The sustainability challenge - from a distance, the world looks blue and green

A decade ago, the United Nations (UN) adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) built around an inspiring set of resolutions:

“We resolve, between now and 2030, to end poverty and hunger everywhere, to combat inequalities within and among countries, to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies, to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources. We resolve also to create conditions for sustainable, inclusive and sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and decent work for all, taking into account different levels of national development and capacities.” (UN 2015 SDG statement.)

An optimistic outlook - as singer-songwriter Julie Gold might have expressed it:

“From a distance, the world looks blue and green.”

The 2025 UN SDG report updated its vision:

“Progress has been fragile and unequal. Millions still face extreme poverty, hunger, inadequate housing, and a lack of basic services. Women, people with disabilities, and marginalized communities continue to face systemic disadvantages. Escalating conflicts, climate chaos, rising inequalities, and soaring debt service costs are holding back further advancements.” (UN SDG Report 2025.)

From a distance, the world may look blue and green. But up close, the colours fade.

Faced with these myriad sustainability challenges, one response has been to narrow the field of view - ‘menu picking’ from the SDGs at national and corporate levels.

A high-profile example is the focus on SDG 13 - the ambition “to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”

Global climate integrity is something that we can all agree is important, enshrined in what was, until recently, a net-zero consensus both nationally and internationally.

But myopic net-zero thinking always involved contradictions. Local carbon production reductions in a country such as the UK can lead to greater not lower global emissions, if domestic industrial activities move to developing countries using older technologies.

Worse, a focus on just one goal may jeopardise others. The economist Partha Dasgupta highlights potential challenges in squaring the circle between Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) and Goals 14 and 15 (to restore, conserve and sustainably use resources on land and sea.)
 

Is there an escape? Thankfully, yes.

It is to think about sustainability in a different way – articulated long ago in the Brundtland Commission Report (1987): Our Common Future. It defined sustainable development as:

“Development that meets the needs of the present world without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

This shifts policy from grandstanding and great visions to a single evolutionary imperative. It suggests we ask the strategic ‘how to’ questions with reference to this unifying framework. Conserving nature assumes the pivotal role.

There is a compelling rationale. The biosphere is bounded. Its annual bounties (such as freshwater and food) are finite. Breaching earth system boundaries impairs nature, implying we shall reap less in the future. An unsustainable path.

You may think that technology can always bail us out.

Technological progress can certainly help us to become more efficient in terms of how we convert nature’s annual gifts into GDP. This does give us leeway to grow sustainably within nature’s constraints.

But the end game is that infinite growth on a finite planet will inevitably handicap us irreversibly at some stage.

Unless, that is, we are prepared to imagine an untrammelled human population living in space, freed from nature’s constraints altogether. It is certainly not ‘wrong’ to contemplate the idea. Elon Musk has understood the earth’s environmental limits better than many.

A better critique of “a city on Mars” is that it might be an extremely expensive but uncomfortable existence for its inhabitants.

 As Elton John reminds us:

 “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact it’s cold as hell.”

Faced with that prospect, the alternative conservation track on planet earth would appear to have much to recommend it.

This can best flourish with public and private investment in nature education and research. That plus strict environmental laws and market mechanisms to underwrite the integrity of nature. Pursued at national and local levels, there would be ‘buy in’ across the generational spectrum, from children to pensioners. Such indirect strategies to keep us on the Brundtland path would have many positive spin-offs across the whole of society including our health.

Yes, we will also need an international architecture to fully underwrite the protection of our planet. But the expertise already exists at the UN in crucial areas such as law, health, international trade and development finance – using its organs more effectively is the overdue institutional way forward at the global level.

Less international talking shops and more local action.

The earth needs to be green and blue, up close, and not just from a distance. Otherwise, the outlook for our children may be very bleak.

Further reading:

Dieter Helm - Legacy. Cambridge University Press (2023).
Partha Dasgupta – On Natural Capital. Witness Books (2025).