More than one hundred scientists are calling on the United Nations to ditch the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. According to the signatories of a joint letter, the world’s problems cannot be solved with the same ideology that created them.
The SDGs are a set of 17 goals adopted in 2015 to address global social and environmental problems. These include hunger, climate change and fairly distributed economic growth. “If the way modern societies operate cause the problems that the SDGs seek to address, can we be surprised that those same systems are incapable of fixing them?” the letter reads.
The scientists, but also other experts, believe that the United Nations should abandon its current model for dealing with world crises. The letter was published this week in the British newspaper The Independent. It was published on the occasion of a United Nations conference on risk and disaster management in Bali.
‘SDGs enable greenwashing’
The letter was published at a time when criticism of the investment world is also growing. Critics believe that certain asset managers and banks wrongfully use SDGs to launch so-called sustainable products. Marcel Andringa, director at various pension funds including PME, points out in an interview with Investment Officer that in many cases there is indeed talk of “greenwashing”.
He sees the danger of image damage for market parties. “I would feel cheated if I, as a private person, think I have bought something sustainable and it turns out to be a disappointment. Because there are also many products on the market with a green label that are not. Besides, the SDGs were never written to be used as a basis for investments. They were goals aimed at the world, not to base an investment portfolio on,” said Andringa in an interview to be published next week on InvestmentOfficer.nl.
It is a convenient myth
Jem Bendel, a sustainability researcher at the University of Cumbria and a signatory to the letter, called the SDGs a “systemic greenwash” that undermines “challenges to structural power.”
“Previously, it may have been appropriate for politicians, bureaucrats, and individuals in the organisations they fund to maintain an optimistic message that more technology, capital, and management will solve both poverty and environmental destruction,” he said. “However, UN reports clearly show that this is just a convenient myth, and that billions of people would be better served with a sober analysis of the deteriorating situation.”
The letter calls on the UN to “move away from the superfluous ideology of sustainable development’ and towards domestic resilience programmes and “stop the growth in rich economies”.
“It is clear that this idea is not very attractive to the people in Davos,” Bendel said, referring to the World Economic Forum meeting that took place this week and brings together government and business leaders for the 51st time in a row.
According to a Deloitte report published this week, postponing climate action would result in a loss of 178,000 billion dollars in global GDP over the next 50 years, while meeting the sustainability targets set in Paris would generate 43,000 billion dollars in additional growth.
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