20+5 SDG Cities Leadership Platform

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to be in Heidelberg today – thank you for your kind invitation.
Many associations come to mind when one thinks of Heidelberg:

̶ A stronghold of liberal, cosmopolitan thought.
̶ A fairytale place of Romanticist longings.

It is this very tension between passionate idealism and even-keeled analysis which makes Heidelberg such a fitting surrounding for exploring the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
After all, the 2030 Agenda - which is nothing less than the most ambitious development agenda in human history - requires both: the idealist conviction of the Romantic as much as the realistic assessment of the dispassionate analyst.

Politics, the Heidelberg sociologist Max Weber once famously observed, is the “strong and slow drilling of hard boards” - das langsame Bohren harter Bretter. It requires, he said, “passion as well as perspective.”

Allow me then to briefly expand on both - that is, the analytical perspective and the passionate conviction.

Start with the analysis, that is, start with the question of how things are in the world, before we go into what and how we would change.

Today, our world is facing an existential crisis of legitimacy, of confidence, of trust.

This crisis is not abstract – it is rooted in the legitimate fears, anxieties and even anger of people.

No one can doubt the many benefits of globalization – the integration of the world’s economies, the expansion of trade, the incredible advances in technology.

And neither are these benefits abstract.

More people have risen out of extreme poverty than ever before. The global middle class is bigger than ever. More people are living longer and healthier lives.

But too many are being left behind in the different Rust Belts of our world.

10% of the world’s population live on less than two dollars a day.

1 billion women are disconnected from the economy, prevented by discriminatory laws and practices from being full economic actors.

Youth unemployment is at alarming levels.

And inequalities are rampant – stretching the fabric of society to the breaking point and undermining the social compact.

Exclusion has a price: frustration, alienation, instability.

Life chances and contributions become severely limited. Vulnerability to economic and climate-related shocks grows. So, too, does the challenge of forced migration and the temptation to fall prey to the siren songs of extremist ideologies.

And if you need proof that our lifestyle puts unsustainable demands on our planet, just consider what will happen in the next hour alone. According to data from the World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund, in this single hour, four million tons of carbon dioxide will be emitted; 1,500 hectares of forests will be cut; and three species will go extinct. During this hour, the pollution that already resides in our atmosphere will trap as much heat as would be released by detonating over 16,600 Hiroshima class atomic bombs. All in just the next hour.

Let us also be aware that geopolitically, the Cold War is back - with a vengeance but with a difference.

The mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past no longer seem to be present.

This crisis of the multilateral order has many parents - but one is the diffusion of power.

What used to be a bipolar world, with controlled confrontation between two superpowers, has metamorphosed into something much more diffuse – internationally, mid-level powers act increasingly autonomously from the big powers; domestically, the state’s monopoly of power is challenged by non-state actors; cyberspace is mostly privately owned and operated by huge corporations; and even within governments, mayors can at times be as influential in making policy as prime ministers or presidents.

But if this complex polycentric system engenders challenges, it also holds opportunities for progress.

In other words, never let a good crisis go to waste. Crises can catalyze the necessary momentum for fundamental change.

After all, as long as we cling to an economic and social model that drives exclusion and environmental destruction, people die, opportunities are missed, the seeds of division and future conflicts are sown and the full force of climate change becomes ever more likely.

The many crises we face today compel us to do all we can to achieve inclusive and sustainable development - a goal in its own right, but also our best form of prevention against all kind of risks.

This is why the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Global Goals are so critically important.

One, they are indivisible and universal.

Two, they “leave no one behind”.

Three, they are everyone’s responsibility.

This last point is connected to the diffusion of power I just mentioned.

States alone cannot achieve the SDGs. We need everyone’s involvement and we need everyone to take responsibility - from presidents to mayors; from citizens to global businesses.

The SDGs are also the responsibility of businesses, not just because sustainability is a moral imperative, or because their innovation and investment are essential, but because it is increasingly critical for their own commercial success.

And last but certainly not least, the SDGs are also the responsibility of cities.

Cities - the “original human community” in Benjamin Barber’s apt definition - play a critical role in the achievement of the 2030 Agenda.

They can be trailblazers for what Barber described as “democratic glocalism”, not top-down imposition; for flexible horizontalism, not rigid hierarchy.

Today, over half of the world’s people live in cities. By 2050, a full two-thirds will.

The concentration of people has always made cities engines of innovation.

The Renaissance started in Florence; and it was in Birmingham that the Industrial Revolution took off.

