Thought Leaders Synergy Circle
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demand nothing short of a transformation of the financial, economic and political systems that govern our societies today to guarantee the human rights of all.
– António Guterres, UN Secretary General
The purpose of this Thought Leaders Circle is to support, promote and address a transformational agenda building from the spirit and intention of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through the infusion of innovative, unifying and uplifting visions, values and strategies, co-creative partnerships, and heart-based service for the good of the whole.
This Synergy Circle consists of a wide range of individuals who stand ready and are equipped with the vision, understanding, and skills to help foster the achievement of a future of peace, sustainability, equality, and democracy. And since this responsibility should be shared universally, we anticipate supporting their achievement both within the context of the United Nations as well as with other sectors that carry responsibility for their achievement.
Ultimately, our commitment is to act as agents of change in alliance with those who are likewise committed to the evolution of our species and the protection of the planet we share.
SDGs
The Sustainable Development Goals (commonly known as the “SDGs”) were adopted in finalized form on September 25, 2015 when 193 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted a 2030 Development Agenda titled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” as a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. **
A comprehensive public resource is available at: Sustainable Development Goals and United Nations websites dedicated to the SDGs are at: UN.org: Sustainable Development.
The plan includes specific “Targets” for each goal, along with” Indicators” to be used in measuring progress toward each target (see List of SDG targets and indicators). In all there are 169 SDG Targets and 247 related Indicators.
To date five progress reports have been published on the SDGs by the United Nations (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)) and affiliated international organizations.
Discussion of the SDGs vision and implementation continues worldwide through multiple persons and organizations both within and outside the United Nations organizational community.
**United Nations (2015) Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015, Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (A/RES/70/1)
See Our Perspective Below
Our Perspective
The aim of this Synergy Circle is to amplify and help manifest a vision that ensures a healthy, vibrant future for all life on our beautiful planet.
We believe that achieving the vision of these goals is paramount to the future of our planet and the survival and thrival of our species. However, in spite of the time urgency of addressing global challenges expressed in the SDGs such as poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change and others, we also recognize that the underlying conditions summarized in the 17 SDG categories, are not new—they evolved over years, decades, centuries, and even millennia. Each issue identified in the 17 categories critically speaks to the interdependence of all people with one another and with the larger ecosystems in which we exist and live with our planetary home as a whole.
We promote a life-affirming approach to regenerative and sustainable development. Without addressing the underlying beliefs and conditions of the past, it will be impossible to make significant and sustained progress toward these goals. The approach must be based on an understanding of the unity of all people and beings on the planet and our planetary home in its entirety. It must also be based on an understanding that while the technical solutions to these issues might differ, the problems are all inherently interconnected. Therefore, approaches to solving global challenges must adopt new wholistic paradigms that recognize and account for the inter-relatedness of the issues to one another.
The United Nations Building showing the SDG icons (Photo: UN Photo / Cia Pak)
Fortunately, there are approaches to addressing the major issues of the 17 SDG categories that are embedded with this new paradigm; these approaches tend to promote practices such as dialogue, diversity, power-sharing, and cooperation. And there are now many examples where these approaches have achieved significant success. We therefore are advocates for critically examining assumptions that are driving these various issues. And then we advocate for using those methodologies that embody the values of unity rather than separateness.
Finally, the role of leadership cannot be underestimated. But rather than the traditional top-down politicized nature of leaders that have currently controlled these issues, the nature of this leadership must be different. Leaders for the essential transformation must recognize that real and lasting solutions to these problems require widespread sharing of responsibility and power with other responsible parties to act with agency. Therefore those in leadership roles must be visionaries acting as facilitators. And they must recognize that any real progress requires a commitment to the long-term focus on the achievement of the goals.
We shape our mission, frame our vision and empower our strategy in the evolutionary context of a unitive narrative.
In summary, a unitive narrative has been drafted by members of the SDG Thought Leaders Synergy Circle of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle (www.evolutionaryleaders.net) to provide an emergent cosmological, planetary, interspiritual and societal foundation to serve and support the conscious evolution of humanity and heal our collective worldview from separation to a perspective of unity in diversity.
It is founded on the convergence of scientific breakthroughs with universal wisdom and spiritually-based teachings. A unitive narrative invites us to inwardly hear the wisdom of our hearts and respect the complementarity of feminine and masculine attributes. And thus, its unity expressed in diversity guides us to a wholeness of both the inner being and outer doing in our lives. This narrative supports us in integrating our innate health and wholeness, both individually and communally and as a planetary species.
In realizing the unified nature of reality, it calls for a collective celebration of our inner lives as a doorway that opens us to an evolutionary shift of consciousness. It supports the emergence of an inclusive interspirituality which provides essential practices for awakening to this unitive consciousness. Vitally, it recognizes our fundamental interbeing; our interconnectedness, interdependence and belonging with the whole community of our planetary home, Gaia, and with the entire Universe.
It empowers us to envision and gives us hope to co-create a love-based rather than separation-based future and where the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030 resolutions are a natural outcome of a world that works for all people and our planetary home.