Conference Primer - Sustainable Development Goals: 2025

- In preparation for the review, DESA, with UN partners, organized EGMs on SDGs 3, 5, and 8, convening stakeholders from academia, civil society, international organizations, youth, and the private sector.
- The meetings assessed progress to date, highlighted challenges and opportunities for accelerating achievements, and presented innovative solutions for advancing interlinked progress across these and other SDGs.

- The co-facilitators looked forward to engaging with delegations and major groups and other stakeholders “to achieve a concise, focused, action-oriented, and forward-looking Declaration, outlining priority areas for accelerated actions”.
- Their vision for the Declaration is to build on collective accomplishments, particularly “the consensus on the 2030 Agenda reaffirmed at the Summit of the Future”.
- The Declaration would also reiterate the HLPF’s central role in overseeing the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda and its contribution to sharing knowledge and creating synergies to achieve the SDGs.

Geneva-based international organisations and NGOs were startled by an odd questionnaire sent out by the United States, revealing a troubling misunderstanding of how the multilateral system works.

The world must reinforce multilateral action to tackle global threats, such as climate change and inequality.

- At the Forum, ESCAP, the Asian Development Bank, and the UN Development Programme launched the 2025 Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership Report, which highlights the need for a just transition by advancing decent work, gender equality, and social protection.
- The report describes more than 50 examples of scalable and adaptable solutions and good practices implemented across the region.
- Asia-Pacific youth communicated to the APFSD a call to action, offering situational analysis and recommendations on each of the five SDGs under review in 2025.

- It is time to rethink the role of greening education in our approach to the global climate crisis.
- To overcome humanity’s greatest challenge, we must begin in the most critical place where knowledge is cultivated: the classroom.
- Greening education must go from a “nice to have” in school curricula to a “must have,” to ensure our very survival.

- The Trump administration’s decision to abandon DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion— which was aimed at promoting fair treatment in the work place, is having its repercussions at the United Nations.
- The US has been exerting pressure on UN agencies to drop DEI largely protecting minority groups, and women in particular, who have been historically underrepresented or subject to discrimination.

“The poison of patriarchy is back and is back with a vengeance,” United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres told the opening of the annual session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the UN in New York on Monday.

- Much of the current investment comes from public financing, official development assistance, and philanthropy.
- They are important in their conventional forms, but they can also be merged creatively to generate more impact as we embrace new, innovative approaches.
- We need to focus on those who care directly for the environment, such as Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

PrepCom 3 is set to expand on discussions on a draft of the outcome document of the upcoming Fourth Financing for Development Conference.

- This issue of the ‘Beyond GDP’ update series focuses on recent publications that question the relevance of GDP as a measure of progress, highlighting its limitations in addressing well-being, gender issues, unpaid work, inequality, extreme poverty, human rights, and aspects of environmental sustainability, such as ecological footprint and material flows.
- Some papers discussed emphasize the importance of capturing institutional capacity, quality, and governance approaches in beyond GDP efforts.
- We also note a call to integrate beyond GDP approaches and new development measurements into global agreements and processes, such as the upcoming Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development and HLPF 2025, as well as to feature such approaches as key issues for discussion during South Africa’s G20 presidency.

Launched at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, the Arab Region SDG Index and Dashboards Report 2025 offers a comprehensive evaluation of the SDG progress of the region. The report includes a unique set of indicators specially tailored to regional priorities and features a special chapter offering data-driven insights, examining resilience in the Arab region from a sustainable development lens.

- Amid “cascading crises,” the report underscores resilience building through regional and global partnerships as an imperative, emphasizing the urgent need for societies, economies, and ecosystems to adapt and maintain momentum towards achieving the SDGs.
- The resource aims to provide a data-driven practical tool for governments, policymakers, and other stakeholders to measure progress on the SDGs, highlight implementation challenges, and identify data gaps, providing a strong foundation for effective decision making and action.