This makes sense: innovation speeds up because people are personally connected to each other, and because cities are gateways to finance, markets and other things that spur economic and cultural growth.

A larger percentage of people live in cities than at any point in human history simply because cities work.

As we are approaching the 1000-day mark since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, our sight is firmly set on implementation. And while the scope and ambition of the Goals is global, implementation happens on the ground, that is to say, it happens locally. It happens first of all in cities.

This is why I commend the work of the SDG Cities Leadership Platform which connects the local on a global scale, to share best practices that apply to Heidelberg as much as to Hangzhou, to Anchorage as much as to Abidjan.

But let us be clear minded about the “power” of cities. They can accelerate results, and often do, but inequalities are also huge in many cities and may not always be the answer. Cities can magnify how policies can go really right, but also how they can go terribly wrong. Cities work if a systemic approach is taken and no one is left behind. And this also refers to financing. Fully implementing the 17 Goals is going to be expensive. And a sustainable response will only happen if financing is shared in terms of where the money is coming from, in order to avoid individual agendas driving decisions, to share the risks and to make solutions sustainable - which is what this initiative is all about!

Challenges come in different degrees and shapes depending on the local context, but they are always captured by the SDGs - whether it’s urban infrastructure investment, or crime prevention, or the provision of health services.

The city in which I live, Geneva, is an important actor in all of these. Much as New York is the political center of the international system, Geneva is its operational heart. It is here that more than 100 international organizations, hundreds of NGOs, world-class academic institutions and a vibrant business community are working hard collaboratively on implementing everything concerning the 17 SDGs.

We don’t have the time to go into all the initiatives that are happening, but let me still mention two which I think are relevant for our discussions today.

̶ The first one is a veritable laboratory for SDG implementation. It is the “SDG Lab”, an initiative which I set up in my office last year. The Lab, which includes staff from international organizations, national governments and NGOs, creates space for interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral partnerships. It shares best practices. It tries to test assumptions and ask difficult questions about what is needed to achieve the 2030 Agenda. For reasons that I am sure are obvious to you, the Lab has recently begun explicitly focusing on the critical contributions of cities.

̶ The second initiative worth mentioning here is led by the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, which is in the process of creating a Cities Forum. The main objective is to deepen the connection between cities on the one hand, and international organizations on the other.
I am mentioning both the SDG Lab and the Cities Forum, because both are initiatives that might offer the potential for fruitful synergies for some of you here today, and, of course, for the network as a whole.

After all, the more we are in sync, the higher our chances of actually delivering the 2030 Agenda - and not just in Geneva or Heidelberg, but everywhere else as well.

Establishing closer collaboration between us - between cities, international organizations, businesses - that is one part of the equation. The other, equally important part, is to explore collaboration on specific issues. Take, for example, urban infrastructure.

UN Habitat estimates that 70% of the urban infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has not yet been built. Now here is an opportunity disguised as a challenge.

̶ A challenge, because most buildings today - in the developed world at least - consume 70% of our electricity and produce 40% of carbon emissions. If we keep building them like that, future generations will suffer the consequences.

̶ But it’s just as much an opportunity, because it forces us to reimagine cities and how they are built. The buildings of tomorrow must be part of a wider effort to reduce energy demand to a level that can be met by clean energy. The United Smart Cities partnership between the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Organization for International Economic Relations (OiER) is an excellent example of just how innovative we can be in finding sustainable urban solutions if we just put our collective heads together.

This is also why I am excited about what solutions your discussions over the coming days will yield.
We need to raise our ambition: Science demands it. The global economy needs it. And humanity depends on it.

The SDGs are our common roadmap towards our shared destination - a fair globalization that leaves no one behind.

If “you win-I lose” calculations dominated Cold War-era international relations, the SDGs are the paradigm shift necessary for the new polycentric system that does away with zero-sum games. The new logic is simple and powerful: if the threats are existential, if power is dispersed and challenges are global and interlinked, then we really are all in this together, and no one wins unless everyone wins.

At the outset, I mentioned Max Weber and his well-known saying that politics is like drilling hard boards. As we head into our discussions, let us take to heart what his younger brother, Alfred Weber, exemplified in his teachings in Heidelberg as much as in his political life: to avoid all dogmatism; to insist on individual responsibility; to always ask what the elegant theory might mean for the messy reality in which it is implemented; and finally, to allow for that inspirational spark - that idea of “immanent transcendence” - that lies behind every useful and rational goal.

I wish you every success.

Thank you.