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In 2015, the leaders of the world
made a big promise.
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A promise that over the next 15 years,
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the lives of billions of people
are going to get better
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with no one left behind.
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That promise is the Sustainable
Development Goals --
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the SDGs.
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We're now three years in;
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a fifth of the way into the journey.
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The clock is ticking.
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If we offtrack now,
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it's going to get harder and harder
to hit those goals.
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So what I want to do for you today
is give you a snapshot
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on where we are today,
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some projections on where we're heading
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and some ideas on things
we might need to do differently.
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Now, the SDGs are of course
spectacularly complicated.
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I would expect nothing less
from the United Nations.
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(Laughter)
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How many goals?
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Maybe something tried and tested,
like three, seven or 10.
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No, let's pick a prime number
higher than 10.
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Seventeen goals.
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I congratulate those of you
who've memorized them already.
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For the rest of us, here they are.
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Seventeen goals ranging
from ending poverty
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to inclusive cities
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to sustainable fisheries;
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all a comprehensive plan
for the future of our world.
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But sadly, a plan
without the data to measure it.
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So how are we going to track progress?
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Well, I'm going to use today
the Social Progress Index.
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It's a measure of
the quality of life of countries,
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ranging from the basic
needs of survival --
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food, water, shelter, safety --
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through to the foundations
of well-being --
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education, information,
health and the environment --
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and opportunity --
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rights, freedom of choice, inclusiveness
and access to higher education.
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Now, the Social Progress Index
doesn't look like the SDGs,
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but fundamentally,
it's measuring the same concepts,
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and the Social Progress Index
has the advantage that we have the data.
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We have 51 indicators
drawn from trusted sources
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to measure these concepts.
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And also, what we can do
because it's an index,
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is add together all those indicators
to give us an aggregate score
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about how we're performing
against the total package of the SDGs.
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Now, one caveat.
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The Social Progress Index
is a measure of quality of life.
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We're not looking at whether
this can be achieved
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within the planet's environmental limits.
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You will need other tools to do that.
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So how are we doing on the SDGs?
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Well, I'm going to put the SDGs
on a scale of zero to 100.
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And zero is the absolute worst score
on each of those 51 indicators:
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absolute social progress, zero.
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And then 100 is the minimum standard
required to achieve those SDGs.
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A hundred is where
we want to get to by 2030.
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So, where did we start on this journey?
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Fortunately, not at zero.
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In 2015, the world score
against the SDGs was 69.1.
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Some way on the way there
but quite a long way to go.
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Now let me also emphasize
that this world forecast,
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which is based on data from 180 countries,
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is population weighted.
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So China has more weight in than Comoros;
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India has more weight in than Iceland.
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But we could unpack this
and see how the countries are doing.
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And the country today that is closest
to achieving the SDGs is Denmark.
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And the country with the furthest to go
is Central African Republic.
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And everyone else is somewhere in between.
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So the challenge for the SDGs
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is to try and sweep all these dots
across to the right, to 100 by 2030.
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Can we get there?
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Well, with the Social Progress Index,
we've got some time series data.
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So we have some idea of the trend
that the countries are on,
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on which we can build some projections.
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So let's have a look.
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Let's start with our
top-performing country, Denmark.
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And yes, I'm pleased to say that Denmark
is forecast to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
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Maybe not surprising, but I'll take a win.
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Let's look at some of the other
richer countries of the world --
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the G7.
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And we find that Germany and Japan
will get there or thereabouts.
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But Canada, France, the UK and Italy
are all going to fall short.
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And the United States?
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Quite some way back.
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Now, this is sort of worrying news.
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But these are the richest
countries in the world,
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not the most populous.
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So let's take a look now
at the biggest countries in the world,
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the ones that will most affect
whether or not we achieve the SDGs.
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And here they are --
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countries in the world with a population
of higher than 100 million,
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ranging from China to Ethiopia.
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Obviously, the US and Japan
would be in that list,
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but we've looked at them already.
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So here we are.
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The biggest countries in the world;
the dealbreakers for the SDGs.
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And the country that's going to make
most progress towards the SDGs
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is Mexico.
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Mexico is going to get to about 87,
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so just shy of where
the US is going to get
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but quite some way off our SDG target.
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Russia comes next.
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Then China and Indonesia.
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Then Brazil -- might've expected
Brazil to do a bit better.
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Philippines,
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and then a step down to India,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria,
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and then Ethiopia.
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So none of these countries
are going to hit the SDGs.
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And we can then take these numbers
in all the countries of the world
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to give ourselves a world forecast
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on achieving that total
package of the SDGs.
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So remember, in 2015 we started at 69.1.
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I'm pleased to say
that over the last three years,
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we have made some progress.
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In 2018, we've hit 70.5,
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and if we project that rate
of progress forward to 2030,
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that's going to get us to 75.2,
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which is obviously
a long way short of our target.
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Indeed, on current trends,
we won't hit the 2030 targets until 2094.
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Now, I don't know about you,
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but I certainly don't
want to wait that long.
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So what can we do about this?
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Well, the first thing to do is
we've got to call out the rich countries.
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Here are the countries
closest to the SDGs,
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with the greatest resources,
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and they're falling short.
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Maybe they think
that this is like the Old World
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where goals for the UN are just
for poor countries and not for them.
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Well, you're wrong.
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The SDGs are for every country,
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and it's shameful that these wealthy
countries are falling short.
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Every country needs a plan
to implement the SDGs
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and deliver them for their citizens.
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G7, other rich countries --
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get your act together.
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The second thing we can do
is look a bit further into the data
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and see where there are opportunities
to accelerate progress
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or there are negative trends
that we can reverse.
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So I'm going to take you into three areas.
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One where we're doing quite well,
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one where we really should be doing better
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and another where we've got
some real problems.
