2030 Agenda Challenges

The 2030 Agenda was agreed by the UN in 2015 and simply described as a plan of action for people, planet, prosperity and peace.

It is the foundation for all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Challenges to the attainment of these Goals are many.  The quotes below from senior UN officials, including the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, highlight the seriousness of the situation faced.

“Progress towards goal 16, through which countries aspire to establish more peaceful, just and inclusive societies, is worryingly slow. In some cases, it is even moving in the wrong direction …. we see that progress on violence reduction, access to justice, inclusive governance and peaceful societies is stagnating or in reverse”

Global Progress Report on

Sustainable Development Goal 16 Indicators",

UNODC, UNDP, OHCHR, 2023.

"Today’s great challenges – climate change, conflict, widening inequalities, socio-economic and geopolitical changes – intensify, while the confluence of social, technological, political and economic megatrends generates unprecedented complexity, uncertainty and disruption."

Annual Letter to UN Global Compact Participants from Sanda Ojiambo

Assistant Secretary General and CEO, The UN Global Compact

“We need peace … solidarity … a surge in implementation … gender equality … massive investment and more effective partnerships … (and) stronger and more effective international collaboration”

The UN ‘Sustainable Development Goals Report’, 2024

Foreword by the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres

​“Halfway to the deadline for the 2030 Agenda, we are leaving more than half the world behind…. Unless we act now the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been”.

‘Special Edition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Progress Report’

UN Secretary-General António Guterres,

New York, 25th April 2023