The world output in 2018, measured at international prices, will be approximately $134 trillion, according to projections by the International Monetary Fund. That is an average of $17,600 for each man, woman, and child on the planet. This sum is easily enough to end all poverty, to ensure universal access to health care and education, and to provide the investments needed for the transformation to environmental sustainability. We are rich as a planet. We have no shortage of resources whatsoever.
In September 2015, the world agreed to put sustainable development at the center of global economic cooperation, adopting Agenda 2030 with the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A few weeks later, the world adopted the Paris Climate Agreement. Together, these constitute a globally agreed agenda, albeit one that the Trump administration has ignored (in the case of the SDGs) or disdained (in the case of the Paris Climate Agreement).
The SDGs call for a more balanced society, in which economic growth is accompanied by policies to ensure that the economic growth is widely shared and environmentally sustainable. The SDGs are described as the “triple bottom line” of economic, social, and environmental objectives.
It is sometimes claimed that the SDGs are too expensive. Poor countries, for example, will probably need an additional $100–200 billion per year in development aid to meet the challenges of health, education, and basic infrastructure. That amount may seem unattainable, but consider this. As of early 2018, according to Forbes magazine, a mere 2,208 individuals—the world’s billionaires—had $9.1 trillion in wealth.1 If the $9.1 trillion were a foundation endowment with a 5 percent per year payout rate, the annual payout would be $455 billion. That sum could end extreme poverty (SDG 1), ensure universal health coverage (SDG 3), and guarantee access for the poor to a quality education (SDG 4).
Or consider this. According to calculations by the Institute of Economics and Peace, publisher of the Global Peace Index (2017), the global costs of violence in 2016 totaled around $14 trillion (measured at international dollars), or roughly 13 percent of global output. These costs include military and security outlays, the costs of armed conflicts, and the costs of interpersonal violence. While precision in such estimates is difficult, there is no doubt that $14 trillion dwarfs the costs of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals universally, including global energy transformation.
The world’s tax havens, small islands like the Cayman Islands and the Virgin Islands, are host to more than $20 trillion of offshore deposits, money that has been moved to these places to avoid taxation and responsibility. In front of our eyes, in broad daylight, these havens of secrecy and unaccountability have been created and nurtured by our own governments, especially the most powerful and richest governments in the world.
This is the challenge of sustainable development: so affordable, so important for well-being, and yet so elusive. If we analyze carefully the realistic path to achieving the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement, we find five broad categories of activity that should become the priority work of every government in the world.
First is to ensure quality health and education for all, especially our children, whose entire lives will be shaped by the health care and education we give them in their early years. Without quality health care and education, individuals cannot realistically hope for happy and productive lives. The SDGs include universal commitments to universal health coverage (SDG 3) and universal quality education at least through the secondary level (SDG 4). We have a steep path to success. In many low-income countries, the secondary completion rate today is only 20–30 percent. By 2030, it should be 100 percent.
Second is sustainable land-use management. As I travel the world for the Sustainable Development Goals, I witness in nearly every country that the world is facing a crisis of unsustainable land management, including the loss of biodiversity, soils, freshwater, forest cover, and ecosystem functioning, at rates that are unprecedented and perilous.
Third is decent jobs and infrastructure for all. SDG 1 calls for an end to extreme poverty; SDG 8 aims for decent work for all; and SDGs 6, 7, 9, 11, and 12 include various goals for universal access to infrastructure, including safe water and sanitation, modern energy services including electrification, and transport and communications. Of course, decent work will depend on decent education combined with adequate infrastructure, so the SDGs are interdependent and mutually supportive.
Fourth is to decarbonize the energy system. The shift to zero-carbon energy is the sine qua non of planetary climate safety. By 2050 we have to achieve zero carbon emissions in order to keep global warming within the safety limits set by the Paris Climate Agreement (“well below 2 degrees Celsius” compared with the preindustrial temperature). To achieve this, we will have to be driving electric vehicles rather than cars with internal combustion engines. We will have to be using electricity produced by wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other zero-carbon energy sources, rather than by coal, oil, and natural gas. We will have to heat our buildings with electric heat pumps rather than boilers and furnaces. Time is short. Every year we have new evidence that we are at the tipping point of runaway climate disaster.
Fifth is good governance, including honesty, rule of law, fairness, competence, and transparency in managing our politics. Good governance also includes gender equality (SDG 5), reduced inequalities within and among nations (SDG 10), peaceful and inclusive societies (SDG 16), and global cooperation (SDG 17).
THE SDGS AND THE UNITED STATES
Every year the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which I direct on behalf of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, collects data from around the world to assess where countries stand on progress toward the SDGs.2 The SDG Index gives a global ranking, while the SDG Scorecard highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each of the 150 or so countries for which the requisite global data are available. The SDG Index and Dashboard together therefore offer an objective account of each country’s absolute progress toward the goals and its relative position among other nations.
