News & Updates
Chief Sustainability Officers’ Outlook, in Brief
18/09/2026
Summarising the World Economic Forum's Chief Sustainability Officers' Outlook (Insight Report, September 2026), produced by the Centre for Nature and Climate. The survey ran from 10 February to 18 March 2026 and drew 103 anonymised responses from a community of 189 sustainability leaders at large companies. Providing insight as to what has been missed in the report.
Do We Really Understand Sustainability? - The Illusion of Explanatory Depth
16/09/2026
Education is often described as the process of acquiring knowledge, but sustainable education also requires students to understand relationships, dependencies and consequences.
Where We Are, Where We Are Going, and Who Carries It: The 2026 SDSN Report, COP31, and the Tools to Deliver
29/06/2026
A 169to1® analysis for the road to Antalya. This summary draws on the United Nations Sustainable Development Report 2026, whose opening section, “From Goals to Means: The Path to SDG Implementation,” was led by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs and the SDSN SDG Transformation Center team.
Three things, one line of progress
To understand the moment we are in, it helps to hold three things together, because they are not separate stories. They are one story told in sequence.
The SDSN Report 2026 tells us where we are now, and it does so by measuring how far we have come since 2015. It is the record of the journey and the snapshot of the present.
COP31 is the vehicle that carries everyone forward from that snapshot toward 2030 and beyond. It is where the diagnosis becomes negotiation, and where the next stage of the journey is set.
169to1® is where the journey is actually walked, by the four groups who turn global commitments into local action: educators, small businesses, NGO teams, and youth movements.
Read together, the line runs clean. The report says what the problem now is. COP31 decides how to act on it. 169to1® equips the people who have to deliver it. The rest of this analysis follows that line.
Where we are now: the report, and the progress behind it
The eleventh SDSN Report, published this June, lands with a clear verdict. A decade after the Goals were adopted, the world is significantly off pace, and the central problem has shifted. The targets are known, the data is richer than ever, and the diagnosis is no longer in doubt. What is missing is delivery. The report frames the entire challenge ahead as a move “from goals to means”, from setting ambitions to building the financing, governance, and data systems that turn them into outcomes on the ground.
The report’s value is that it tracks movement across ten years of comparable data. Since 2016 it has tracked every UN Member State on the same measures, so this year's picture sits on a decade of comparable data. East and South Asia have made more progress than any other region since 2015, with China climbing fourteen places and India eighteen. Finland, Sweden, and Denmark top the SDG Index again, yet even the highest performers face serious gaps. The United States has slipped five positions. This year the Index ranks 169 countries across 123 indicators, with Eritrea and Timor-Leste assessed for the first time.
Two additions give the 2026 edition its distinctive shape. The first is a new Index of Countries' Support for UN-Based Multilateralism, on which Barbados ranks first and the United States ranks last. The second is a pair of surveys, one of SDSN's expert networks and one of more than a thousand people across 127 countries, asking what is actually blocking progress. The answer was consistent. People want the SDG framework to continue beyond 2030, and they want it backed by stronger implementation: adequate financing, credible governance at every level, and better use of science and data.
This is the strategic backdrop. Formal UN discussions on a post-2030 agenda begin in 2027, alongside a transition to a new Secretary-General. The report is the baseline everyone will argue from. The next eighteen months decide what is built on it.
Where we are going: COP31 as the vehicle to 2030 and beyond
COP31 convenes in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9 to 20 November 2026 at the Antalya Expo Center, with Türkiye holding the Presidency and Australia leading the negotiations. A World Leaders' Summit falls on 11 and 12 November, and a Pre-COP in the Pacific, hosted in Fiji with a leaders' component in Tuvalu, will carry the concerns of small island states into the room before the main session opens.
