15. The EU’s support for the global Sustainable Development Agenda: how to accelerate progress until 2030
Paula von Haaren, Ariel Macaspac Hernandez and Axel Berger
in: Hackenesch, C., Keijzer, N., & Koch, S. (Eds., 2024). The European Union’s global role in a changing world: Challenges and opportunities for the new leadership (IDOS Discussion Paper 11/2024). IDOS.
State of play
The current global polycrisis – characterised by wars, geopolitical tensions, pandemics, environmental degradation, climate change, inequality, and social injustice – has exposed the challenges faced by the world community in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First, it highlights the interconnected causes of multiple crises and the need to move away from siloed thinking and towards more integrated, sustainability-oriented policymaking across topics, sectors and social systems. Secondly, despite the large number of goals and targets, today’s crises show that the SDG framework is incomplete and fails to sufficiently capture several key dimensions of human wellbeing, such as social cohesion, mental health, or digital sovereignty. Thirdly, the slow progress and setbacks experienced in realising the Agenda reveal wavering government commitment to the SDGs through, for instance, insufficient financing and regulatory measures to tackle harmful externalities, often referred to as negative spillovers. At present, only 16% of the SDG targets are projected to be reached by 2030 (Sachs et al., 2024).
Notwithstanding this, the polycrisis has also revealed a growing need and public support for effective sustainable development measures, including in the European Union (EU) and its member states (European Commission, 2023). The EU has played an important role in promoting the SDGs globally and, together with its member states, has provided substantial funding to support sustainable development in low- and middle-income countries (see Section 17 in this publication). The EU was also the first region to present a Voluntary Review (VR) at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2023. The VR outlined the EU’s current sustainable development policies such as the Green Deal, the Global Gateway programme and the integration of SDGs into the EU budget, and discussed predominantly positive externalities. However, the report lacks detailed action plans that tackle the structural causes of SDG deficits. Moreover, it largely ignores the persistent negative spillover effects of European financial policy, consumption and production on other countries (Lafortune et al., 2024).
As the 2030 Agenda ends in 2030, the remaining years should be used to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs, while at the same time preparing the ground for the negotiation of a follow-up Agenda beyond 2030. The 2027 SDG Summit – the key gathering of world leaders taking place every four years to take stock of the SDG implementation and provide policy leadership – will be crucial for initiating these negotiations. This presents a key opportunity for the EU’s leadership to shape the future of sustainable development policy both within the EU and globally.
Internal and external influences
Despite previously championing the SDGs internationally, the EU recently reduced the priority of and focus on the SDGs in its development and international policies. This shift is connected to various internal and external developments and conflicts of interest between the EU and its partner countries.
One reason for the stalling progress in achieving the Agenda 2030 are insufficient financial means for its implementation. The economic stimulus measures during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion have put public budgets under pressure. Within the EU, the rise of populist and right-wing political parties has led to questioning and redirection of the focus and fiscal space to finance SDG implementation. Globally, no consensus has been reached on how to distribute the financial burden between current and historical greenhouse gas emitters, and between poor and wealthy countries.
Increasing global conflicts, economic competition, and the prioritisation of national health during the pandemic have created an atmosphere of distrust globally, challenging cooperation and negotiation. This is reflected in greater reluctance of the EU and its member states to share technologies (a central pillar of Agenda 2030) with some states, in particular China. There also exist disagreements about the perceived protection of domestic green industries on both sides (see Section 3 on EU trade policy).
Finally, rising powers from the Global South have become alternative development partners, promoting their own definitions and practices of sustainable development. This introduces competitive dynamics into development cooperation and challenges the values and instruments supporting the SDGs.
Looking ahead
Accelerate progress towards Agenda 2030
Timely measures are needed to expedite progress towards the 2030 Agenda, but also to avoid negative environmental and social tipping points leading to social conflict. To this end, a recent publication (Lafortune et al., 2024) highlights several priority actions for the EU:
Ambitious environmental and social policies: The EU should adopt a new European Deal for the Future with clear targets, timelines and action plans to address both environmental and social problems. For instance, it should increase and accelerate efforts to achieve net-zero emissions, including the active discouragement and dismantling of subsidies for unsustainable technologies and practices. New social policies should reduce vulnerability to poverty and social exclusion.
Strengthen engagement at all levels: Engagement can be fostered by creating and institutionalising platforms that engage civil society in EU SDG policies, and by institutionalising the annual monitoring of SDG progress by the European Parliament. The EU should also support sub-national actors in implementing and monitoring local SDG policies, for example, financially, through training, and integration into multinational networks.
Avoid negative international spillovers: To avoid spillovers, the EU must eliminate unsustainable practices in its international supply chains and streamline financial and macro-economic policies to avoid inequitable tax competition and “profit shifting”.
Increase financing for sustainable development (FSD) in other countries: FSD should be anchored in the European Deal for the Future and earmarked in the 2028 budget. Moreover, the EU should increase funding to multilateral development banks and support the inclusion of all sustainability dimensions into the global financial architecture’s mandate.
Promote alliances for the SDGs outside of the EU: To this end, the EU should expand “Team Europe” to coordinate diplomatic action of EU member states and re-orient international partnerships to be mutually transformative.
Consider interlinkages: In addition to the above points raised by Lafortune et al., (2024) planning and implementation should consider interlinkages between different goals, sectors and territories. This can be supported by linking EU financing to a set of SDGs that relate to several sectors.
