The 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), universally adopted by all
193 United Nations (UN) Member States in 2015, represent a shared vision for people and the planet. With a framework containing 169 targets and 248 indicators, the SDGs stipulate an aspirational agenda for global society to achieve by 2030. Since their adoption, SDGs have been impactful in some respects. They frequently appear in government documents and national leaders’ speeches, and all but a handful of countries have reported progress through
Voluntary National Reviews. SDGs have been a source of inspiration for the research community—a quick search in Elsevier’s SCOPUS database would show more than 9000 research articles published to date with SDGs in their title.
As the initial euphoria fades and the two-thirds milestone of the journey rapidly approaches, serious concerns are surfacing that the world is not on track to achieving most of the SDGs. Although some progress has been made, its degree and pace vary across countries, and COVID-19 and geopolitical conflicts have stymied progress on several SDGs. Progress in addressing climate change, along with many other environment-related goals, remains off track. This lack of progress is commonly attributed to the
gap between rhetoric and action, insufficient
funding to drive implementation, lack of business engagement, and lack of ownership and
appropriate global institutions to operationalize the agenda.
The SDGs successfully highlight where we need to go, but they fall short in specifying who should do what and, notably, how much, to get us there. Sure, SDGs are meant for everyone, as clearly stated in the first page of the UN document: “All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan.” But in practice, everyone’s task could also mean no one’s task in particular. As discussions have already begun on what post-2030 global goals should look like, I argue for setting explicit goals and targets for cities and businesses. Doing so has the potential to address multiple issues.
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Better mobilization of actors, including previously untapped actors, will be key for the success of next-generation global goal setting. As the entities that approved the goals in the first place, nations are the default actors to take actions on SDGs and should remain as such in any post-2030 goals. Yet, the track record so far indicates that engaging nations is critical but insufficient. The lack of core international institutions that can own and coordinate the implementation of some of the SDGs is considered a reason for the lack of progress.
Research shows that although SDGs themselves can help global institutionalization to some extent, such effects tend to be short-lived, and they don’t provide a lasting solution to this problem.
Establishing new, global institutions can be one way to solve this problem. But we could also turn the focus to fully mobilizing existing institutions—cities and businesses, in particular. These subnational actors stand out for the magnitude of their impacts, as well as their potential agency to take swift actions. Yet these are not sufficiently reflected in the current SDGs.
SDG11 is about cities—making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. Although the framing is comprehensive, the current specific targets and indicators of SDG11 mostly focus on what needs to be achieved within cities, but they do not include what cities could and should do to achieve broader SDG goals. For example, shifts in consumption and other behavior patterns in major cities can have substantial impacts on carbon emissions and biodiversity conservation. These changes not only directly reduce overall emissions and resource
demand but also help establish new cultural norms (e.g.,
clean plate movement to reduce food waste or
cycling instead of driving) that can spread throughout society. Research can identify strong
interconnections between SDG11 and other goals, in terms of both synergies and trade-offs. Elevating cities as key agents in achieving broader SDGs could inspire them to look beyond their boundaries and empower them to do more. A systematic and comprehensive approach in target setting can help avoid cherry picking at the city level—prioritizing some targets over the others. It would also reduce the lengthy process of localizing SDGs by individual cities—
research shows that many cities are engaging in downscaling and localizing SDGs to their specific context, as both objectives and measurement indicators need to be adjusted at the local level.
For businesses, engagement pathways are less clear as there is no specific target for them. Various efforts are being made to engage businesses into SDGs. The UN Global Compact sets out 10 principles for companies, to “uphold their basic responsibilities to people and planet, but also setting the stage for long-term success.” The outcome of these post–goal-setting engagement efforts is less than optimal, as many identify the lack of engagement of the business sector as a key reason for the failure in achieving SDGs. Even for those willing to engage, SDG engagement often remains at a
superficial box-ticking level without additional actions. Having explicit targets would provide important motivation and a much-needed spur for businesses to integrate SDGs into their key performance indicators. For example, setting an explicit target for financial institutions, e.g., percentage of investment in areas relevant to SDGs, can be an important way to tackle the lack of interest for them to act upon, and thereby addressing another critical cause for failure—the lack of funding.
Setting specific targets for cities and businesses in post-2030 global goals will strongly resonate with and boost efforts on other fronts as well, e.g., preserving and enhancing the global commons. From an Earth system functioning perspective, the
Planetary Boundary (PB) framework and its subsequent
update sets limits in nine Earth system domains within which humans can safely operate, which has been influential in global research and policy over the past decade. The
Earth Commission extends the PB framework by integrating the human dimensions and Earth system functions,
conceptualizing and quantifying eight
Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) across five Earth system domains. The PBs and ESBs represent a hard boundary within which human enterprise should strive to operate.