COP31 is being called an implementation COP, and that is precisely where the report stops being a document and starts being a tool. COP29 in Baku set the finance goals: at least US$300 billion a year by 2035 for developing countries, inside a wider aim of US$1.3 trillion a year from all sources, with the Baku to Belém Roadmap to show how. Antalya now has to show that money and policy translate into measurable national action, with the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions under scrutiny against a 1.5 degree pathway that requires emissions to fall roughly 43 percent by 2030. The report's central message and the conference's central task are the same task, described in two languages. This is the forward motion: from a measured present, through a negotiated agreement, toward 2030 and the framework that follows it.
How representatives should use the report at COP31
The Sustainable Development Report is not a climate report, and that is its value in a climate negotiation. It treats climate action as inseparable from financing, development, and governance, which is exactly the integration delegates need to argue for. Six practical uses stand out.
Benchmark national positions in shared data. The SDG Index and dashboards give every delegation a defensible, internationally comparable baseline. Representatives can ground their statements in where their country actually stands, identify the targets pulling them off track, and hold counterparts to the same evidence rather than to rhetoric.
Make the financing case structurally, not as a plea. The report's emphasis on implementation means and reform of the global financial architecture supports pressure to deliver the 1.3 trillion dollar goal and to reform multilateral development banks. The argument moves from asking for money to fixing the plumbing that moves it.
Use the spillover evidence as leverage. The report's spillover analysis shows how high-income economies generate a large share of their environmental footprint abroad through trade and imported emissions. For Pacific, African, and small-island delegations, this turns a moral appeal into a quantified accountability claim, and it connects directly to the agenda the Pacific Pre-COP will carry into Antalya.
Anchor NDCs 3.0 in science and indicators. The implementation focus matches COP31's mandate to convert pledges into verifiable policy. Delegates can tie revised contributions to the report's indicators so that ambition is expressed in tracked outcomes rather than headline figures.
Defend the multilateral system itself. The new multilateralism index arrives in a year of visible fragmentation. Representatives who want climate action to stay inside a coordinated UN framework now have a measured way to show which countries are holding that system up and which are pulling away.
Connect Antalya to the post-2030 question. COP31 does not stand alone. It feeds the 2027 discussions on what follows the 2030 Agenda. Delegates who link climate implementation to the wider SDG implementation agenda will help shape the framework that follows 2030.
Who carries it: 169to1® and the four groups who deliver
A report measures, and a conference negotiates, but neither delivers. Delivery happens further down, in classrooms, small firms, civil-society teams, and youth campaigns. The 169to1® Official SDG Toolkit Collection was built for that final stretch, with material rewritten around the 169 official targets for the four groups who carry the work locally. Here is what each can do as COP31 opens.
Education. The Education and Schools editions, including alignment for IB and CIS settings, turn this year's findings into curriculum-ready material. A teacher can take the report's headline results and the “from goals to means” framing into a single lesson, use SDG 13 as the reference unit, and have students follow COP31 live rather than studying it years later. Assessment guides turn that understanding into evidence a school can show.
SME Business. The SME Core edition gives smaller firms a practical route into SDG and ESG alignment without enterprise-scale overhead. As the report's spillover findings and COP31's financing decisions raise expectations along supply chains, an SME can use the edition to map its own position against the targets and prepare for the procurement, reporting, and capital shifts that follow Antalya, before those expectations arrive as a demand.
NGO Teams. The NGO Teams edition supports civil-society organisations in doing exactly what the report calls for: stronger governance, partnerships built on mutual accountability rather than donor-recipient dynamics, and monitoring that measures long-term impact rather than inputs. An NGO team can use it to build a partnership or accountability case and bring structure to its engagement with the COP31 Action Agenda and the Blue and Green Zones.
Youth Movements. The Youth Ambassadors edition moves young people from slogans to systems, with leadership and project structures built on the 169 targets. With a Youth Champion role embedded in the COP31 leadership model and youth voices central to the Pacific Pre-COP, a young leader can use the toolkit to design a real project, not a poster, and step into the moment they prepared for.
