Devex: Opinion: It always seems impossible until it’s done
Simone Filippini, president of Leadership4SDGs, and Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, former UNDP administrator, and former chair of the U.N. Development Group

“In April 2019, Jean-Paul Moatti, a member of the United Nations expert group evaluating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, reported that progress on most SDGs has gone into reverse. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has also rung the alarm bell, underlining that ‘It is abundantly clear that a much deeper, faster, and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals.’ … [W]hy is there insufficient progress on these crucial agendas? And what can be done? In-depth transformation to achieve the SDGs requires systemic change. And systemic change requires leadership committed to that. … Improved governance and upskilled ministerial leadership is needed to drive policy change and implementation. If such support to empower and capacitate governments could be offered in a structured and systematic way, … the SDGs would stand a better chance of being achieved. Put simply, the 2030 Agenda is too important to fail. Business as usual is not an option; it guarantees failure. … If the world is to stand a chance of achieving the SDGs, new approaches are needed — and needed quickly. There’s no time to lose” (1/3).