Lawrence Sperling questioned
Sir Watson – the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda started out of the blocks with a lot of enthusiasm and seemed to generate a great deal of political will – countries, financial institutions, companies and civil society organizations world wide began to organize their strategies around the SDG framework, and partner with each other, reflecting increased awareness of the interconnected nature of social, economic, environmental and governance issues. Despite this “great buzz”, by 2020 (i.e., before the pandemic), it was already apparent that the world was far behind in achieving the SDGs. To what do you attribute this failure across all the dimensions of the SDGs, in spite of all the excitement they initially generated. What lessons can we take from this for reinvigorating the interconnected approach you call for in the post-pandemic era?.