By Javier Surasky-
William
Arthur Ward, an American writer who lived between 1921 and 1994, is credited
with saying, "Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you
miss them."
When taking
action to build a better world for all people, we've already waited too long.
We wait for things to change, we wait for leaders to act, we wait for
international priorities to shift, we wait for solidarity. We wait; to make
things worse, we've been waiting without hope for some time.
Although it
may seem strange, there's a neglected commitment in the 2030 Agenda that must
be brought to the forefront to address this hopelessness and mobilize
responses: countries decided that the United Nations High-Level Political Forum
would be the leading global space for monitoring the Sustainable Development
Goals, and assigned it the mission of providing high-level political guidance
on the Agenda and its implementation, including through detecting progress made
and emerging problems, and mobilizing new measures to accelerate implementation
(paragraph 87).
None of
this has happened, not even on the two occasions when the HLPF met at the level
of heads of state and government in 2019 and 2023 (the so-called "SDG
Summits").
On the
contrary, UN member countries have transformed the HLPF into a grand
international circus where innovative ideas and honest political dialogue have
yet to be invited. As a result, the adopted political declarations need more
essential elements to provide political guidance to advance towards achieving
the SDGs, lost among previously agreed vocabulary, and lack of political will
hidden behind tangled texts barely decipherable by experts.
Reclaiming
the HLPF for sustainable development is critical, and its 2024 meeting, which
will take place between July 8 and 17, will be a crucial moment in that
journey.
I no longer
find it relevant that the assigned theme for the 2024 HLPF is "Reinforcing
the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and eradicating poverty in times of
multiple crises by effectively providing sustainable, resilient, and innovative
solutions." Nor will the goals under special review be Goal 1: No Poverty;
2: Zero Hunger; 13: Climate Action; 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions;
17: Partnerships for the Goals.
I don't
even find it so important that only 37 countries will present their Voluntary
National Reviews this year, a number that only manages to surpass the
presentations made in 2016, the first year these took place. Still, it is a
warning.
What
matters about the HLPF today is that it became capable of fulfilling the
functions attributed to it by the countries in the 2030
Agenda. The UN can only do this if member states are willing to do so.
More than
ever, it's necessary for the HLPF to:
- Be a true beacon today, capable of providing political guidance at the highest level.
- Analyze current and emerging problems and design common outlines of opportunities to address them jointly, which is the only possible way to accelerate the SDGs.
For this to
happen, the HLPF must take a turn:
- Less political spectacle and more data-based, action-oriented work.
- Apply future perspective and thinking tools.
- Development of its ability to respond to people's demands.
For all
voices to be heard at the HLPF, participation must increase in quantity and
quality. To begin with, the HLPF is not providing incentives for the
involvement of relevant actors:
- The private sector and philanthropy play a marginal role, which also weakens session by session. Creating attractors that bring these actors "on board" the HLPF is necessary.
- With active participation, civil society has always been present at HLPF sessions. Still, the working modalities where they are allocated speaking time in segments ranging from two to three minutes is now unacceptable. Additionally, this year, for the first time, there will be no funding from the UN to ensure the participation of at least one civil society representative from each of the 37 countries that will present their national reports. It's not a lack of will but of foresight in resorting to other sources, given that the UN would be in the process of financial bankruptcy if it weren't what it is.
- The role of regions must increase. For years, the HLPF program has included just one session where reports from each regional sustainable development forum are shared successively and without analysis. This breaks the continuity between the global and the regional and discourages regional initiatives, making them invisible.
The urgency
is compounded by the fact that the 2024 HLPF is the prelude to the Summit of
the Future, where countries must decide whether
we're moving towards stronger multilateralism or an "every man for
himself" approach. A Summit of the Future that, moreover, has forcefully
put on the table anew the legacy of the world we're leaving to future
generations and the risks of continuing to develop digital technologies,
including artificial intelligence, without any control. Remember that the
Summit mentioned above must adopt a political document, the Pact for the
Future, with two annexes: the Declaration on Future Generations and the GlobalDigital Compact, which we have already referred to in this blog.
The debates
around the Summit of the Future that will take place as part of the HLPF agenda
will be a first clue to what we can expect from that meeting. The worst option
would be for countries to attend that meeting to launch their pre-designed
speeches, resulting in a succession of barely connected monologues.
If the HLPF
must produce political guidance for achieving the SDGs, it's called to be the
engine of necessary change. The Summit of the Future is a unique opportunity
that we cannot let pass or continue waiting for but must be actively created
through the most traditional tools of diplomacy: dialogue, negotiation, and the
search for common positions. And if these tools are insufficient, the Summit is
the space to create them to respond to the complexity of current challenges.
When the
feeling that the dawn Ward spoke of is slipping through our fingers, it's
opportune also to remember Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"In
every crisis, there is a message. Crises are nature's way of forcing
change—breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that
something new and better can take their place" [1].
The 2024
HLPF, in the context of the Summit of the Future, is the last opportunity to
generate that "something new" before the end of dawn. Afterwards, it
will still be possible to find new dawns, but the day will have passed.
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[1] The
Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Modern Library, 2000.
