Cristina Gallach, High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda: “We are now at a moment of multilateral fragility, so we need new momentum and more ambition”
“The crisis of multilateralism is the new challenge that the 2030 Agenda must address,” declared Cristina Gallach, High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda of Spain, during a session at ESADE Madrid entitled “Spain and the 2030 Agenda: Challenges and Advances in the Implementation of the SDGs”, which featured the participation of Javier Solana, President of the Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics (ESADEgeo).
“The 2030 Agenda originated in a context of positive multilateralism. It saw rapid development in its early stages and grew into various alliances and global summits,” explained Ms. Gallach. However, after Marrakech, which marked the departure of the United States and a few European countries, “We are now at a moment of multilateral fragility, so we need new momentum and more ambition,” she added.
Dr. Solana commented: “The challenges of sustainability are very large and the various sectors must develop strategies and synergies to work towards a new model without leaving anyone behind.” He also noted that it is necessary to create global governance instruments to foster sustainable development and defend global public goods.
Spain and the 2030 Agenda
With regard to the 2030 Agenda promoted by Brussels, Ms. Gallach highlighted Spain’s role in the implementation of in-depth reforms at the European level. She cited various fundamental challenges that the Spanish Government is trying to address with the help of the office of the High Commissioner: spreading knowledge to help all stakeholders understand the 2030 Agenda, providing leadership on matters of sustainability, and mobilising all sectors in pursuit of the Agenda.
Eva Jané-Llopis, Director of Health, SDGs and Social Innovation at ESADE, delved further into the lines of action being pursued at the European level by presenting the main conclusions of the Agenda 2030 report Towards a Sustainable Europe by 2030, which was approved by the European Commission and was prepared with ESADE’s participation. “All the new national architecture developed by the High Commissioner will be aligned with these 2030 Agenda objectives developed by the High-Level Multi-stakeholder Platform, whose recommendations are reached by consensus among the various participants,” she explained.
The challenges of multi-stakeholder alliances
“The implementation of the 2030 Agenda requires the generation of multi-stakeholder alliances for global governance,” observed Ms. Gallach. “There are different lines of action and various sectors and stakeholders that are working to put these new alliances into practice day after day.”
Antoni Ballabriga, Global Head of Responsible Business at BBVA, commented: “In the private sector, we must incentivise business-model transformation while also getting the financial and industrial sectors involved, and incentives play an important role in this.”
The 2030 Agenda also calls for the establishment of a sustainable development strategy. Enrique Segovia, Director of Conservation at WWF, commented: “Cooperation among different social sectors will be much easier if we, as a society, manage to coordinate ourselves and decide where we want to go.”
The speakers wrapped up the session by agreeing that both strategy and collaboration must take the long view in order to avoid falling into the trap of short-term thinking. According to the panel of experts, countries must overcome the “political cycle” to develop credible and long-lasting sustainability actions. Moreover, they argued, companies must expand their decision-making time horizons considerably; only by setting long-term sustainability goals and creating incentives can coordination and synergy be ensured.