The UN-SDG Goals are to be met by 2030. When I was hired to create awareness for these amongst policy makers and bureaucrats my biggest challenge was ‘How to focus on all 17 SDGs at the same time!’
Ask communicators and they will tell you that ‘singular focus’ is the first building block of creating awareness. So imagine my plight when I was briefed to focus on all 17 goals together! And I was like, really, why?!
The answer to the why is ‘Dependent origination’ – a concept that Buddha explained by a simple metaphor of two bundles of reeds that are leaning against each other. They can remain standing so long as they both have each other to support. In that sense ‘because this exists, that exists and because that exists, this exists’. Both owe their existence to each other. Hence both must be given attention to together.
Or in this case all 17! Because these goals are interrelated and to achieve one goal of economic development mankind has single mindedly plundered and looted the planet’s resources. To understand how destructive this unidimensional approach is, see the graph below.
The graph reads, that as the human population explodes, the extinction of other species increases exponentially. The problem is not the growth of the human population but the resources needed to feed the wants of our race.
There is yet another down-side of focus. Take the case of Greta Thunberg. With all due respect to her efforts, her popular actions have made SDG 13 (Climate Action), the poster boy of SDGs and in a way hijacked the SDG narrative. To most people today ‘Climate action’ is SDGs and vice versa. So let’s say, if the outcome at a COP meeting is unfavorable, to many it seems all SDGs are floundering.
While that isn’t true at all. The world is making good progress on – SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities)
Evidently the SDG way needs a new implementation approach, a new mindset. Communicators, administrators, academia, civil society and anyone else dedicated to development work, must think afresh.
I hope to share a few thoughts on changing mindsets – of administrators at sub-national/local level in 5th instalment of The Sustainable Development Goal Chakravyuh. Hope you will like it.
– Terry Ahuja