The line, in one breath
The SDSN Report 2026 shows us where we stand and how far we have travelled. COP31 in Antalya is the vehicle that carries that knowledge forward to 2030 and beyond. 169to1® puts the tools in the hands of the educators, businesses, NGO teams, and young people who turn the agreement into action. Three things, one line of progress, and a clear place for everyone to step onto it.
Sources: SDSN Report 2026 (SDSN, SDG Transformation Center); UNFCCC COP31 information; UN in Türkiye COP30 outcomes summary. Conference logistics are accurate as of June 2026 per UNFCCC materials and may be updated closer to November. This is an independent 169to1® / Hudson Consultancy Online analysis informed by these sources and is not authored by, or endorsed by, Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs or the SDSN.
The 2026 SDG Scorecard: What the Sustainable Development Report Says, and Why It Matters to You
25/06/2026
A 169to1® in-depth analysis of the United Nations Sustainable Development Report 2026, published on 23 June 2026 by the SDSN SDG Transformation Center. Lead authors: Jeffrey D. Sachs, Guillaume Lafortune, Grayson Fuller, and Guilherme Iablonovski.
What this report actually is
Every year since 2016, a team of researchers has produced the closest thing the world has to a report card for the Sustainable Development Goals. The Goals are the seventeen promises that all 193 UN member states made in 2015: to end poverty and hunger, deliver health and education, provide clean water and energy, protect the climate and nature, and build fairer, more peaceful societies, all by 2030.
The report measures how each country is doing using something called the SDG Index. Think of it as a score out of 100, where 100 means a country has fully achieved the Goals. It is built from 123 different indicators, covering 169 countries this year, with Eritrea and Timor-Leste assessed for the first time. Because the same method has been used for a decade, the report shows the direction of travel.
This is the eleventh edition, and its subtitle sets the tone for everything inside it: Implementing Sustainable Development: 2030 and Beyond. The message is that the world has spent ten years agreeing on what to do, and the time for agreeing is over.
The bottom line, stated plainly
Here is the sentence that matters most. With four years left on the clock, only about 16 percent of the targets are on track to be met by 2030. The large majority will be missed at the current pace.
That is the stake in its simplest form. The promises made in 2015 are, for the most part, not being kept on time. And yet the report's second finding is just as important: almost every country still wants the framework to continue. The world has not given up on the Goals. It has fallen behind on delivering them. The whole report is an attempt to explain that gap and to say what would close it.
To make sense of it, the report organises everything around five key messages. Each one carries a real-world consequence, so we will take them in turn.
Message one: the world still believes in the plan
The first finding is reassuring. Commitment to the Goals remains strong almost everywhere. In 2025, when the UN General Assembly voted on resolutions referring to sustainable development, support regularly passed 170 of the 193 member states. A total of 190 countries have now formally reviewed their own progress through the UN's voluntary review process, and a growing number of cities and regions are doing the same at the local level.
What is at stake: this is the foundation everything else rests on. The Goals are not fading away or being quietly abandoned. The plan you may have heard about years ago is still the active, agreed plan of nearly the entire world. That shared commitment is what makes coordinated action possible at all.
Message two: Asia is pulling ahead, and the balance is shifting
The countries making the fastest progress are in East and South Asia. They have improved more than any other region since 2015. Among the major powers, China has climbed fourteen places in the rankings and India eighteen. Russia's position is roughly unchanged. The United States has slipped five places.
At the very top of the table sit Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, the same Nordic countries that have led for years. Even they, the report is careful to note, still fall short on several Goals, particularly around climate and consumption.
What is at stake: progress is real and it is possible, which is the hopeful part. But the centre of gravity in sustainable development is moving. The countries that treat the Goals as a serious national plan are gaining ground, and those that step back are falling behind. This is not only a moral scorecard. It increasingly tracks where economic momentum and global influence are heading.
Message three: the cooperation that holds it all together is under strain
The 2026 report introduces a new measure called the Index of Countries' Support for UN-Based Multilateralism. In plain terms, it asks how much each country actually backs the shared international system, the one that negotiates climate deals, coordinates health responses, and sets common rules.
