The 2023 New York SDG Summit Outcome: Rescue Plan for 2030 Agenda as a Wake-up Call for the Decision-makers

Abstract

As a plenary organ of the UN, the General Assembly has invoked its principal instrumentality of resolutions to address a variety of global problems. The mirage of being called “recommendations” (Article 11, the UN Charter) has never come in the way of finesse with which the Assembly has invoked its resolutions to zero in on contemporary common concerns. The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by resolution 70/1 (September 25, 2015) has been one such major global action plan that became a milestone in a long line of engagements that have also carried the normative halo. Now at the mid-way to the 15-year cycle (2015–2030), the performance assessment on 17 Goals shows that the promise of leaving “no one behind” is in peril. In view of the reality of the world we live in and multiple interconnected planetary scale crisis situations, the UN member states have floundered in giving effect to the promises laid down in the 17 Goals of the 2030 Agenda. The UN Secretary-General’s report (April 27, 2023) has called for a resolute rescue plan for people and planet. The progress came to be reviewed at the SDG Summit convened by the UNGA President during September 18-19, 2023. The available data (Revised Zero Draft of June 8, 2023), underscored the gravity of the peril faced by the humankind since, out of 140 targets, “only about 12 per cent are on track; more than half, although showing some progress, are moderately or severely off track; and some 30 per cent have either seen no movement or regressed below the 2015 baseline”. The Political Declaration adopted at the New York SDG Summit coinciding with the meeting of the High-Level Political Forum, sought to work out a rescue plan considering the UNSG’s stimulus plan and taken the “pledge to act now, for present and future generations”. This article examines the process, the promise, the pledge and the rescue plan for the SDGs in peril.