The world is at an inflection point. United Nations Member States have agreed that global challenges are interconnected across borders, thus an equally interconnected response must address the challenges through reinvigorated, more inclusive multilateralism with a reformed UN at the centre. The year 2023 marks the halfway point for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — and the urgency of reigniting SDG action. The scale of natural and climate-induced crises as well as violent conflict the world over requires more concerted efforts to respond through increased humanitarian support, enhanced resilience and more sustainable development outcomes.

Interview with Dr. Jürgen Zattler

The United Nations marked its 75th anniversary in 2020 – signifying three generations committed to working toward peace, development and the spread of human rights. The same year, the most destabilising pandemic in over a century brought parts of the world to a standstill, providing a dramatic example of global goods, global ‘bads’ and the extent of international coordination needed to address some of the greatest threats to peace and prosperity. The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic brought a whole new focus to multilateralism and has resulted in a number of efforts to strengthen multilateral solutions more broadly. Already in 2020, the UN Secretary-General had developed the initial thinking for Our Common Agenda: an ‘agenda of action’ to strengthen multilateralism, leading to the ‘Summit of the Future’ due to be held in 2024.

At the United Nations, South–South cooperation provides a broad discursive umbrella for collaboration among developing countries, while triangular cooperation refers to partnerships where ‘developed country(ies)/or multilateral organisation(s)’ support South–South schemes. Although its actual extent and significance is often hard to grasp in quantitative terms, South–South and triangular cooperation (SSTC) has become an increasingly prominent modality for the imple-men tation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were agreed upon unanimously in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and are due to be achieved by 2030. However, progress has been too slow and incomplete, with recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the global economic crisis caused by the Ukraine war further setting back progress, especially in regard to poverty and food security targets.1 Although the common response to this shortfall has been to argue for more international development and climate finance, for policy and institutional reform aimed at monitoring progress towards the SDGs and climate goals, and for innovative solutions, this article argues that such efforts are not enough.

Increasing sustainable investment in low- and middle-income countries (namely developing countries) to fund successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate projects is paramount, and should be the North Star of development and climate finance.

‘Localisation’ and ‘scale’ – two of the most dominant themes in recent development debates – are born of separate but related frustrations with the legacy and architecture of inter-national development. In localisation’s case, this frustration begins with a rejection of the proposition that the wisdom and legitimacy to shape the destiny of a country, organisation, community or individual can come from the outside.

Officially, the world has a working plan to root out poverty. The 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the plan of action for people, planet and prosperity, while the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) provides the framework for financing these collective ambitions.1 However, in reality the plan has been running into difficulty. International cooperation, including development cooperation, is increasingly hampered by a loss of trust between high-income countries and the Global South. A sense of indignation, strongly linked to the intrinsically unequal power relationship between giver and receiver, has grown alarmingly during the last few years.

Biodiversity encompasses the rich variety of life on Earth and the abundant services its ecosystems provide. While the primary Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressing nature are 14 and 15, to conserve and sustainably use the marine and terrestrial environment, the achievement of all 17 SDGs is ultimately dependent on thriving biodiversity.

Violence against women and girls (VAWG), the most pervasive human rights violation in the world, remains endemic and devastating and continues to be a significant barrier to development. Despite the progress made over the past three decades, the latest figure remains largely unchanged with 1 in 3 women worldwide subjected to violence in their lifetime. More than 4 million girls are at risk of female genital mutilation by 2023.

The impact of the climate crisis continued to worsen around the world in 2022 and 2023: flooding in Pakistan and the United States, wildfires in Europe and Canada, severe drought in Africa, and record ice melt at the poles are just some examples. While climate change is rarely – if ever – the primary cause of conflict, it can act as a risk multiplier, exacerbating underlying social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities. In doing so, it can compound existing grievances, leading to potential displacement and forced migration, raising food and water insecurity, threatening communities’ livelihoods and stalling economic growth.

Young people play a critical role in efforts for building and sustaining peace. A growing body of evidence demonstrates their importance as mediators, community mobilisers and advocates collaborating across borders to prevent conflict and maintain peace. Through these roles, they strengthen the reach and credibility of peacebuilding programmes within marginalised communities; mobilise powerful social change movements; and employ innovative, intersectional approaches to peacebuilding and conflict prevention.

The Chief Executives Board (CEB) Secretariat has been producing financial statistics on United Nations system- wide revenue and expenditures for at least three decades. The key data source is the revenue and expenses data that individual UN entities report annually to the CEB Secretariat.

