Conclusion

The debates on the future of the 2030 Agenda are clear signs of the interest shown in the SDG framework as a key incentive for continuing discussions between researchers and policy-makers on the directions for sustainable development paths. Given the mixed results on the achievement of the SDGs, there is a legitimate need to pursue the fruitful discussions between researchers and policy-makers on the framework for action.

Among the potential avenues to be explored, we have presented five that would help steer the SDGs back on track: step up research efforts to define environmental indicators at the global level and engage in a discussions on the environmental thresholds to be set at the local level; identify synergies and tensions between goals to promote trade-offs and work concretely on SDG interactions with a focus on specific nexuses; work on interactions by building sustainable development trajectories based on limited number of key variables; reconcile the 2030, 2050 and longer-term time horizons by updating the indicators as and when research and diplomacy make progress, but also by thinking as of now about the goals for 2050.

Climate, biodiversity, inequalities… how to steer the SDGs back on track

There are many other possible ways forward and doubtless each one of them needs to be discussed to enrich exchanges and find responses to the multiple sustainable development challenges. As research moves forward and international commitments to sustainable development make headway, the SDG framework will inevitably need to evolve.

In its global report (GSDR, 2019), the Independent Group of Scientists on sustainable development, appointed by the UN Secretary-General, stresses that the current imbalances across the social, environmental and economic aspects of sustainable development are the result of an insufficient appreciation of the interlinkages between these dimensions, or of undue prioritisation of the short term. As a final point, beyond the realisation of the goals, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda should be viewed as a successful undertaking if it helps to give fresh momentum to the crucial need to improve coherence between public policies, between development sectors, between private and public actors and decision-makers, while also taking on board the intergenerational effects of these policies. In the realm of development aid, the topic of coherence has been on the agenda for many years, but it had so far been confined to policy impacts outside national borders.