Simultaneously, we are witnessing – and some of us actively, peacefully protesting against – increasingly brutal international and domestic political events. They include violent cross-border wars and conflicts with genocidal intent, crimes against humanity, war crimes and outright genocides. Within national borders, we see continuous grievous violations of human rights or civil rights promised on paper by national constitutions; we see obstruction or even overturning of election outcomes; lethal attacks by government forces on citizens and residents. Across the world, re-armament and militarisation are presented as a new logic necessary to address risks – genuine or imagined ones – while the same players downplay, ignore or even ridicule the actual imminent risk of biodiversity crash and planetary devastation.
This is actually not a new situation: When the SDG Agenda was under negotiation, the geopolitical constellation was similarly stacked against social progress and peace. However, since then, there have been major realignments among the super-large countries. Not just their political practice: even the narrative in many countries now openly diverges from any notions of social development and social justice.
Does it make sense then to devote intellectual or political energy to UN processes devoted to human progress? Does it make sense to envision a global agenda for “development”, for instance imagining what a next development agenda might look like? Is that appeasement? Doublespeak?
So far, UN and some commentators have notified that discussions on the next development agenda would begin in 2027, perhaps in order to concentrate on the UN reform process, or because the UN’s acute liquidity crisis is absorbing all creative resources, or just pragmatically, to await the dialogues for a new Secretary-General scheduled for April this year.
However, regardless whether progressive visioning is realistic, or timely: SDG reporting is underway, linked with fledgling post-2030 discussions. In the global South, the BRICS Summit in mid-2025 called for accelerating SDG performance, and rallied around the right to food and the fight against poverty, malnutrition, and inequalities. Brazil is calling for a tax justice movement. The G20 Summit, also in 2025, held in South Africa, underlined the importance of the SDG Agenda, with special emphasis on universal social protection and SDG1. In the global North, the EU begins its next multiyear plan in 2028, and several EU countries convened consultations in November 2025 on a forthcoming development agenda. In the US, while the federal administration has slammed the entire notion of SDGs, gender and diversity, and aims to delete references from all UN documents, individual cities in the US continue to adopt and implement local SDG plans.
These trends need to be watched closely in terms of pointers for beyond-2030 agenda visioning. Several BRICS countries do not follow human rights or gender equality or democratic principles, and instead pursue a notion of “plural” development paths, and prioritise their own policy sovereignty. Moreover, a majority of BRICS members and many G20 governments are closing down civic space. The EU is moving away from its earlier social and environmental commitments; its new plan makes no reference to the SDGs.
Thinking beyond 2030 as an antidote to despair
So, in this disillusioning geopolitical situation, exploring progressive ideas and imaginings “beyond 2030” could be an antidote. The basics: whichever turn the next agenda takes – continuation; deepening and widening the current SDG list; or a clean slate – it needs to offer a wide, progressive understanding of “development” as devoted to economic, social and gender justice within planetary boundaries. Human rights, discursive democracy and peaceful forms of conflict resolution are the central axis. A truly interactive process is indispensable, systematically integrating those whose voices are not heard and challenging established patriarchal hierarchies, entrenched powers of economic and political oppression and extractivism.
In that vein, I’d like to humbly put forward some rough thoughts, to kickstart the imagining.
It is an unspoken convention that (most) UN documents eschew critical political economy analyses of the structures that systemically create global and national inequities, and current geopolitics make it unlikely that countries would accept that the UN offer such analyses at this point. Yet: A conceptual image of justice is needed – a bridging vision to pull together all the principles and action points of a new agenda, whatever practical formulation it agrees to. Coalescing under a normative bridge could be conceivable; this would not necessarily be contentious. Much thinking is in co-creation here, such as the rights-based or wellbeing economy model. One attractive approach would be to use the concept of a transformative eco-social contract as the conceptual bridge to connect the points – to link-up economic, social, ecological, planetary, gender, political justice and the policy domains and service delivery of each.
At the “operational” level: a new locus for monitoring
In a beyond-2030 approach, more weight – and adequate financial resources –could be given to the citizens’ statistics movement. Here, residents of a country, NGOs and the most vulnerable communities collect on-the-ground data and are empowered to scrutinise governments’ performance. Such data can support, and correct, the work of national statistical offices. This movement has gained traction in place in many countries.
In HRC processes, governments report, among other themes, on their performance on the 9 core human rights conventionswhich they have ratified. These include conventions on women’s rights, child rights, migrants, racial discrimination, torture and others. The process includes a report by the country itself, findings from independent research by the Office of Human Rights, and where existent, by civil society. The Human Rights Council also reviews entire rights-related outcomes of countries; in these Universal Periodic Reviews, the reporting is supplemented by assessments made by peer governments.
Thus, arguably, a new dynamic could ensue. It might be more efficient, because governments could combine their SDG reviews with their convention reportings. It could be more effective, because the HRC obliges governments to react to recommendations made. It could be more honest and transparent because of the multiple view points, and it could be more scientific, because part of the reporting on UN conventions is done by specialists familiar with academic standards. Granted, it would be more painful, too, for those countries violating their human rights commitments, so it will not be easy to implement such a proposal.
Kickstart? Imaginings towards a beyond-2030 “development” agenda
The 2030 Agenda and recent follow-ups
As is well-known, in 2015 the UN General Assembly adopted, by acclamation, an Agenda for sustainable development (2015 to 2030). The 2030 Agenda followed a continuous series of development decades, since 1960 in fact. Since 2015, the UN secretariat itself launched follow-on processes, such as Our Common Agenda which in turn led to the Summit for the Future; and in November 2025 the UN General Assembly agreed to a resolution on the world summit for social development.