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Let's start with the good news,
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and I want to talk about what we call
nutrition and basic medical care.
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This covers SDG 2 on no hunger
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and the basic elements of SDG 3 on health,
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so maternal and child mortality,
infectious diseases, etc ...
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This is an area where most
of the rich world has hit the SDGs.
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And we also find,
looking at our big countries,
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that the most advanced
have got pretty close.
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Here are our 11 big countries,
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and if you look at the top,
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Brazil and Russia
are pretty close to the SDG target.
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But at the bottom --
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Ethiopia, Pakistan -- a long way to go.
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That's where we are in 2018.
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What's our trajectory?
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On the current trajectory,
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how far are we going to get by 2030?
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Well, let's have a look.
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Well, what we see is a lot of progress.
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See Bangladesh in the middle.
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If Bangladesh maintains
its current rate of progress,
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it could get very close
to that SDG target.
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And Ethiopia at the bottom
is making a huge amount of progress
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at the moment.
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If that can be maintained,
Ethiopia could get a long way.
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We add this all up
for all the countries of the world
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and our projection
is a score of 94.5 by 2030.
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And if countries like the Philippines,
which have grown more slowly,
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could accelerate progress,
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then we could get a lot closer.
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So there are reasons to be optimistic
about SDGs 2 and 3.
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But there's another very basic area
of the SDGs where we're doing less well,
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which is SDG 6, on water and sanitation.
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Again, it's an SDG
where most of the rich countries
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have already achieved the targets.
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And again, for our big countries --
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our big 11 emerging countries,
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we see that some of the countries,
like Russia and Mexico,
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are very close to the target,
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but Nigeria and other countries
are a very long way back.
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So how are we doing on this target?
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What progress are we going to make
over the next 12 years
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based on the current direction of travel?
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Well, here we go ...
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and yes, there is some progress.
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Our top four countries
are all hitting the SDG targets --
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some are moving forward quite quickly.
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But it's not enough
to really move us forward significantly.
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What we see is that
for the world as a whole,
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we're forecasting a score
of around 85, 86 by 2030 --
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not fast enough.
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Now, obviously this is not good news,
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but I think what this data also shows
is that we could be doing a lot better.
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Water and sanitation is a solved problem.
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It's about scaling
that solution everywhere.
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So if we could accelerate progress
in some of those countries
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who are improving more slowly --
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Nigeria, the Philippines, etc. --
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then we could get
a lot closer to the goal.
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Indeed, I think SDG 6
is probably the biggest opportunity
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of all the SDGs for a step change.
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So that's an area we could do better.
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Let's look finally at an area
where we are struggling,
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which is what we call
personal rights and inclusiveness.
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This is covering concepts
across a range of SDGs.
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SDG 1 on poverty,
SDG 5 on gender equality,
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SDG 10 on inequality,
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SDG 11 on inclusive cities
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and SDG 16 on peace and justice.
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So across those SDGs there are themes
around rights and inclusiveness,
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and those may seem
less immediate or pressing
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than things like hunger and disease,
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but rights and inclusion are critical
to an agenda of no one left behind.
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So how are we doing on those issues?
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Let's start off with personal rights.
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What I'm going to do first
is show you our big countries in 2015.
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So here they are,
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and I've put the USA and Japan back in,
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so it's our 13 biggest
countries in the world.
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And we see a wide range of scores.
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The United States at the top
with Japan hitting the goals;
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China a long way behind.
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So what's been our direction of travel
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on the rights agenda
over the last three years?
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Let's have a look.
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Well, what we see is actually pretty ugly.
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The majority of the countries
are standing still or moving backwards,
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and big countries like Brazil,
India, China, Bangladesh
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have all seen significant declines.
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This is worrying.
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Let's have a look now at inclusiveness.
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And inclusiveness is looking at things
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like violence and discrimination
against minorities,
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gender equity, LGBT inclusion, etc...
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And as a result, we see that the scores
for our big countries are generally lower.
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Every country, rich and poor
alike, is struggling
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with building an inclusive society.
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But what's our direction of travel?
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Are we building more inclusive countries?
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Let's have a look -- progress to 2018.
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And again we see
the world moving backwards:
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most countries static,
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a lot of countries going backwards --
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Bangladesh moving backwards --
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but also, two of the countries
that were leading --
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Brazil and the United States --
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have gone backwards significantly
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over the last three years.
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Let's sum this up now
for the world as a whole.
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And what we see on personal rights
for the whole world
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is we're forecasting actually
a decline in the score on personal rights
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to about 60,
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and then this decline in the score
of inclusiveness to about 42.
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Now, obviously these things
can change quite quickly
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with rights and with changes in law,
changes in attitudes,
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but we have to accept
that on current trends,
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this is probably the most
worrying aspect of the SDGs.
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How I've depressed you ...
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(Laughter)
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I hope not because I think what we do see
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is that progress is happening
in a lot of places
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and there are opportunities
for accelerating progress.
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We are living in a world
that is tantalizingly close
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to ensuring that no one need die
of hunger or malaria or diarrhea.
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If we can focus our efforts,
mobilize resources,
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galvanize the political will,
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that step change is possible.
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But in focusing on those
really basic, solvable SDGs,
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we mustn't forget the whole package.
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The goals are an unwieldy
set of indicators, goals and targets,
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but they also include
the challenges our world faces.
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The fact that the SDGs
are focusing attention
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on the fact that we face a crisis
in personal rights and inclusiveness
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is a positive.
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If we forget that,
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if we choose to double down
on the SDGs that we can solve,
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if we go for SDG à la carte
and pick the most easy SDGs,
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then we will have missed
the point of the SDGs,
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we will miss the goals
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and we will have failed
on the promise of the SDGs.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