Beyond-2030: fostering commitment, effective implementation, trust and collaboration
An updated or new global Sustainable Development Agenda beyond 2030 would need to address shortcomings of the current framework. This will involve tackling obstacles to effective implementation, monitoring and peer review mechanisms and improving the formulation of the goals and indicators themselves. To pave the way for a potential agreement on an Agenda beyond 2030, the EU must navigate conflicts of interest between countries, regain trust and credibility, and form new, flexible alliances with governments, the private sector, and civil society.
Increasing commitment and ensuring effective implementation for transformative change
Commitment: Firstly, preparations for the negotiations of a new global Agenda beyond 2030 must ensure in discourse and timing that they do not discourage stakeholders’ commitment to pursue the current SDGs during the remaining time until 2030. Secondly, EU states need to develop a unified, evidence-based position on the most important sustainability aims and policies. Thirdly, a new framework must ensure continued commitment from all states to its implementation.
Recent studies show that governments tend to stick with their existing agenda, linking it to selected SDGs while neglecting others. To avoid this selection bias, making the SDGs binding in areas without international legislation – at least amongst coalitions of the willing – could help achieve real change (Bierman et al., 2023).
Moreover, monitoring of SDG policies at all levels should look beyond policy aims and evaluate policy effectiveness. Monitoring should also involve civil society more extensively (Bierman et al., 2023).
Implementation: More attention must be devoted to negative spillover effects, both in SDG monitoring (e.g. by integrating the SDSN’s spillover index into the international review system) and in EU policies such as the Green Deal. The EU should also advocate for incorporating guardrails against negative international spillovers, and directly regulate upcoming cross-border challenges, such as water use, in the new SDG framework to pre-empt future conflicts.
Local action and implementation are particularly integrated and committed to the SDGs (Bierman et al., 2023). Acknowledging the validity of local and indigenous knowledge, and integrating it into the framework, is crucial. Opening the SDGs to local sustainability narratives could also strengthen local support.
Revising goals and indicators: Continued progress towards the SDGs will be fostered by guiding and incentivising stakeholders to focus on incremental implementation and root causes, not just on reaching the end goals. Indicators and goals can reflect this by becoming more ambitious over time and by incorporating measures against the underlying causes of deficits in the goals.
Indicators should include non-material measures of wellbeing. For instance, composite measures of welfare and poverty should move away from GDP (gross domestic product), as poverty and welfare deficiency can manifest in various non-material forms such as ill health or poor education. Other neglected non-material aspects of human wellbeing include mental health, culture, social, emotional and creative skills education, employment quality, social cohesion and engagement.
Furthermore, the EU needs to engage in discourse on balancing the ethical questions surrounding digitalisation and North-South technology-sharing in the framework. Sharing policies should support equitable access and accelerate green transformation while ensuring the security of sharing states and protecting citizens in receiving countries from misuse by autocratic governments.
Establishing trust and international cooperation
Achieving cooperation and agreement for an Agenda beyond 2030 requires greater pre-negotiation and trust-building than the 2015 negotiations, due to fluctuating coalitions and a greater diversity of actors and development concepts.
Given the shifts in geopolitical power, the EU needs to take its partners’ needs seriously when discussing the Beyond-2030 Agenda and the distribution of financial responsibilities. Negotiations can be structured to enhance mutual understanding. For example, a stocktaking phase before negotiations, as used in 2015, could help establish common knowledge and trust. The Beyond-2015 process would also benefit from breaking up North-South fronts and involving actors from various policy sectors, such as the less hierarchical environmental community, as well as stakeholders from science, civil society and the private sector early in the negotiation process (Fukuda-Parr, 2023).
However, the EU also needs to identify and promote ways to include the voices of groups that are not organised at international level. Global citizen surveys should be supplemented by an accountability mechanism that documents how results are incorporated into the Beyond-2030 process at EU and UN level.
References
Biermann, F., Sun, Y., Banik, D., Beisheim, M., Bloomfield, M. J., Charles, A., Chasek, P., Hickmann, T., Pradhan, P., & Sénit, C. A. (2023). Four governance reforms to strengthen the SDGs. Science 381(6663), 1159-1160. doi: 10.1126/science.adj5434
ECDMP. (2024). What is driving change in Europe’s international cooperation agenda? (Figure 4: Key events and moments of change). Accessed 13 August 2024.https://ecdpm.org/work/what-driving-change-europes-international-cooperation-agenda-part-1
European Commission. (2023). Special Eurobarometer 538 climate change – Summary report. https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2954. doi: 10.2834/432566.Fukuda-Parr, S. (2023). Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the promise of a transformative agenda. In T. G. Weiss & R. Wilkinson (Eds.), International Organization and Global Governance (pp. 708-723). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003266365
Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Kloke-Lesch, A., Koundouri, P. & Riccaboni, A. (2024). European elections, Europe’s future and the SDGs: Europe Sustainable Development Report 2023/24. SDSN and SDSN Europe and Dublin: Dublin University Press. https://doi.org/10.25546/104407
Sachs, J. D., Lafortune, G., & Fuller, G. (2024). The SDGs and the UN Summit of the Future. Sustainable Development Report 2024. SDSN and Dublin University Press. doi: 10.25546/108572
