February 16, 2016

Last week, Greenleaf published a blog in which NewForesight founder and CEO Lucas Simons provided his thoughts on the SDGs, and the rules of success for sustainable change.

“The world is at war.

And I’m not talking about the terrible war in Syria or the recent terrorist attacks. I’m talking about the war against the root causes that are real drivers and amplifiers of the aggression we see nowadays. It is a war against depletion, scarcity, degradation, poverty and exclusion and for health, wellbeing, biodiversity, prosperity and inclusion. It is the most important war we, as influencers in public and private organizations, can fight at this moment, and since we are our own worst enemy in this case, we need to stand united in tackling this complex issue.

For a few months now the targets and goals in this war have had a new name: the Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs for short. As the name suggests SDGs are global goals that world leaders, through the United Nations, have agreed to reach in the areas of sustainability and development. The list of seventeen goals, including ending hunger, ending poverty and education for all, are not new. In fact you could say that they are old news at best. They are the sequel to an earlier list, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). And despite the hundreds of billions of dollars we have invested in these goals we have only been able to achieve half of them.

Is it important that we have a list with global goals? Absolutely – the SDGs, and the MDGs before them, are important concepts as they allow the whole of society to rally behind the same concrete and targeted approaches to global issues.

But why didn’t we achieve the first full list of goals? The answer to that question is more complex. The MDGs were from a time of fighting poverty with traditional development aid; they were focused on “rich countries helping poor countries”, not on collaborative effort and certainly not on using market forces.

We know by now that when attempting to tackle complex global problems, there are three interrelated key rules for success (…)” Continue reading on the Greenleaf blog, where this blogpost was originally published.