It’s time for the United Nations to drop its current model for tackling the world’s crises, according to a letter from 100 scientists, teachers, and experts, shared exclusively with The Independent.
The experts call for the United Nations to abandon the “Sustainable Development Goals,” a group of 17 targets adopted in 2015 to tackle global social and environmental problems from hunger to climate change to economic growth.
“If the way modern societies operate cause the problems that the SDGs seek to address, can we be surprised that those same systems are incapable of fixing them?” the letter says.
The letter has been approved by researchers from 27 countries, all in personal power and not as representatives of any institution.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are based on an ideology that values material and technological progress and prioritizes corporate interests – where “humanity will balance social, economic and environmental issues to progress materially,” Jem Bendell, a sustainability experimenter at the University of Cumbria, warned The Independent via email, citing a recent non-peer studied paper that he authored on the subject.
Since then, it may have been effective for politicians, bureaucrats, and people in the organizations they finance, to conserve an upbeat statement that more technology, equity, and management will unravel both poverty and environmental destruction,” the letter reads.
“However, the evidence from the UN’s own reports show clearly that is merely a convenient myth, and that billions of people would be better served by more sober analysis of the worsening situation,” it adds.