Barbados, a small island nation, ranks first. The United States ranks last and is described as a statistical outlier, meaning it sits far outside the normal range. The report notes that the US federal government openly declared its opposition to the Goals and the 2030 Agenda, withdrew from more than sixty international organisations in January 2026, and in 2025 voted with the international majority in only about 5 percent of recorded UN votes.
What is at stake: global goals depend on countries choosing to work together. When one of the most powerful nations steps out of the shared system, it strains the cooperation that everything else relies on, from climate finance to disease control to trade rules. For the rest of the world, the question becomes whether the system can hold, and deliver, without full participation from every major power.
Message four: ten years of experience, distilled into eight priorities
This is the heart of the report, and the part led directly by Jeffrey Sachs. After a decade of trying, the authors set out eight priorities for what must change to accelerate progress. In everyday language, they are:
End the wars and spend the savings on people. Redirect money from conflict and military budgets toward peace, health, and human development.
Set a real timeline. Replace vague ambition with a concrete, dated plan for getting the work done.
Organise around six big transformations. Focus effort on six areas that drive everything else: education and skills, health, clean energy, sustainable food and land use, livable cities, and the digital shift.
Make long-term investment plans. Fund those transformations with steady, long-range financing rather than short-term, stop-start spending.
Strengthen cooperation closer to the ground. Build investment and collaboration at the continental, regional, and local levels, not only the global one.
Introduce new global taxes for shared needs. Raise dedicated funding for the things that benefit everyone, such as a stable climate, that no single country pays for alone.
Write the rules for new technology. Create global governance for artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and other fast-moving fields before they outpace oversight.
Bring the UN closer to the world it serves. Establish new UN campuses in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
What is at stake: this is the to-do list. It is the difference between a report that only complains and one that offers a route forward. Whether these priorities get taken up, especially the financing ones, largely determines whether the next phase succeeds or repeats the last decade's shortfall.
Message five: the real problem is doing, not deciding
To test its conclusions, the report ran two new surveys: one of expert networks across 64 countries plus the European Union, and a public survey of more than a thousand people across 127 countries. The findings were strikingly consistent. People want the framework to continue beyond 2030, and they believe the missing ingredient is implementation. They named three things above all: enough money, capable government at every level, and better use of science and data.
What is at stake: this confirms the report's central argument and the reason for its subtitle. The world does not lack goals, awareness, or even public support. It lacks the means to deliver, the financing, the institutions, and the evidence to act well. That is the gap that now decides everything.
So what is really at stake, in human terms
It is easy to read percentages and rankings and feel removed from them. Here is what they translate to.
Missing the Goals is not an abstract scoring failure. It means children who stay out of school, families who stay in poverty, illnesses that go untreated, and climate damage that arrives sooner and hits harder. The 16 percent figure is, underneath, a measure of human lives that the original promise was meant to improve and, on current trends, will not reach in time.
The report also points to a clear deadline beyond 2030. The UN will hold an SDG Summit in September 2027, and formal talks on what comes after the 2030 Agenda begin that year, alongside a change of UN Secretary-General. In other words, the next eighteen months set the terms for the framework that will guide the world toward mid-century. This report is the evidence base everyone will argue from when those decisions are made.
The world agreed on a good plan, has kept believing in it, and has fallen behind on delivering it. The reasons are now well understood, and the fixes are known. What remains uncertain is whether enough people and institutions choose to act on them in the narrow window that is left. That choice, repeated in thousands of places by governments, businesses, schools, and communities, is what the next four years come down to.
Source: Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Iablonovski, G. (2026). Implementing Sustainable Development: 2030 and Beyond. Sustainable Development Report 2026. Paris: SDSN; Dublin: Dublin University Press. Figures and findings as published on 23 June 2026. This is an independent 169to1® / Hudson Consultancy Online analysis of the report and is not authored by, or endorsed by, the report's authors or the SDSN.