Countdown 2030

The countdown is on: Since 2025, we have just six years left to move closer to achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda.

The current setbacks in reaching sustainable development are cause for serious concern. Many important summits and multilateral processes will shape sustainability cooperation in the coming years. At the same time, the discussion about the future of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is beginning.

Civil society actors play a key role in strengthening and shaping these sustainability discourses at the multilateral level. As part of the Countdown 2030 project, VENRO, together with development and humanitarian networks from Brazil (ABONG), Ethiopia (CCRDA), and India (VANI), seeks to shape these debates and help strengthen sustainability issues in multilateral processes. This aim is particularly important in the context of current geopolitical tensions.

Like its partners, VENRO is active across various themes in multiple multilateral processes and acts as an important multiplier through its national and international networks. We are contributing to or plan to contribute to the following events and processes:

• The UN Summit of the Future 2024
• The 4th Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in 2025
• The Hamburg Sustainability Conferences
• The UN Climate Conferences
• The G7/G20 processes
• The future of the 2030 Agenda and shaping the development narrative
• The revision and further development of the German Sustainable Development Strategy

Our focus is on issues with the potential to reduce poverty and inequality, such as:

• Development financing and international financial architecture
• Climate justice and just transition
• Food systems, especially at the intersection with climate change and health

Development Financing

“From Billions to Trillions” – this was the early vision for financing the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. But this vision has faded in the face of current realities. Countries have access to fewer and fewer financial resources for the 2030 Agenda. The reason is the long-overdue but necessary reforms of the international financial system — especially regarding solutions for the global debt crisis, reforming global tax systems, financial markets, and enabling equal participation of Global South countries in the governance of multilateral development banks.

To even get close to achieving the SDGs, there must be strong political will, as well as ambitious measures backed by adequate financial resources.

Through the Countdown 2030 project, we advocate for fair international financing for sustainable development — in particular, for a multilateral debt relief mechanism that includes both public and private creditors, and for an inclusive design and adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Tax. Our demands are directed toward international contexts such as the G7 and G20 and are part of the negotiations for the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, scheduled for June/July 2025 in Seville, Spain, as well as in the UN Tax Convention.

Sustainable Food Systems

Globally, 828 million people suffer from hunger — and this number has been rising steadily since 2017. Precarious, informal jobs and a lack of social security, along with extreme weather due to climate change and armed conflicts, contribute to global food insecurity. The climate/environmental, food, and health crises are inextricably linked. These crises are deepening inequality both within and between societies.

The issue of "improving food security" is addressed in numerous multilateral forums, such as the UN Committee on World Food Security and G7 and G20 summits.

Within our project, we aim to protect fundamental human rights and reduce social and economic inequality. The resilience of people, ecosystems, and the climate must be strengthened. In the climate/environment-food-health nexus, this resilience can be achieved through a comprehensive and sustainable transformation of food systems. This transformation must include the consistent adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and draw on holistic concepts like One Health or Planetary Health.

A global transformation of food systems also requires structural political measures, including:

• The realization of sustainable agricultural supply chains to better protect human rights
• The reform of agricultural trade to improve income and food security, especially for smallholder farmers
• The elimination of negative spillover effects from German and European agricultural policies

Social protection is another important tool to support food security. It also enables access to healthcare services and reduces the risk of poverty due to illness, job loss, or natural disasters. For these reasons, financial support for building and expanding social protection systems — with a view to climate resilience — is urgently needed.

Too often, the voices of vulnerable people who suffer the most from food insecurity, its health consequences, and climate-related extreme weather events are not heard in the development of corresponding measures. Their perspectives must be included — especially in light of the fact that, in many Global South countries, the space for civil society engagement is increasingly restricted by governments.

Areas of Focus

Summit of the Future

The United Nations Summit of the Future was held in New York on September 22–23, 2024. The summit aimed to provide a much-needed boost to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Peace and security were also addressed, and approaches to structural reforms in the multilateral system and development financing were formulated. The final declaration of the summit, the “Pact for the Future,” was adopted.

Here, our partner network ABONG outlines its expectations for the summit.

Climate

The transition to a climate-just global society is one of the most urgent challenges of the coming years. The accelerating climate crisis and the devastating disasters we are currently witnessing hit the most vulnerable countries and populations hardest.

Those who have contributed the least to global warming suffer the most from its consequences — an injustice that we address in our work. Existing inequalities and discrimination — based on gender, sexuality, or origin — are further exacerbated by the climate crisis. Additionally, these communities often lack the structures and resources needed to mitigate the impacts or build necessary resilience.

To mitigate the severe consequences of climate change, the Paris Climate Agreement must be consistently implemented, and global warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. VENRO supports the implementation of the Paris Agreement in cooperation with the Climate Alliance Germany and makes concrete demands of the German government to ensure it fulfills its climate policy obligations. The latest demands from German civil society — for example, ahead of the World Climate Summit in Azerbaijan (COP29) — can be found here.

Key Work Areas

Through the Countdown 2030 project, VENRO and its partners ABONG, CCRDA, and VANI advocate for climate justice in multilateral processes. The focus lies on the UN climate negotiations and conferences (COPs), the SDG forums, and development financing processes. The project particularly works on the intersection of climate, food security, and health, as well as on climate-friendly reform of the international financial system.

German Sustainable Development Strategy

Germany’s Sustainable Development Strategy (DNS) is an important national instrument for implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda. For the DNS to become more effective, policy coherence must be improved, and spillover effects must be better addressed. The international dimension of global sustainability also needs to be advanced through concrete transformative actions and monitored with meaningful indicators.

Through Countdown 2030, VENRO works with its national partners to push for an ambitious implementation of the 2030 Agenda. We contribute our demands for fair and sustainable development that reduces social inequality, hunger, and poverty both nationally and globally. One key occasion will be Germany’s third Voluntary National Review at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) in summer 2025, where progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda will be reviewed.