Guest blog from Gabriele Köhler, independent researcher, UNRISD senior research associate and board member, Women Engage for a Common Future.The HLPF process has come under critique for being an insiders’ airbrushing exercise. So the question is: what is the normative role and impact of the 2030 Agenda? Is there any real pressure from a UN document which after all is now a few years old now, was elaborated by more progressive governments, does not get ratified in parliaments, and is not binding? Is it all just fancy but futile song and dance? Well, a number of countries have actually used the 2030 Agenda and its more narrow set of SDGs to influence their domestic policy frameworks.

Guest blog by Dominic Wilhelm: Dominic works with leaders to shape better futures. He has worked with the largest business networks in the world and is currently working on an intuitive to “scale trust, accelerate impact toward 2030” globally.Recent conversations I had with changemakers including UN Ambassador Marc-Andre Blanchard, Minh-Thu Pham, Simon Preston and Brian Brault drove home the point that trust is essential for progress toward impact.And by 'impact', we mean those actions that take us closer to better social, environmental and economic futures as captivatingly outlined by the UN's 2030 Agenda;"We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind." Agenda 2030.

Guest blog by Jill Van den Brule who is a humanitarian and social entrepreneur named 40 over 40 by Forbes. She co-founded a B Corps that makes solar lanterns and helped launch the UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocates. Originally published in the Solutions Journal here.

We have a climate emergency. Regardless of where one stands on this issue – this is our ‘inconvenient truth’. Yet the power to reach people has never been greater. Close to 3.2 Billion people today are online, about 2 Billion are from developing countries and over 89 million from least developed countries.1 Our currency today lies is in our culture, our capacity for mass mobilization and in the immense untapped power of our global neural network. We can literally put our heads and hearts together on this one! Yet, why do the majority seem paralyzed by the daunting challenge of tackling climate change? How do we move humanity beyond the denial and doom? How do we begin making changes in our daily lives to help us all not only thrive but literally survive? We are on the verge of extinction. Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, and the world’s experts warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens our very civilisation

This is published on new SDG Online Taylor & Francis Group, which includes Routledge Publishing, publishes more than 2,500 journals and over 5,000 new books each year, with a books backlist in excess of 120,000 specialist titles. It has great resources and other thought pieces

The 1990s was a decade of UN Conferences and Summits which had resulted in programmes of action on children (1990), environment and development (1992), population and development (1994), social development (1995), women: action for equality, development and peace (1995), food security (1996) and human settlement (1996). By the end of decade, most governments couldn’t deal with the amount of commitments they had made. The idea around the 2000 Millennium Summit was to simplify these various commitments into a concise and achievable series of goals and targets that could be measured and reported on.The Millennium Summit did not agree the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as some people think; these were crafted by the UN in 2001 without governments and stakeholder involvement. There were eight Millennium Development Goals and 18 targets.Progress to delivering those Goals was compromised by the 2008 financial crisis.

Remaining Key Sustainable Development UN Dates for 2019.