The SDGs & UN Summit of the Future - Highlights - GUILLAUME LAFORTUNE
How can we get 193 countries to move in the same direction for a better tomorrow?
In today's podcast, we talk with Guillaume Lafortune, Vice President and Head of the Paris Office of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the largest global network of scientists and practitioners dedicated to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We discuss the intersections of sustainability, global progress, the UN Summit of the Future, and the daunting challenges we face. From the impact of war on climate initiatives to transforming data into narratives that drive change, we explore how global cooperation, education, and technology pave the way for a sustainable future and look at the lessons of history and the power of diplomacy in shaping our path forward.
Duration:
15m
Broadcast on:
31 Jul 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
In today's podcast, we talk with Guillaume Lafortune, Vice President and Head of the Paris Office of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the largest global network of scientists and practitioners dedicated to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We discuss the intersections of sustainability, global progress, the UN Summit of the Future, and the daunting challenges we face. From the impact of war on climate initiatives to transforming data into narratives that drive change, we explore how global cooperation, education, and technology pave the way for a sustainable future and look at the lessons of history and the power of diplomacy in shaping our path forward.
Guillaume Lafortune joined SDSN in 2017 to lead work on SDG data, policies, and financing including the preparation of the annual Sustainable Development Report (which includes the SDG Index and Dashboards). Between 2020 and 2022 Guillaume was a member of The Lancet Commission on COVID-19, where he coordinated the taskforces on “Fiscal Policy and Financial Markets” and “Green Recovery”, and co-authored the final report of the Commission. Guillaume is also a member of the Grenoble Center for Economic Research (CREG) at the Grenoble Alpes University. Previously, he served as an economist at the OECD in Paris and at the Ministry of Economic Development in the Government of Quebec (Canada). Guillaume is the author of 50+ scientific publications, book chapters, policy briefs and international reports on sustainable development, economic policy and good governance.
GUILLAUME LAFORTUNE
The SDSN has been set up to mobilize research and science for the Sustainable Development Goals. Each year, we aim to provide a fair and accurate assessment of countries' progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The development goals were adopted back in 2015 by all UN member states, marking the first time in human history that we have a common goal for the entire world.
Our goal each year with the SDG index is to have sound methodologies and translate these into actionable insights that can generate impactful results at the end of the day. Out of all the targets that we track, only 16 percent are estimated to be on track. This agenda not only combines environmental development but also social development, economic development, and good governance. Currently, none of the SDGs are on track to be achieved at the global level.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interview Producer and Associate Text Editor on this episode was Nadia Lam. One Planet Podcast is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.
(soft piano music) - You're listening to highlights from one planet podcast interview with Guillaume La Fortune, vice president and head of the Paris office at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This podcast is supported by the Jan Moschowski Foundation. - I've always wanted to be also in the room with those that change the world and I guess there's different ways to do this, but my way is to try to contribute in the modest way with the analytical work that I do. And I think at this DSM, this is one of the great opportunities. Finally, another motivator in my journey has been to try to think about what can be good and what can I do for having a positive impact on the next generation. I have two kids, so what can I do to make this world a better place for my kids but also for the future generations? The SDSN has been set up to mobilize research and science for the sustainable development goals. And each year we try to come up with a fair and sound diagnosis of how countries are doing in terms of their progress among the 17 sustainable development goals which were adopted back in 2015 by all UN member states. The first time in human history that we have common goal for the entire world. And so this is what we try to do, especially with this SDG index each year is to have sound methodologies but also to translate this into actionable insights for generating a DNA impact. Out of all of the targets that we track, only 16% are estimated to be on track. And again, this is an agenda that combines not only environmental development but also social development, economic development and good governance. 16% of the targets are on track. Currently none of the SDGs are on track to be achieved at the global level. The BRICS countries, for instance, are making quite significant progress. So when we started tracking this in 2015 they were below the world average right now. They are above the world average SDG index. East and South Asia are also making quite significant progress. And if we go down one level to the level of countries that are making the most progress on this agenda, we see countries like Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, but also countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Togo, UAE, Uzbekistan that are making quite significant progress. And among the countries I just listed, some of them have very strong long-term planning departments. For instance, I think about Indonesia. But also some of them have developed very innovative tools like sustainable development goals, bond, so sovereign financing instruments structured around the SDGs. That's the case for a country like Benin or Uzbekistan. And I think those are examples we can build on in