SDGs at the halfway point: How the 17 global goals address risks and wicked problems

In 2015, all 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) agreed on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. An ambitious, all-encompassing, global agreement addressing a multitude of major challenges of our time including poverty and equity, health, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, urbanization, and sustainable economies. The agreement comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specified by 169 individual targets, and a common understanding that these global goals need to be treated as being interconnected and interdependent rather than handled separately or even confined in silos (Dodds et al. 2017; UN 2022a). Like their predecessor—the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—the SDGs were designed to be clear, time-bound and measurable, but while theMDGs could be considered aimed at ‘rich donors helping poor recipients’ (Matthews 2020), the SDGs are more universal and expected to be implemented in every country. Furthermore, they are inspired by the intention to overcome the gap between conserving resources and limiting emissions on one side and on the other side providing incentives for further economic development. Thereby, they constitute an attempt to shift the world onto a more sustainable but also transformative path. The years 2022–2023mark the halfway point for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, providing a unique opportunity to analyze implementation challenges during the 7 years of SDG implementation so far and provide recommendations for the second half of the period towards 2030 (Biermann et al. 2022a). The time left to avoid or postpone implementation gaps is rapidly shortening. The world was reminded about vulnerabilities and how fast things can change during the COVID-19 pandemic, which e.g. deleted more than four years of progress on poverty eradication and resulted in 93 million more people pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 (UN 2022b). The implementation of the ambitious 2030 Agenda is characterized by a considerable level of uncertainty, not least, since the SDGs are interconnected (Rockström and Sukhdev 2016; Nilsson et al. 2018) and the achievement or failure to achieve individual goals, will cascade down the likelihood of achieving others. Hence, working towards the SDGs to a large extent is about reducing or controlling risks (Cham et al. 2019). The SDGs address multiple actions and they encompass, in addition, key areas of risk governance such as risk prevention, risk–benefit balancing, communication, uncertainty management, and compensation for risks (Renn 2008, 2020; Florin 2014). Hence, achieving the SDGs will require more advanced, multifaceted and rigorous analyses of risk governance. Despite this need, risk assessments and/or management issues are largely ignored in the SDG context; they are barely mentioned in the formulation of goals, and a risk management strategy is lacking. Both the individual SDGs and associated targets address risks incoherently. It is crucial to create a shared understanding on risks in the context of the SDGs. Addressing the interlinkages between SDGs and risk requires analyses of structures and processes for monitoring and other means of knowledge generation, anticipation, and foresight, as well as understanding management and governance barriers and opportunities (Fukuda-Parr et al. 2013; Homer-Dixon et al. 2022). Additionally, more can be done to understand how different tools are used for SDG evaluation and risk assessment, and how they are governed and implemented in national, regional, and local settings, to inform policy on measures and management procedures for handling them. Due to their interconnected character and their reference to multiple sectors, a vital requirement for achieving the SDGs is policy integration and alignment, which remains a hurdle for policy makers. As Mickwitz et al. (2009, p. 83)