Simultaneously, we are witnessing – and some of us actively, peacefully protesting against – increasingly brutal international and domestic political events. They include violent cross-border wars and conflicts with genocidal intent, crimes against humanity, war crimes and outright genocides. Within national borders, we see continuous grievous violations of human rights or civil rights promised on paper by national constitutions; we see obstruction or even overturning of election outcomes; lethal attacks by government forces on citizens and residents. Across the world, re-armament and militarisation are presented as a new logic necessary to address risks – genuine or imagined ones – while the same players downplay, ignore or even ridicule the actual imminent risk of biodiversity crash and planetary devastation.
This is actually not a new situation: When the SDG Agenda was under negotiation, the geopolitical constellation was similarly stacked against social progress and peace. However, since then, there have been major realignments among the super-large countries. Not just their political practice: even the narrative in many countries now openly diverges from any notions of social development and social justice.
Does it make sense then to devote intellectual or political energy to UN processes devoted to human progress? Does it make sense to envision a global agenda for “development”, for instance imagining what a next development agenda might look like? Is that appeasement? Doublespeak?
So far, UN and some commentators have notified that discussions on the next development agenda would begin in 2027, perhaps in order to concentrate on the UN reform process, or because the UN’s acute liquidity crisis is absorbing all creative resources, or just pragmatically, to await the dialogues for a new Secretary-General scheduled for April this year.
However, regardless whether progressive visioning is realistic, or timely: SDG reporting is underway, linked with fledgling post-2030 discussions. In the global South, the BRICS Summit in mid-2025 called for accelerating SDG performance, and rallied around the right to food and the fight against poverty, malnutrition, and inequalities. Brazil is calling for a tax justice movement. The G20 Summit, also in 2025, held in South Africa, underlined the importance of the SDG Agenda, with special emphasis on universal social protection and SDG1. In the global North, the EU begins its next multiyear plan in 2028, and several EU countries convened consultations in November 2025 on a forthcoming development agenda. In the US, while the federal administration has slammed the entire notion of SDGs, gender and diversity, and aims to delete references from all UN documents, individual cities in the US continue to adopt and implement local SDG plans.
These trends need to be watched closely in terms of pointers for beyond-2030 agenda visioning. Several BRICS countries do not follow human rights or gender equality or democratic principles, and instead pursue a notion of “plural” development paths, and prioritise their own policy sovereignty. Moreover, a majority of BRICS members and many G20 governments are closing down civic space. The EU is moving away from its earlier social and environmental commitments; its new plan makes no reference to the SDGs.
Thinking beyond 2030 as an antidote to despair
So, in this disillusioning geopolitical situation, exploring progressive ideas and imaginings “beyond 2030” could be an antidote. The basics: whichever turn the next agenda takes – continuation; deepening and widening the current SDG list; or a clean slate – it needs to offer a wide, progressive understanding of “development” as devoted to economic, social and gender justice within planetary boundaries. Human rights, discursive democracy and peaceful forms of conflict resolution are the central axis. A truly interactive process is indispensable, systematically integrating those whose voices are not heard and challenging established patriarchal hierarchies, entrenched powers of economic and political oppression and extractivism.
In that vein, I’d like to humbly put forward some rough thoughts, to kickstart the imagining.
At the conceptual level: a bridging vision
It is an unspoken convention that (most) UN documents eschew critical political economy analyses of the structures that systemically create global and national inequities, and current geopolitics make it unlikely that countries would accept that the UN offer such analyses at this point. Yet: A conceptual image of justice is needed – a bridging vision to pull together all the principles and action points of a new agenda, whatever practical formulation it agrees to. Coalescing under a normative bridge could be conceivable; this would not necessarily be contentious. Much thinking is in co-creation here, such as the rights-based or wellbeing economy model. One attractive approach would be to use the concept of a transformative eco-social contract as the conceptual bridge to connect the points – to link-up economic, social, ecological, planetary, gender, political justice and the policy domains and service delivery of each.
At the “operational” level: a new locus for monitoring
In a beyond-2030 approach, more weight – and adequate financial resources –could be given to the citizens’ statistics movement. Here, residents of a country, NGOs and the most vulnerable communities collect on-the-ground data and are empowered to scrutinise governments’ performance. Such data can support, and correct, the work of national statistical offices. This movement has gained traction in place in many countries.
A more difficult move could be to shift the next agenda’s negotiations, and oversight of implementation, to the Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, instead of placing the onus of SDG reporting on the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development , convened annually in New York. The idea is not new, and faced some opposition when the SDGs were conceptualised. But: since 2015, a human rights monitoring tool, developed by the Danish Human Rights Institute, is in place. It links the SDG targets to human rights conventions, so there is already accumulated experience.
In HRC processes, governments report, among other themes, on their performance on the 9 core human rights conventions which they have ratified. These include conventions on women’s rights, child rights, migrants, racial discrimination, torture and others. The process includes a report by the country itself, findings from independent research by the Office of Human Rights, and where existent, by civil society. The Human Rights Council also reviews entire rights-related outcomes of countries; in these Universal Periodic Reviews, the reporting is supplemented by assessments made by peer governments.
Thus, arguably, a new dynamic could ensue. It might be more efficient, because governments could combine their SDG reviews with their convention reportings. It could be more effective, because the HRC obliges governments to react to recommendations made. It could be more honest and transparent because of the multiple view points, and it could be more scientific, because part of the reporting on UN conventions is done by specialists familiar with academic standards. Granted, it would be more painful, too, for those countries violating their human rights commitments, so it will not be easy to implement such a proposal.
At the people level: creative coalitions
This imagining needs creative coalitions and some realignments in the three UNs, on which next blog.
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