Future of Sustainable Development: Understanding the interplay between society, business, and policy for accelerating SDGs and beyond

While most of the event is closed to invited participants, we warmly welcome all interested to join the open session on 8 October from 13:30 onwards at the House of Connections!

Countries are not on track to meet the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. Underachieving SDGs will negatively impact billions of people and exacerbate environmental and socio-economic problems. The next five years are crucial for accelerating efforts towards sustainable development and co-creating a science-based post-2030 Agenda, which also requires collaborative efforts among various stakeholders, including science, society, business, and policy. 

In 2027, the United Nations will organize the final SDG Summit, where progress on the SDGs will be reviewed and the post-2030 Agenda will be discussed. Stakeholder engagements at various levels can contribute to the success of the final SDG summit, including turbocharging SDG implementation in the final years. Thus, we organize this workshop as a platform for a dialogue among stakeholders representing science, society, business, and policy on their roles in achieving sustainable development. Bringing various stakeholders to the table, we aim to understand the interplay between society, business, and policy in accelerating the achievement of the SDGs and beyond. 

The specific objectives of our workshop are threefold:

• Bring various stakeholders together to discuss their roles in accelerating the achievement of the SDGs and share ideas for the post-2030 Agenda, based on their lessons learned from implementing the SDGs.

• Build and foster stakeholder partnerships to prepare for the 2027 final SDG summit and beyond.  

• Develop a perspective paper on the action points for fostering interplay between society, business, and policy to accelerate SDGs and beyond, accounting for the current scientific evidence and stakeholder lessons learned.

The workshop will consist of plenary sessions and break-out groups. The plenary sessions will include keynote presentations, panel discussions, and reports from the breakout groups. We will have delegated sessions focusing on society, business, and policy, including one on their interplay. We will prepare the workshop agenda to encourage active participation in the consensus paper, following the Chatham House Rule.