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SDSN Joins Sustainable Development Transformation Forum

By Lauren Barredo

From October 22 to 24, 2019, the SDSN joined the Sustainable Development Transformation Forum in Incheon, Republic of Korea, organized by the UN Office for Sustainable Development (UNOSD) in partnership with the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF). The event explored what it will take to support economic, social, and environmental transformations towards sustainable development. Participants also discussed how to catalyse transformations through finance, governance, behavior change, and science and technology. The role of partnerships, particularly between business, civil society, and government, was given particular attention. The Forum also considered the political economy, and how to overcome entrenched resistance to change from vested interests.

The Forum opened with sessions on the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR). The GSDR identifies six entry points for transformation and four key levers to accelerate those transformations. The six entry points are:

  1. Human well-being and capabilities
  2. Sustainable and just economies
  3. Food systems and nutrition patterns
  4. Energy decarbonization and universal access
  5. Urban and peri-urban development
  6. Global environmental commons

The four levers are:

  1. Governance
  2. Economy and finance
  3. Individual and collective behavior
  4. Science and technology

Three members of the Independent Group of Scientists who authored the report were present to discuss their findings; Dr. Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, Professor and Chair of the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University (an SDSN member); Dr. Eun Mee Kim, Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha Woman's University; and Dr. David Smith, Coordinator of the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and Chair of the SDSN Caribbean. The three authors also participated in an interview, footage from which is available below.

Other participants from the SDSN included Lauren Barredo, Head of Partnerships, who ran a session on successful coalition building for the SDGs, and Dr. David Horan, a Marie Curie IRC Caroline Post-doctoral Researcher at the University College Dublin's School of Politics and International Relations and a Visiting Researcher at SDSN, who gave a media interview. Highlights from the interview with Dr. Horan was broadcast on Arirang TV (below).

The event welcomed approximately 100 participants, with the governments of over 70 countries represented. An outcome document, the Incheon Communique, is available on the UNOSD website.