Post 2030 global goals need explicit targets for cities and businesses

How can we better advance human and environmental well-being? ARC Laureate and Distinguished Professor Xuemei Bai of the Australian National University argues in a recent Science Expert Voice article that setting explicit global goals and targets for cities and businesses would empower them to help accelerate change.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an attempt to focus attention on areas that directly relate to human well-being and environmental protection. The SDGs were adopted by all 193 United Nations Member States in 2015 as guiding principles for current and future peace and prosperity. The goals centre around the well-being of humankind, such as goal 1 on eliminating global poverty, and goal 6 on ensuring the availability of well-managed water and sanitation. SDGs also include goals around environmental protection, such as goal 13 concerning climate action, and goal 14 on oceans and seas.

Progress on the SDGs is, however, stalling. The reasons for this will likely sound familiar: gaps that occurs between rhetoric and action, insufficient funding, lack of business engagement, and a lack of ownership and appropriate global institutions to operationalize the agenda.

Additionally, the lack of specificity in the goals may be stymieing progress. SDGs identify where we need to go, but say nothing specific about who should do what, and how much needs to be done.

A way to advance the SDGs may be to articulate the "who", and mobilising these actors into action. And cities and businesses are two critical groups of actors in this regard.

Distinguished Professor Xuemei Bai of the Fenner School of Environment and Society argues that cities and businesses could harness their unique properties. “Cities and businesses are often cast as a problem by negatively contributing to global environmental challenges,” she states. “While this is true, but they are also the ones that have and continue attracting the most financial and innovative capacity. They have a lot of potential to accelerate change."

Professor Bai suggests that treating cities and businesses as agents in addressing climate change would increase the speed and breadth of positive changes. “Setting specific targets for cities and businesses in post-2030 global goals will strongly resonate with and boost efforts on other fronts as well”, such as “preserving and enhancing the global commons,” she writes.

Professor Bai provides a number of pointers how post SDG targets for cities and businesses could look like. For cities, their role in achieving broader global goals beyond their boundaries needs to be reflected. For example by reducing consumption, and establishing new cultural norms such as reducing food waste and encouraging biking, cities can have far reaching impacts. Businesses could integrate the SDGs into their Key Performance Indicators; for example, a specific percentage of investments to go towards supporting SDG areas. This would have the added benefit of supporting SDG initiatives that lack funding. The paper provides additional pointers[1] .

Environment is one of the areas within SDGs where progress is lagging behind. Research shows pressures from human activities are breaching the majority of the earth's systems boundaries (ESBs) and planterary boundaries (PBs). Achieving societal goals should not come at the expense of earth system functions, argues Distinguished Professor Bai. “Setting explicit societal targets for cities and businesses, including those that cover the critical domains of the Earth System, can be a powerful avenue to make this happen.”

Setting explicit goals is crucial, but challenging. There will be clashes of interests and possible interventions by vested interest. General aspirational goals are less controversial than actor specific targets, but we know that these are ineffective in bringing about rapid change. Science is not fully settled either in terms how responsibilities should be shared even in the case of carbon emission- the first global target in environment. 

“But it is at least worth trying,” writes Distinguished Professor Bai. “The galvanizing power of positive goal-setting should never be underestimated.” Many new initiatives are working towards developing methods and help setting science based targets for cities and businesses for carbon, nature and beyond.

“What is needed is a clear policy signal. Starting the discussion involving stakeholders early on will be crucial.”

Paper

Bai, X. (2024). A case for altruistic cities. Science, 386(6722). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adt4139