Achieving societal aspirational goals such as SDGs shouldn’t come at the cost of the stability of Earth’s life-supporting system, thereby causing harm to human well-being in the long run. Staying within these boundaries must also be a universally recognized goal for humanity. There are important synergies between these two sets of goals. Across SDGs, the environment is an area where most of the indicators continue to follow a deteriorating trend. Achieving many of the SDG targets will have direct impacts on one or more PBs and ESBs. Advancing one will enhance the other.
Like SDGs, operationalizing the Earth system limits also requires mobilizing actors, and cities and businesses are key actors in this regard. Within the Earth system, there are complex nested scales of actors, including cities and businesses, which are increasingly taking action to reduce environmental impacts. Although often influenced or constrained by national policies, these bottom-up actions by cities and companies are important, as national-level policy pledges and actions alone are insufficient to halt the deterioration of Earth system functions.
But many more cities and companies need to join the effort if we are to stay within the PBs and ESBs. Setting explicit societal targets for cities and businesses, including those that cover the critical domains of the Earth System, can be a powerful avenue to make this happen. It will spotlight important subnational actors and uplift the environmental agenda in global policy processes.
So, what would such goals and targets look like? Rigorous scientific discussions and extensive stakeholder engagements will be needed to determine them, while lessons learned from
translating PBs and ESBs for cities and businesses can provide some food for thought:
1) Targets could be relative or absolute, but collectively they need to ensure that the goals are met.
2) A systems approach is crucial in target setting, taking into account cascading impacts, synergies, and trade-offs as much as possible. The strongest leverage points should be prioritized for the most pressing issues.
3) Targets should be included to establish less obvious links, e.g., a target that mandates a certain percentage of all investment into preserving and regenerating global commons, reducing poverty and inequality, and enhancing human well-being. The reporting of actions and impacts across all SDGs should be mandated.
4) Goals and targets should be differentiated to reflect actors’ socioeconomic and environmental context for equity, and to engage all.
5) Targets should be tiered to enable and encourage continued engagement and to harness the full potential of actors. This means those actors that are doing well and have the capacity should be able to find a next-level target. Further, actors that have cleared their own targets should be encouraged to help others.
The key in such goal setting would be to identify and agree upon what needs to be done by whom, and how much, across all SDGs. For example, Principle 8 of the UN Global Compact Principles for companies is: “Undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility.” An operationalized version of this would be the identified fair share of environmental resources, impacts, and responsibilities by businesses, which would collectively ensure that we stay within the PBs and ESBs. There are many
technical and methodological challenges in doing so. Data availability is another bottleneck.
But foundations are forming at an accelerated pace, with promising recent developments on multiple fronts. Countries started to adopt the guidelines developed by the Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (
TCFD) and the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosure (
TNFD) and mandate that corporations release relevant information, making data more readily available. The
International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), established in 2021, aims to set up a comprehensive global baseline of sustainability disclosures focusing on the needs of investors and the financial markets. Earth Commission’s
Workstream on Translation, Actors and Agency aims to advance science and methods of cross-scale translation, and Science Based Targets Initiative (
SBTi) and Science Based Targets Network (
SBTN) are developing methods and actively engaging cities and businesses to set science-based targets. The inclusion of specific goals and targets for cities and businesses will demonstrate a clear political commitment at the highest level, which will in turn substantially elevate these efforts, driving a step change in progress.
Including explicit targets for subnational actors will not be an easy process. Priorities and interests may clash and power may intervene, making it much harder to reach agreement than for generic aspirational goals. Yet, setting targets for cities and businesses could be less political—at least less bound by current or past geopolitical conflicts between nations, and therefore potentially easier than setting the same measurable targets for countries. Science is not completely ready, either. There is still much debate and disagreement even in the case of
carbon, which is the first globally recognized target. Setting targets for other domains of the global commons is only nascent even though the awareness is growing.
But it is at least worth trying. The
galvanizing power of positive goal setting should never be underestimated. Political will is the key—once the UN organizations and country leaders land the targets, businesses and cities may respond strongly. For businesses, at least, there is clear motivation—staying one step ahead of regulations and managing reputational, supply chain, and other risks are important. Lessons from localizing SDGs and implementing them in thousands of cities across the world, and from the
UN Global Compact’s effort to drive business actions, can form a strong foundation. What is needed is a clear policy signal. Starting the discussion involving stakeholders early on will be crucial.
Acknowledgments
X.B. is supported by Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship Grant FL230100021. She is a member of Earth Commission co-leading its workstream on Translation, Actors and Agency. The author thanks S. Wang for research assistance and Y. Zheng for editing the draft.
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