This report is a call to accept transformations with the instantly needed to accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. The last report was published in 2019 after that many challenges have arrived, progress has been restricted in many areas, partly as a consequence of a confluence of crises – the ongoing pandemic, rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, environmental and economic distress, along with regional and national unrest, conflicts, and natural disasters.

As a result, overall progress towards the 2030 Agenda and the Goals has been severely disrupted in the last three years. The resilience and well-being of planet, people, environment and ecosystems are degraded. The world is changing at an accelerated rate.

This report is a synthesis of the key transformative shifts needed across different entry points (human well-being and capabilities, sustainable and just economies, food sources and healthy nutrition, energy decarburization with universal access, urban and rural development, and global environmental commons), as well as a framework for understanding how those transformations may unfold over time.

This report has six chapters. In chapter 1, the question “Where are we now?” is raised and, reflecting on where the world is at the halfway point to 2030, it highlights the need for flexibility and advancement.

The world is far off track, the situation is more worries as compared to 2019 including the COVID-19 pandemic, cost-of-living increases, armed conflict and natural disasters have slow down the progress. The pandemic resulted in losses of jobs, livelihoods, incomes and remittances.

In 2022, the total hours worked globally remained 2 per cent below the pre-pandemic level. The pandemic also exacerbated existing fault lines of inequality. Between June and September 2022, around 89 per cent of the least developed countries, 93 per cent of landlocked developing countries and 94 per cent of small island developing States had food inflation above 5 per cent.

By the end of 2020, around two billion people were living in conflict-affected countries. Conflict and unrest are barriers to progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in many countries beyond the war in Ukraine, including in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Venezuela and the Sahel region of Africa among others.

Between March and May 2022, approximately 26.5 million people in the Sahel region faced a food and nutrition crisis.

Chapter 2 raises the question “Where are we heading?” and frames the future, reviewing new knowledge for understanding the interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals and international spillovers of the Goals.

The world is far off track but it is possible to actively improve future prospects for action and progress by 2030 and beyond. Leveraging scientific knowledge, strengthening governance for the Goals and unleashing the full potential of the Sustainable Development Goals framework for promoting sustainable development can make this happen.

Chapter 3 focuses on the question “What needs to be done?”, reviewing scenario projections for the Goals alongside key shifts and interventions to accelerate transformations through the some entry points introduced in the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report.

Increased ambition and transformative interventions are needed to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The Report highlights important shifts needed across each entry point to accelerate progress, It also provides examples of how specific policy, finance, technology, and behavioral changes could be combined to enable the necessary transformations.

Transformative shifts for each entry point from global scenarios include: Human well-being and capabilities, Sustainable food systems and healthy nutrition, Energy decarburizations and universal access, Urban and pre-urban development, Global environmental commons.

Chapter 4 considers the question “How can it be done?” with a framework that can guide strategy action. It unpacks the dynamics in different phases of transformations towards sustainable development, with examples from historical and recent experience.

This Report provides a stylized model to help unpack and understand the transformation process through a systematic and structured approach, suggesting that a successful transformation can be considered in three phases – emergence, acceleration and stabilization.

During the first phase, emergence, innovative ideas give rise to new technologies and practices, during the second phase, acceleration, innovations expand and reach tipping points beyond which they are widely shared and adopted, leading to rapid, non-linear growth. Finally, in the third phase, stabilization, these technologies and practices become pervasive in daily life as the new normal.

Chapter 5 is about the unifying role of science, the importance of knowledge from a broader spectrum of society, both in the production of socially robust science, and in connecting science to policymaking. Making the production of science more inclusive and geographically diverse, it is also crucial to ensure that once science is produced, the resulting knowledge is widely accessible.

Public interest groups, policymakers, industry and teachers should have free access to the relevant publications, data and software.  A major hurdle for science is the speed of publication. Producing unbiased, peer-reviewed information absorbs time and money, giving some platforms, particularly social media, a head start for promulgating false information.

The world has responded to the proliferation of fake news with comprehensive countermeasures. In 2022 around 400 teams of journalists and researchers in 105 countries were working on tackling political lies, hoaxes and other forms of misinformation. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires broader societal engagement with all aspects of science and a greater democratization of knowledge – so that people will be ready and willing to commit to the transformations needed.

Finally, Chapter 6 is a call for action inviting a reflection on the steps ahead, to accelerate transformative action, improve the underlying conditions for transformation and use science to drive the world forward. Transformation is possible, and inevitable. To guide policymakers in this process, the Report presents a series of calls to action. First, it proposes that, at the midpoint to the 2030 Agenda, the United Nations Member States elaborate a shared transformation framework for the Sustainable Development Goals that consists of six elements:

• National plans of action to counter negative trends or stagnation in implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

• Local and industry-specific planning to feed into national plans.

• Initiatives through the Addis Ababa Action Agenda or otherwise to increase fiscal space, including tax reforms, debt restructuring and relief, and increased engagement by international finance institutions for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

• Investment in data related to the Goals, science-based tools and policy learning.

• Partnerships to strengthen the science-policy-society interface.

Measures to improve accountability of governments and other stakeholders.