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Why the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals are not on track to be financed soon
The world faces a sustainable development crisis, and while most countries have strategies in place, they don’t have the cash to back them up. How far off track are we with the financing needed to support the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, ranging from quality education and health care to climate action and clean water?
Shari Spiegel, who runs the UN’s Financing for Sustainable Development Office, sat down with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis at a Global Stage event for the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings this week. She explains that the SDGs were off track even before the pandemic and that now, owing to global crises, many poorer countries have slipped backwards.
“We actually started backtracking on many of these goals as countries were under enormous stress, and particularly the poorest countries,” she said, noting that the global output of many of the poorest nations has fallen by 30% — and some, such as the Small Island Developing States, by 40%. This has led to an enormous finance divide — raising SDG financing and investment gaps from $2 trillion a few years ago to around $4 trillion today.
So how can the UN restrengthen multilateralism and, in turn, help narrow this gap? Watch here.
For more of our 2024 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings coverage, visit Global Stage.
Graphic Truth: Food insecurity and poverty in the US & Canada
Poverty and food insecurity, exacerbated by COVID and the soaring cost of living, plague both the US and Canada. At the height of the pandemic, school closures in the US deprived many children of their vital food source: free school lunches. This, coupled with job losses and inflation, plunged many into food insecurity. The economic outlook has still not improved for these families, thanks to the high rate of inflation, which is keeping grocery and gas prices elevated.
In Canada, a cost-of-living crisis has seen demand for food banks surge, with the 2023 Hunger Count by Food Banks Canada revealing a 32% rise in year-on-year visits in 2022. Parents made up the largest share of food bank users. Like in the US, they are grappling with exorbitant housing, food, and fuel costs, compounded by childcare expenses. A record 1.9 million Canadians sought assistance from food banks in just March 2023 alone.
How has US food insecurity increased, but not poverty? The poverty line, defined by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963, hasn't been reassessed since. Back then, poverty was defined as anyone spending a third of their income on a “bare essentials diet.” But thanks to globalization and agricultural advances, an average American now spends only one-eighth of their income on food.
Instead, housing and childcare are the biggest budget busters. An American renter making $30,000 likely allocates over half their income to housing and may struggle with food insecurity. But, given the 1960s “poverty” guidelines, they need to earn nearly three times less, or $12,880, to be considered poor.
Bjorn Lomborg wants to redefine climate change's impact on our lives and economy
Climate change is an urgent problem, but it can be helpful to think about it in the long term because it’s a problem that will be inherited by generations to come.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer challenges controversial climate author Bjorn Lomborg on whether his perspective on climate would be different if he were going to live for 200 years instead of the typical 85. But Lomborg holds fast in his belief that though climate change will affect the trajectory of human progress, it won’t lead to the most dire predictions forecast by climate scientists. Instead of searching for a panacea, Lomborg says the world should focus on policies that address climate change in the most cost-effective and efficient ways.
Bremmer challenges Lomborg to think about the potential loss of coastal areas and homelands from rising sea levels, which would lead to a significant shift in how people perceive the future of the planet. But Lomborg is firm in his belief that straight-line thinking is counterproductive. Lomborg predicts we’ll be able to protect most places with advances in technology and that worst-case climate scenarios won’t come to pass.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Steven Pinker shares his "relentless optimism" about human progress
If you follow the news closely, chances are your view of the state of the world is not super optimistic. From war in Ukraine to a warming planet to global poverty and hunger, there's plenty to get upset about. But what if things are actually getting...better? That's what Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker asks in his interview with Ian Bremmer for the latest episode of GZERO World.
"If you compare the number of wars and the number of people killed in wars in the sixties and the seventies and even the eighties, we're actually much better off today" Pinker argues. "And so if you don't look at data, if you look at headlines, since as long as bad things haven't vanished from the face of the earth, which they never will, you can get the impression that things are unchanged or even are worse than ever, even when they're improving. It's only when you count the number of wars, number of deaths in war, longevity, child mortality, extreme poverty, number of leisure hours, that you see that there actually has been improvement. "
Watch the GZERO World episode: Is life better than ever for the human race?
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
- Podcast: The case for global optimism with Steven Pinker ›
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- Why human beings are so easily fooled by AI, psychologist Steven Pinker explains ›
- Ian Explains: Will biotech breakthroughs lead to super humans? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Tracking the rapid rise of human-enhancing biotech with Siddhartha Mukherjee - GZERO Media ›
- From CRISPR to cloning: The science of new humans - GZERO Media ›
- Yuval Noah Harari: AI is a “social weapon of mass destruction” to humanity - GZERO Media ›
Philanthropy's moment to act
Note: This interview appeared as part of an episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, "Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate" on January 29, 2023.
It's almost the first anniversary of Russia's war in Ukraine. On March 11, it'll be three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And 2022 was the sixth warmest year on record since 1880. We are still dealing with the fallout from all three events. But not equally. Since 2020, the richest 1% of people has accumulated nearly two-thirds of all the new wealth created in the world.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to UN Foundation President and CEO Elizabeth Cousens, who thinks it's the perfect time for institutions backed by the 1 percent to step up even more. Foundations have traditionally resisted going big on fixing the world's problems because they're in it for the long run. The stakes are so high and the crises so urgent that Cousens sees a window of opportunity for philanthropy to take swift action instead of their traditional long-term approach. When it comes to immediate and deadly problems like famine and flooding, an influx of money could start making a huge difference very quickly.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate
Our unsustainably unequal world
The past is still very much with us.
It's almost the first anniversary of Russia's war in Ukraine. On March 11, it'll be three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And 2022 was the sixth warmest year on record since ... 1880.
We are still dealing with the fallout from all three events. But not equally.
Since 2020, the richest 1% of people has accumulated nearly two-thirds of all the new wealth created in the world. Just 10% of the population owns three-quarters of global wealth — and account for nearly half of carbon emissions.
What can we do to turn this around?
Watch the GZERO World episode: Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate
Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate
Almost three years after COVID, we're still grappling with the geopolitical convulsions that the pandemic unleashed or worsened. They're all wiping out decades of progress on fighting global inequality.
What's more, the world has become more unequal at a time when global cooperation is often an afterthought. So, what can we do about it?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to UN Foundation President and CEO Elizabeth Cousens, who thinks it's the perfect time for institutions backed by the 1 percent to step up even more.
Foundations have traditionally resisted going big on fixing the world's problems because they're in it for the long run. But now the stakes are so high and the crises so urgent that Cousens sees a "window" of opportunity for philanthropy to play a bigger role in global development.
The are real problems, she says, that money can solve immediately.
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Odds of a global recession? 50/50, says David Malpass
Global inflation is forecast to finish 2022 at 8.8%, settling in at around 6.5% in 2023. So is a global recession imminent? David Malpass, President of the World Bank, discusses the global economy with Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World.
Malpass places the odds of a global recession at 50/50. Efforts to combat inflation in the developed world could spur a debt crisis in the developing one, and optimism for a speedy post-pandemic recovery has faded as Putin’s war in Ukraine has strained the global supply chain. But the World Bank chief is most worried about the poorest countries going backwards on their development goals. He also discusses climate change and confirms that he is not a climate science denier.