GPO 2025

A New Agenda for Sustainability

From climate change to technological threats, humanity faces interconnected crises which redefine our existence. Marie-Laure Salles calls for a rethinking of the international systems to align peace efforts with sustainability.

Geneva Policy Outlook
Jan 20, 2025
5 min read
Photo by Paula Prekopova / Unsplash

By Marie-Laure Salles

On September 25, 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Objectives. The Preamble of that text was very clear: “There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development”. Sustainability has since then become inscribed at the heart of multilateralism, and has found its way to the public and private sectors in many parts of the world. The notion, however, has remained broad and vague enough to leave a fair amount of room for interpretation and, as a consequence, for possible procrastination, if not avoidance.

Grappling with an Era of Radical Uncertainty

Since 2015, we have seen an intensification and acceleration of the many challenges humanity faces, and we have had to acknowledge our relative failure to tackle them. We are contending with interconnected crises – climate, destruction of biodiversity, extreme inequalities, disinformation and cyberwars, pandemics, wars including the return of the nuclear risk, and technological threats. The reinforcing dynamics between those crises generate the kind of radical uncertainty that characterises our age. Those many challenges potentially have an existential impact, each in itself let alone in combination. Even if they are not questioning our species’ survival, they could lead to a profound redefinition of what it means to be human. 

In parallel, we must acknowledge that we are falling short when it comes to the solutions and to the promises associated with the 2016 Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030. Various reports show that staying within the +1.5° or even the +2° Celsius range set by the Paris Agreement is becoming increasingly less likely. We know from the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that a +2° Celsius increase will bring along major environmental disruptions with irrefutably dramatic consequences. At the same time, the United Nations confirms that we are on track to achieve at most 17% of the sustainable development objectives that we collectively set for ourselves in 2015.

As we are now indeed in an exceptional period, we must be prepared, and have a clear plan, in the form of a new sustainability agenda.

We could despair and give up, seeing the task as impossible. 

Or, we could affirm, as Jean Monnet does, that “anything is possible in exceptional moments, provided that we are prepared, that we are ready, and that we have a clear plan at the moment when everything appears uncertain.” As we are now indeed in an exceptional period, we must be prepared, and have a clear plan, in the form of a new sustainability agenda.

A New Agenda for Sustainability     

Sustainability is here to stay as a major issue for humanity. In principle, we should understand sustainability as a progressive notion as we strive, as a species, for human and social progress. But today, a focus on sustainability should, in fact, start with the more modest but essential objective of ensuring at least the same quality of life for the next generations. A useful way to think about sustainability is in terms of reconnection – and more precisely, multidimensional reconnection. Our new agenda for sustainability should foster, in combination, a reconnection with nature, a reconnection with each other and a reconnection with our human self. This is the only way we can hope to avoid the writing on the wall and catastrophic prospects for the next generations. 

Our new agenda for sustainability should foster, in combination, a reconnection with nature, a reconnection with each other and a reconnection with our human self.

Our reconnection with nature implies the preservation of our biosphere and the respect and regeneration of Humus, the Earth, the planet to which we (Humans) belong and on which our well-being and survival, as well as that of other species, entirely depend. On this matter, see Hugo Slim’s piece on how to better represent the Earth. 

Our reconnection with each other is at least as important. It implies the reinvention of a social contract, which, by necessity, also has a global dimension – as we are facing today’s challenges, which have a global scale and reach and hence call for collaboration, cooperation and justice instead of competition, conflict, inequalities and polarisation.

Finally, it is urgent to reconnect with our humanity, including our fragility, which has historically also been our strength. The current technological drive tends to come with the “overcoming” and the scorn of humanity and its capabilities. But what is technology except congealed human intelligence? And today, what we need is intensely alive, future-oriented collective human intelligence (not congealed in and from the past) to foster the type of profound systemic transformation and adaptation, which our current predicament calls for. 

Advancing the Agenda

The spirit of Geneva – a courageous humanist perspective combined with international collaboration – has never been as relevant and necessary as today to carry through our new agenda for sustainability. 

Our new sustainability agenda implies a shift from our current extractivist economic paradigm towards a regenerative one.

We need to change the paradigm and act fast. In our current system, humans, other living species and nature as a whole have become resources and variables of adjustment for economic, financial and technological growth. We should hope and strive for exactly the contrary. Under a new paradigm, we would orient and mobilise our massive capacities towards human flourishing, well-being, dignity and emancipation, in full respect of environmental cycles of regeneration, which the article of Chandler and Ojouk further highlights. Our new sustainability agenda implies a shift from our current extractivist economic paradigm towards a regenerative one. This means that we need to modify our compass – from growth to prosperity, from exclusion to inclusion, from competition to collaboration, from isolation to connection, from waste to recycling, from having to being, from (monetary) value to (moral) values, from a financial to a positive-impact definition of success.

The path forward is clear, and now we must “walk the talk.” This will call for leaders with courage, integrity, creativity, trust (in themselves and in a desirable future) and a sense of responsibility for collective challenges, individuals who are ready to do their part in what will naturally be a collective and collaborative effort. We will also have to identify and connect the many actors and initiatives that have already developed and deployed solutions that move us in the right direction. There will be a need to reinvent forms of international collaboration that manage to reconcile humanity’s striving for peace with the sustainability agenda in a manner that brings along fairness and equity, including from a historical perspective. Last but certainly not least, we will also need to mobilise the financial capital indispensable for such a deep and consequential transformation. Geneva has all it takes to reinvent itself as a core hub for this epochal transition – the legacy, the institutions, the “spirit”, an agile position as a neutral boundary spanner, relevant educational resources and access to the financial networks. This is a call we cannot miss!  


About the Author

Marie-Laure Salles is the Director of the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Geneva Policy Outlook or its partner organisations.