In 2015 the member states of the UN decided to create the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which they see as “a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity.”
They state that eradicating poverty “is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.” But this simply isn’t true! Anthropogenic climate change, and the unfolding climate crisis is the greatest global challenge, and the single biggest barrier to implementing sustainable development.
If you do not factor in mitigation of and adaption to the impacts of climate change, then you are not carrying out sustainable development – you are building on sand, and wasting value time and resources by doing so. Not putting action on climate change at the heart of policy, and framing action on all other development goals around it, makes you complicit in creating a reality where the very people you claim to be helping will experience greater suffering.
This is an example of how, even at the highest levels of global governance, and despite all the reporting carried out by various UN bodies leading up to and since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, there is a lack of public acknowledgment that the climate crisis threatens our very existance, and unpins the sustainability of any work we do to create a better, more egalitarian world.
The politicians are either choosing to bury their heads in the sand, or acting like startled rabbits in front of a speeding car, at a time when we need their leadership to create the change we need to avoid the collision course we are currently on.
The 17 UN SDGs distract from the greatest issue, and fail to acknowledge the role climate change plays in achieving them. How much more reporting, scientific analysis and extreme weather events have to occur for our political leaders to start showing some real leadership on this – addressing the single greatest global challenge humanity has ever faced, and start taking meaningful, constructive action?