The international community witnessed a historic moment on September 25, 2015, when world leaders gathered at the United Nations to unanimously adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I had the opportunity to attend this event alongside 192 other young leaders and be a part of this important celebration. Kanchan Amatya, a fellow youth observer who founded the Sustainable Fish Farming Initiative, observed that "this event was extraordinary not just because it signaled the dawn of a new era of sustainable development; it also marked a new period of global cooperation."
It took the United Nations four years of stocktaking, deliberations, and negotiations to make the SDGs a reality. During this process, nearly eight and a half million people contributed to the shaping of these goals through online and offline platforms. On the other hand, the SDGs' predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), were created behind closed doors in a last-minute attempt to salvage the dying Millennium Declaration. Regardless of this fact, the MDGs have achieved massive success with their ability to rally the international community to achieve a common vision. The new development agenda will similarly mirror this element to foster a sense of a global commonwealth.
In a recent conversation with my close friend and colleague, Natasha Ardiani, former Associate Director of the Indonesian President's Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight, she accurately commented that the "SDGs are a framework that are being implemented two decades too late. In 2000, the relationships between poverty, environmental degradation, and inequality were not as obvious. While our leaders may have signed the resolution, our work is far from done."
The tardiness of the SDGs should stimulate increased urgency for accelerated commitments and investments towards the attainment of these goals, and in the meantime makes me contemplate on a criticism I hear quite often about the UN being "all talk". People who share this sentiment do not fully understand how international laws, customs, and relations work. With respect to the SDGs, we cannot depend entirely on the UN nor its Member States to realize these goals, even though they are important actors, and overlook that the very nature of the SDGs depend on individual mobilization. This consequently makes us all equally responsible for its attainment 15 years from now.
While the United Nations (UN) have made creative efforts to market these goals to the global audience, and despite the fact that these goals have far-reaching relevance to our everyday lives, it is nonetheless difficult for an ordinary person to internalize this massive framework in a way where it can be translated into personal action. For those facing this daunting task, I share a philosophy that many others have shared with me: think global, act local. Although the SDGs are global in scope, they are fundamentally rooted in the idea of individual action and commitment, and they depend on this realization to become successful.
I have no doubt that the SDGs will help countless people in the years to come. At the same time, having been involved in this process for the past four years, through the UN Major Group for Children and Youth, have already impacted my life in many ways. The MDGs and the SDGs inspired my academic and professional pursuits and provided me with opportunities to meet and learn from other young people, like Natasha, who have become a personal source of inspiration. As a result, these goals have already cultivated a newer form of diplomacy among young leaders around the world as well.
In these upcoming 15 years, the international community needs to be vigilant in the implementation, monitoring and reviewing process of these goals, in order to hold decision-makers and stakeholders accountable when they fail to hold their end of the deal. These goals need to be achieved, as they are in many ways the representation of the human enterprise and the manifestation of our collective intergenerational promise for a future of peace, prosperity, and dignity. Ultimately, they are a road map that requires the entire world to be drivers of change.