, widened gender gaps, and caused significant health consequences and educational losses, affecting vulnerable groups the most. It highlights SDG investment as “a cost-effective resilience-building strategy because it addresses the economic, social and environmental challenges simultaneously.”

The report draws on the recommendations of the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023, “to forge enhanced synergy in the implementation of the SDGs.” The six transitions, or investment pathways, identified in the report are food systems, energy access and affordability, digital connectivity, education, jobs and social protection, and climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Acknowledging the high cost of recurrent crises, the report outlines sustainable, resilient, and innovative solutions for revitalizing SDG implementation. These solutions include:

• Leveraging smart technologies in food systems and promoting circular agriculture;
• Stepping up clean energy technology investment and transfer, and unlocking energy efficiency opportunities and value for energy access and affordability, which the report calls the “bedrock of sustainable development”;
• Delivering equitable e-government services and improving financial inclusion for digital connectivity, which, according to the report, provides an “opportunity for economic leapfrogging”;
• Ensuring education for all and enhancing digital education and skills to build a “ladder to future prosperity”;
• To act on jobs and social protection, modernizing social protection systems to “eradicat[e] poverty by breaking the vicious cycle of informal employment and low pay”; and
• Promoting sustainable transportation, decarbonizing industry, and promoting sustainable consumption and production processes to mitigate the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

The report recommends that countries “turbocharge SDG implementation in the second half of the SDG period by putting in place policies that drive a transformation towards sustainable development,” giving high priority to poverty eradication and ending hunger. Improving development financing, including concessional financing, and working towards “a legal framework to prevent a sovereign debt crisis by giving priority to debt cancellation and a new approach to debt sustainability” are also among the report’s recommendations.

The Secretary-General’s report was issued on 1 May 2024. [Publication: Advanced Unedited Version: Reinforcing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Eradicating Poverty in Times of Multiple Crises: The Effective Delivery of Sustainable, Resilient and Innovative Solutions: Report of the Secretary-General]