order to achieve the goals that we need to build on what has been achieved and the progress that we've made, including by developing sovereign investment bonds around the SDGs in the next phase of this agenda. There's six years left. I think it's very clear that we won't achieve all of those goals by 2030. One of the recommendation that we are making in this year's Sustainable Development Report is perhaps we will need eventually to extend this agenda to 2050. This would align with the Paris climate agreement. And we will need to build a narrative so that it's not just postponing the homework that needs to be handed in, but perhaps raising a little bit ambition and bringing new topics into the mix. For instance, artificial intelligence back in 2015 was not mentioned in the official 2030 agenda document. So that's for sure a topic that might need to be incorporated in the next agenda that will continue the SDGs beyond 2030. There's been various estimates that have been put forward in terms of the financing gap to achieve the SDGs and often they tend to focus on the infrastructure and investment gap to a large extent. And so I think there's been different estimates out there, but essentially the financing gap, especially for developing economies, would be somewhere between one and four trillion USD per year that we need to be mobilized compared to what is currently being mobilized right now. One to four trillion might seem like a very large number, right? But when we take a step back and look at this from the global economy, one to four trillion is basically equivalent to between one and four percent of global GDP. I think the story needs to be told that there is actually no financial impossibility in achieving those goals and investing into the infrastructures that are needed into the SDGs, but it's basically a question of political leadership, in particular to align the global financing flows to achieve sustainable infrastructure and sustainable development and health the countries that need it the most. When we publish this year to Sustainable Development Report, the title this year is the SDGs and the UN Summit of the Future, because what we're trying to do is to support this very important summit that is coming up in September, which has been cut forward by the UN Secretary General, to basically come up with a new vision for the UN system. We believe that to achieve goals that are complex, we need two things, global cooperation in peace, financing, and long-term pathways. And those long-term pathways must be supported by strong monitoring systems who track progress. In 2012, the UN Secretary General at the time, Vancouver, decided to basically set up and mandate the new organization to mobilize research and science for the SDGs. And at the time, the SDGs were not yet adopted, so part of our role was to make recommendations on what could follow at the time the millennium did not go to the MDGs, which were adopted from 2000 to 2015. And in 2012, there was the whole discussion around okay, well, what will come next. So our earlier reports, that is this, and have been around what could be the next set of goals. And then the goals were, of course, adopted. And I think a key term in our organization is sustainable development solutions network. So our goal is to come up with solutions for this agenda. And in this sense, we do four major things. First of all, we try to advise the UN leadership, the leadership of other international institutions, multilateral development banks, national governments, local governments, on SDG policies, analytics, and planning and monitoring. Second of all, we mobilized the largest global network of researchers and scientists that aim to implement the SDGs, sometimes at a very micro level, within their university curricular, within their campus, but also at the city level. Third, we develop our own tools. The SDG Index is one, we do a lot of work on long-term pathways, scenarios, including for food and land pathways. And then fourth, is education for sustainable development. At the end of the day, I mean, what we care about is evidence-based policies, science-based policies, the science policy interface. But indeed, we don't have public opinions. That supports those kinds of policies, this is an issue. So this is why this fourth pillar of our work on education for sustainable development, the SDG Academy, tries to bring to the world at very low cost, often free of charge, education to the entire world online for educating the future generations, but also current practitioners around sustainable development. AI in my mind can be very positive for this agenda, but there's, of course, a real question around regulation and going back to our bread and butter at the SDSN. I think this is really something we should think about how to incorporate AI. Either we incorporate AI targets and regulations within some of the existing goals, or we could also think about a separate goal. I think the situation in France perhaps reflects a broader situation in many European countries where we see growing polarization, fragmentation of our societies. Many countries are facing a move towards more conservative government in Europe. When we have all those political deadlock, this fragmentation, political violence, and so on, there's a risk that we're not able institutionally to advance those long-term goals and objectives. When we look at the latest document of the European Council, the strategy for 2024 to 2029, which was just published a few weeks ago, there's zero mention of sustainable development goals. Zero mention of agenda 2030, issues like climate and biodiversity are barely mentioned. When we look at the G20 declaration of India last September, the SDGs are mentioned many, many times. And as I said, we have countries that are actually adopting sovereign investment instrument around SDGs, like Benin, like Uzbekistan, for instance, are really using this agenda and taking it seriously. And so I think it's in the interest of Europe to continue to use the SDGs, talk about the SDGs, and use this as a common language with the rest of the world, including the global South. The other thing that we've been trying to track this year, especially in the context of the summit of the future, is if we think that