United Nations Secretary-General Guterres has asserted that financing for sustainable development is at a crossroads: ‘Either we close the yawning gap between political ambition and development financing, or we will fail to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030’.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the global economy on a scale not recorded since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Global real gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 5% in 2020, with – aside from a handful countries, including China – economies across the board registering real GDP contraction. In response to the unprecedented economic crisis, countries responded vigorously and swiftly, deploying a variety of fiscal, monetary and financial policy measures. In contrast
to the response during the 2008 global financial crisis, there was wider consensus on the use of fiscal policy
– notably utilising discretionary fiscal measures while also letting automatic stabilisers work. In total, the global fiscal response between January 2020 and September 2021 amounted to US$ 16.9 trillion, or 16.4% of global GDP in 2020.

Nature is sending us invoices, and they are getting bigger by the day. The costs of the COVID-19 pandemic and other zoonotic diseases, linked to how we treat nature, are well-documented. Increasing wildfires and heatwaves, associated to climate change, are costing national economies billions of dollars each year. Pollution and waste are damaging ecosystem services, claiming millions of lives and placing a huge financial burden on healthcare systems.

The need for urgent climate action is more acute than ever, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s most recent assessment reports on adaptation, mitigation and the physical science of climate change outlining in stark detail both the opportunities and risks that will be encountered over the coming decades.

On 1 April 2022, the Human Rights Council (HRC) concluded the longest session it had held since being established in 2006.1 The session took place against an exceptional backdrop of events that placed the HRC at the heart of multilateral diplomacy, at a time when other intergovernmental bodies were in stalemate. In response to rapidly evolving developments following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the HRC – taking upon itself a mandate for accountability – called for immediate de-escalation and respect for international humanitarian law.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 saw a dramatic backsliding in women’s labour force participation, a deepening feminisation of poverty, an escalating burden of unpaid care work, and an intensification of all types of violence against women and girls (‘the shadow pandemic’). Thus, now more than ever, prioritising gender equality commitments and mobilising financing for gender equality is vital to ensuring that the significant erosion of gender equality gains and women’s human rights is reversed, and that progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is put back on track. In short, building forward better demands a stronger and more concerted focus on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.

Unlike previous United Nations reforms, the current reform of the UN development system (UNDS) squarely addresses the imperative of changing how the UNDS is funded in order to ensure it can respond robustly and predictably to countries’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) priorities without compromising the multilateral nature of UN support.1 Through the Funding Compact welcomed in 2019, both Member States and the UNDS recognised the necessity of addressing the sharp imbalance between core and non-core resources. Moreover, there was clear acknowledgement of the need to change funding behaviour, and especially to improve the quality of funding, if the UN is to deliver better results against the ambitious 2030 Agenda.

Speed, flexibility and accountability lie at the heart of the humanitarian pooled funds managed by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The creation of the funds – the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and the country- based pooled funds (CBPFs) – date back to 2005, when the reform process aimed at improving humanitarian response effectiveness was initiated.1 Since then, the funds have become important lifelines for the most vulnerable, between them disbursing US$ 13.7 billion and supporting tens of millions of people.

In May 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Member States took the historic decision to increase the share of assessed contributions in the organisation’s regular budget from 16% to 50% by 2028. While future budget negotiations will show whether Member States honour their commitments, the political signal is clear. Member States want to provide a more sustainable financial footing for WHO which is currently overly dependent on voluntary earmarked funding, including from private actors. The pitfalls of (certain forms) of earmarked funding have been widely discussed, not least in previous editions of this report. Assessed contributions represent an important alternative route to sustainable financing for multilateralism as they cannot be arbitrarily withdrawn – they are membership fees that all states are obliged to contribute. Assessed contributions can also be re-purposed in line with an international organisation’s mandate and core organisational needs, thereby enabling the organisation to act more effectively, independently and with greater authority.

The global fragility landscape has worsened significantly in the last few years, impacting both low-income and middle-income countries. Violent conflicts have increased to the highest levels observed over the past three decades. In 2021, an estimated 44% of people below the poverty line were in countries on the World Bank’s fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) list.1 The world is also witnessing heightened geopolitical tensions – most notably the far-reaching impacts of the current conflict in Ukraine. Concurrently, the COVID-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic impacts are increasing poverty and aggravating existing fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) risks, amid a context of rising food insecurity, natural hazards, and climate-related stresses.

These are uniquely unsettling times, with one of the most devastating consequences of the current moment being the erosion of hard-won development gains. The compounded crises of the COVID-19 pandemic, food and fuel insecurity, fiscal collapse, political upheaval, climate shocks and the war in Ukraine have stalled or reversed decades of progress. In such circumstances, the United Nations development system should not be subject to a stop–go edict that further contributes to this erosion while at the same time swelling the humanitarian caseload and costs.

In 1736, Benjamin Franklin proclaimed that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If that statement was true in 1736, it is even more so today in our world of compounding and cascading risks. Despite all the evidence that prevention works, however, we still seem incapable of properly financing it. Why not?