The Lehendakari presents the Now, 2030 Proposal that he will address to the United Nations and the main European institutions

• It is a proposal that seeks to contribute to an international consensus that sets the year 2023 as a turning point, globally and locally, in the fulfilment of the SDGs.
• It aims to broaden the format and impact of the UN SDG Summit in September so that it is not just a meeting of Heads of State and Government.
• It proposes a rigorous assessment from 2015 to 2023 and a definition of urgent priorities for the SDGs from 2023 to 2030.
• It also promotes a Declaration of Concrete Commitments by institutions and social actors whose premise is to assume that there is no room for delay: 2030 is now.
• It calls for and offers a commitment. It calls for reaction from the states until 2030. It offers the role of non-state governments in localisation and governance of the SDGs.
• The ultimate goal of the Now, 2030 proposal is none other than to progressively and steadily improve the SDG stocktaking at the end of the decade.

The Basque Country Agenda 2030 Forum (Multi-agent Forum for Social Transition and Agenda 2030) held its fourth plenary session this afternoon, in a meeting chaired by the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, and held at the Araba Technology Park in Miñano. This forum is the body for shared governance of the 2030 Agenda between Basque institutions and social agents.

In addition to the Lehendakari, all the ministers of the Basque Government, the three Provincial Councils, EUDEL and the City Councils of the capital cities, the rectors of the three Basque universities, a representation of the entities of the third sector of the Basque Country through Sareen Sarea, as well as representatives of public-private collaboration through the Basque Center for Climate Change (BC3); the Scientific-Technological Consortium Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA); and ACLIMA form part of this body.

This Forum has the following bodies: Plenary, Standing Committee and Working Groups on Governance, Urban Agenda, Social Transformation, Energy-Climate Transformation and Economic-Digital Transformation, as well as the Guneak participation space.

In this fourth Plenary, among other issues, the 2022 Report and the 2023 Management Plan were approved. At the meeting point between the 2022 stocktaking and the 2023 projection, three key points stand out:

-Firstly, efforts to socially disseminate the 2030 Agenda and its implementation in all types of organisations, entities and institutions need to be intensified. Lack of knowledge about its meaning and usefulness remains high. It is essential to improve the level of information in society as a whole and its different expressions. 

-Secondly, it is necessary to improve the application of the methodology of the concrete. The commitment to the SDGs must be understood by their translation into action. In this respect, it is a priority to accelerate practical responses to the energy-climate transition.

-Thirdly, the location in the Basque Country of the global headquarters of Local 2030 and the United Nations is a responsibility. We are called upon to increase our efforts in terms of localisation (doing more and better inwards) and international collaboration (sharing and exchanging more intensively outwards). 

Final declaration

At the close of the meeting, the Lehendakari presented the fourth Declaration of the Presidency of the Basque Country Agenda 2030 Forum. Its content has served to present the Now 2030 Proposal that the Lehendakari will send in the coming days to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. This proposal will also be sent to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the President of the European Council, Charles Michel; the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola; and the Secretary General of the OECD, Mathias Cormann.

The Lehendakari pointed out that we are halfway through the fifteen-year time period projected by the 2030 Agenda since 2015. In 2019, the UN’s call for a Decade of Action revealed a clearly insufficient level of compliance. He recalled that since then, we have suffered a pandemic and we are in the midst of a war provoked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The stocktaking in this time of 2023 must recognise that the prognosis for meeting the SDGs in the world has worsened.”

Despite this, Iñigo Urkullu stressed that “the 2030 Agenda continues to be a necessity and an opportunity. As a planet, we urgently need to make progress towards its fulfilment and assume that this challenge is a train that we must not let pass us by. If we passively accept that the current inertia will continue its devaluation trajectory, unchanged until 2030, the final stocktaking will be clearly negative. The Decade of Action now needs 7.5 years of reaction. A turning point.”

Within this framework of considerations, he described the content of the Now, 2030 Proposal, which “in all modesty seeks to contribute towards an international consensus sets the year 2023 as a turning point, globally and locally, in the fulfilment of the SDGs.”  On 19-20 September 2023, the United Nations will hold the SDG Summit. The Now, 2030 Proposal proposes to broaden its format and effects. It calls for a process “that goes beyond a new formal summit of Heads of State and Government”. In particular, it contains the following specific suggestions:

-To design this process, through broad participation, in a way that enables the sharing of an assessment of the 2030 Agenda from 2015 to 2023 and a definition of urgent priorities for the SDGs from 2023 to 2030.

-To prepare and present in advance a common model of assessment 2015-2023 that is concrete and useful, both for any government or institution, whether local, regional or state, and for private companies or civil society organisations.

-To prepare and present a clear and simple dashboard of the main priorities up to 2030, in a format that includes globally shared objectives and goals specific to each geographical, social, organisational or institutional reality.

Finally, the Lehendakari stressed that Now, 2030 proposes “preparing and presenting a Declaration of Concrete Commitments for institutions and organisations, the premise of which is to assume that there is no room for delay. The commitment to the SDGs is now or never. 2030 is now.”

Iñigo Urkullu specified that the main objective of this proposal is to “progressively and constantly improve the balance of the 2030 SDGs, and for this it is necessary to raise the level of demands on the institutions that signed up to the 2030 Agenda in 2015 and to promote a critical and self-critical analysis of their current balance.

The Now, 2030 Proposal calls for and offers a compromise. It calls for “a global reaction of firm commitment in the years up to 2030. It offers and claims the role and engagement of local, regional and non-state governments in the localisation of the SDGs as well as their participation in better global co-governance of the 2030 Agenda.”