The news is not good for the United States. According to the 2017 SDG Index, the U.S. ranked no better than forty-second out of 157 countries, and thirtieth out of the thirty-five high-income OECD countries. How could the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, rank so low? The reason is clear. The United States is strong on only one of the three pillars of sustainable development, the economy, but weak on social inclusion and environmental sustainability. Inequality is very high in U.S. society, with huge gaps in income and power between men and women, between races, and across educational levels. Environmental sustainability is weak because powerful corporate lobbies for the fossil-fuel and heavy industries have slowed America’s transition to low-carbon technologies and primary energy sources.
America pays a very heavy price for its failure to pursue sustainable development. U.S. life expectancy ranks twenty-fifth in the OECD and has actually been declining rather than rising in recent years.3 The prevalence of clinical depression is up, and the United States has one of the highest rates of depression in the world. Drug addiction and deaths from drug overdoses are soaring. A large part of the U.S. workforce has not gained from economic growth. Confidence in public institutions has plummeted, as has interpersonal trust in American society. For all of these reasons, the self-reported well-being of Americans has also waned.4
Compared with other high-income societies, the United States also suffers from chronic violence, thereby falling desperately short of SDG 16, which calls for “peaceful and inclusive societies.” America’s violence is evident not only in its nonstop overseas wars, but also in its high homicide rates, astounding levels of gun violence, and off-the-chart rates of incarceration, especially of young African-American men. America’s violence is also captured by the 2017 Global Peace Index, which placed the United States at the shocking rank of 114th most peaceful country out of the 163 countries measured.5
It would not be hard for the United States, with its wealth, skills, and technologies, to achieve the SDGs if it tried to do so. Success would require a change of policies, from corporate tax breaks and environmental deregulation to social programs for the poor and working class and investments in the green economy. Other countries are far ahead of the United States in those directions, and far happier as well.
American consumers have a role to play here. U.S. brand names need to be put on notice: If you cower to the Koch brothers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce, you will pay a price. General Electric, are you with us or against us on saving the planet? How about you, Pepsi, Walmart, IBM, Walt Disney, GM, and other companies whose CEOs have been part of Trump’s corporate advisory committees? Responsible consumers need to make clear that they will walk out on brands that are accomplices to Trump’s attempts to gut environmental regulations. The Koch brothers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to block action on global warming and pollution, and then have the remarkable audacity to ask Americans to buy consumer products such as AngelSoft and Dixie that they own (via Georgia Pacific–Koch Industries). It’s time to say a resounding no!
We must also pressure Congress to act on climate change. Would Republican senators allow the corruption and greed of the Senate to gut the Paris Climate Agreement? It’s possible, but these senators have children and grandchildren too, and most are not as stupid as their party’s official position on climate change.
Just as is true of the United States, the world as a whole has the human resources, skills, technologies, and wealth to achieve the SDGs. We are, after all, in the midst of one of the most productive and exciting scientific and technological revolutions in history. New digital technologies offer new and better ways to deliver universal health coverage, quality education, equitable finance, low-carbon energy, and improved governance in all parts of the world, even in the poorest and remotest places.
What are the obstacles to surmount? There are several. Corporate lobbies, such as the oil and gas industry, use their power and money to hold back progress. Some of the world’s richest people use bribes and campaign contributions to keep their privileges and tax breaks, hoarding funds that should be directed to SDG investments. Irresponsible politicians stoke fear and even war to hold onto power. And governments are too often bereft of practical, workable plans.
There are six main actions we can take to get on track:
First, let us insist that the major companies, especially the fossil-fuel industries, align their business activities with the SDGs.
Second, let us insist that individuals with high net worth should contribute philanthropically to the SDGs, while asset managers should invest their funds according to SDG guidelines.
Third, let us mobilize urgent SDG funding for the world’s poorest nations, so that they can provide universal health coverage, universal quality education, and universal access to modern infrastructure.
Fourth, let us insist that war and peace issues be settled according to the UN Charter, especially by the UN Security Council.
Fifth, let us make polluters compensate those who suffer from the pollution, including having the fossil-fuel industries pay for part of the damage caused by global warming.
Sixth, let us deploy breakthroughs in science and technology to achieve more rapid progress toward the SDGs.
In this last regard, the world’s universities have an exceptional role to play. As centers of higher education, research, and policy design, universities everywhere should work with governments, businesses, and civil society to help accelerate progress toward the SDGs. The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network supports hundreds of universities around the world as they step up to support the SDGs.
These are the strategic steps we can take as a global community to achieve the SDGs. As for the United States, one of the most urgent actions is adopting a new foreign policy that will promote sustainable development.