Watering Down the Global Agenda

This year’s Climate and Society class is out in the field (or lab or office) completing a summer internship or thesis. They’ll be documenting their experiences one blog post at a time. Read on to see what they’re up to.

Anna Schimel, C+S ’18

The world is made up of 195 countries, 7.6 billion people, and an endless number of problems. How does the United Nations address them in one agenda? Which problems deserve inclusion?

In 2015, as the Millennium Development Goals came to end, the world adopted a new global agenda: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). They came about through a process begun in 2012 at the Rio+20 Conference, a collection of civil society, scientists, academics, private sector partners, and government representatives.

They matter because in an increasingly interconnected global society, each countries development agenda had a different purpose. The overarching goal of the SDGs is to set a unified and universal agenda for every country to use as guiding development principles and targets. Seventeen goals were created that address economic inequality, education, hunger, gender and the natural environment (among many other pressing issues), but the last one is at the heart of the SDG agenda.

Sustainable Development Goals (Source: United Nations)

Most of the goals directly reference issues related to our climate and ecosystems. Goal 13 is titled Climate Action. Goals 14 and 15 relate to our land and ocean ecosystems. Goal 11 sets targets for sustainable cities and communities. Yet, out 169 targets set to achieve these goals, there is one glaring gap when it comes to anthropogenic climate change: sea level rise.

The SDGs are often called the 2030 Agenda, as 2030 is the intended completion date. Climate change is predicted to cause catastrophic transformations to our world if we don’t rein in carbon emissions. But many will not be felt until or after 2030. This is not true for sea level rise. It is one of the most critical and pressing issues facing coastal communities today.

A 2007 study by the Center for International Earth Science and Information and the United Nations Environmental Program found that 40 percent of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometers of a coast. With such a large portion of the world population at risk, how do we ensure they receive both the research and SDG support they require?

While some goals address natural hazards or extreme events, there is no natural connection to sea level rises impact on ecosystems, sustainable city planning or climate impacts. Sea level rise will make it difficult to meet many of the goals from hunger to clean water and sanitation to sustainable cities to say nothing of the goal around life below water and on land.

To those living above sea level, this may be an issue for another year or another institutional framework. But for those living in the many island nations are the globe, 2030 may be too late to save their homes. Countries like the Marshall Islands and Kiribati have already lost coastal land and homes, experienced the degradation of their water supply to saltwater intrusion and felt increasingly devastating high tides. All these are issues that should fall within the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals targets.

The process of creating the SDGs was daunting, winding and institutionally complicated. Turning the list of global problems into a condensed list of goals is not easy. Certain intricacies will not make it into a target under one of the 17 goals. However, the environment-themed goals have targets that do not place emphasis on the most pressing issues for 2015-2030. The goals are not an agenda meant to be relevant and comprehensive for our lifetime. Some problems we face today may not be the biggest roadblocks for development in 10 years.

Sea level rise is a problem we face today and will face for the next 15 years. It is an issue with repercussions that far surpass the bar to be explicitly mentioned in one of the 169 targets.