Accelerating Sustainable Development Towards 2030

Taken together, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – contained in UN Resolution 70/1 involving the 194 member States and civil society in its deliberation – seek an encouraging level of development of humanity’s social and environmental existence. They establish a framework through the year 2030 that can assist the nations and communities of the world in plotting what could amount to transformative, prosperous, and sustainable achievements. How can this potential development unfold and be long-lasting? What approaches should we catalyse so that sustainable projects result in and generate the human development benefits the world’s local publics want and need?

- Yossef Ben-Meir

People’s active participation in creating the projects that fulfil the Sustainable Development Goals is ultimately the essential basis upon which the SDGs could come into fruition, expand, and uplift our society and the world. The question then arises: how do we set in motion across lands participatory democratic meetings of local communities of people so that they identify, prioritize, and implement sustainable development projects?

Morocco, for example, has a progressive national municipal charter that is intended to promote inclusive participation. Each municipality is required by law to create multi-year community development plans driven by popular participation. If nations of the world do not imbed in their national policies the essential requirement of inclusion in the creation and determination of sustainable development projects, how can we then expect to achieve SDGs when the public is not encouraged to be involved in the determination and design of initiatives?

However, we have also dishearteningly learnt in Morocco’s case that laws and policies are not enough for the fulfilment of widespread participatory development actions. In fact, the example of Morocco, critically underscores that we must also experientially learn methods (by applying them in reality) of community democratic planning of projects for these processes to genuinely take place. Policies that promote participation coupled with learning by doing are a needed combination that can lead to local community movements towards accomplishing the SDGs.

TANGIBLE REALISATION