global multilateralism based on the UN system is important, we looked at this by focusing on six indicators. One is which countries ratify most of the major UN treaties? Which countries tended to vote alongside the rest of the majority vote at the UN General Assembly? We also looked at the participation, the membership in UN organizations. We've looked at which countries promote peace and demilitarization. We've looked at the adoption of unilateral coercive measures, which are forbidden, the UN system. And we've also looked at which countries tend to pay their dues on time, so finance the UN system, and also achieve their targets on official development assistance in international solidarity. And so we compiled those different metrics and made this available in our report, but also online. The median score on this index goes from zero, very low support for UN-based multiracism to 100 high support for UN-based multiracism. The median score is 17. So the way I'm to print this is that, despite the fact that we talk a lot about the crises of multilateralism and fragmented multiracism, there's actually a majority of countries that want this UN system to work. What I think gives me hope is the fact that when this agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, were adopted back in 2015, there was this agreement that 40 countries each year would go in front of the international community and present so-called voluntary national review. And now in 2024, they could be 180 out of 193 countries have done this. In fact, it could be that by now it's actually 190 because Yemen and South Sudan were on the list to present at the high-level political forum, which is taking place right now in New York. So there's only three countries that haven't done their homework and haven't engaged with what had been agreed in 2015 around the voluntary national review process and two of them are indeed political and social crises. Those are Haiti and Myanmar. I think this one is the United States of America. The problem is you cannot achieve sustainable development in the middle of raging wars. First of all, because there's direct negative humanitarian impacts, catastrophic impact on many of those goals. Of course, decent lives, poverty, mortality rate and so on. So there's a direct impact on those goals. Second of all, there's also some major spillover effects. And thirdly, it's a major distraction for advancing towards sustainable development. I mentioned this document, the Strategic Priority from the European Council 2024-2029, this is very much oriented towards security issues, military issues, strategic independence issues, far less about long-term goals and objectives. Peace is an absolute prerequisite to advance the wars to all goals. Former Prime Minister Davenita Vilpan also spoke very eloquently back in 2003 at the United Nations and made that famous speech and refused that France would join the United States as part of the Iraq War. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ron Hadriman passed away last week. And it's actually interesting to see that him and Mite de Roy in 1986 in a context where the U.S. were pushing France to bomb cadet fees in Libya, actually stood up and refused that U.S. airplanes would fly on top of French soil and were in favor of diplomatic and negotiated solutions with Muamakadeffi at the time in Libya. My hope today is that some leaders would emerge with innovative diplomatic solutions for negotiated peace as soon as possible so that we stop the human suffering. In Ukraine, in Gaza, in Yemen, in Sudan. And once we stop this, then the rest, we have tools, we have visions, we have programs, we have networks that can really help move towards sustainable development because those goals are not unachievable. But we need this. We released a report last March with the OECD and the European Committee of the Regions. And we surveyed more than 240 local and regional leaders. And I was struck by two things in the study. First of all is a very high percentage of those local and regional leaders are telling us we do use the SDGs when we think about our local and regional policies, you know? So the momentum is there. The second thing is when we ask them, what is the main dairy for you to achieve those goals? The number one factor is financing. On the 25th of July, so the day before the opening of the Olympic ceremony, we will actually release that this DSM, the results of about 18 months of work by the SDSN Commission on Urban SDG financing. This commission was co-chaired by Mehiri Dalgo here in Paris, Mehiri Eduardo Pich from Rio de Janeiro and our president, Professor Jeffrey Sass, which will make clear recommendations around how to solve this issue around access to financing for local and regional authorities. There is this UN summit of the future, insip them. We have a common climate, which will take place in back weather by then this year, but also a cup 30, which will take place in 2025 in Brazil. And then at this very important conference will take place in Spain in 2025 in June, which is the fourth international conference on financing for development. I remain hopeful because we have plenty of occasions in the next 18 months to talk about these issues, negotiate and find major breakthroughs on the policy and financing side. One of the main characteristics of Canada is the amount of forests, lakes, mountains and the access to nature that you have. So I've been exposed to this and from a very young age, I always have the willingness to preserve the beauty from nature. And I think, especially I think when you have kids, you hope that they will benefit from an environment which is socially, economically, but also environmentally safe and that they will be able to live in peace. I think there's no reason why we cannot make major breakthroughs in this decade and beyond on all of those 17 sustainable development goals. And this would make the life of future generations, including at the personal level of my own kids, much better. - We hope you've enjoyed this program and listening to the highlights of this podcast. If you liked it, it involved in One Planet podcast or there are more environmental projects, click on the subscribe button. Thank you for listening. (soft piano music) (gentle music)
