As we approach the 2030 deadline, the Sustainable Development Report 2024, published in June 2025, offers a challenging but necessary reality check. According to the report, we are not on track to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Global progress has stalled since 2020, and only 17% of the targets are on track to be completed worldwide.
Many countries are witnessing alarming setbacks, particularly in goals related to inequality, biodiversity, and climate action. On the other hand, most UN member states have made strong progress on targets related to access to basic services and infrastructure, including mobile broadband and internet use, access to electricity, and neonatal and under-5 mortality rates.
The report highlights promising signs of institutional engagement and stakeholder mobilization, especially where public policies and private initiatives converge. It also focuses on the importance of creating a new financial structure to finance the development.
In this context, it is imperative to ask: What comes after 2030? What happens if we do not achieve the Goals? This important debate aims to shed light on the importance of keeping the ambitions of the Goals established in 2015, but to reassess how they can be operationalized and communicated. To be revived, the SDGs must better reflect the dynamics of the business world and the tangible opportunities for private-sector leadership. After all, companies are not just executors of public agendas — they are drivers of innovation, investment, and systemic transformation.
Over the past three years, through the Observatory of the SDGs in Portuguese Companies, we have consistently identified a critical barrier in the adoption of the SDGs by the private sector: the language of the 2030 Agenda itself. Many companies recognize the importance of the SDGs, but struggle to translate them into concrete business actions. The current narrative, often framed in broad and technical terms, creates a distance between the global agenda and day-to-day corporate realities, for all types of companies.
This is why the post-2030 period should be seen as an opportunity to redesign the sustainable development agenda with more accessible, practical, and business-oriented language, taking into account the transformational power they hold. The ambition must remain high, but companies need clearer guidance on what they can do and how they can measure and communicate their contributions in meaningful ways.
Here, we see a strategic opportunity: articulating the SDGs with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), developed under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). These new mandatory reporting standards offer a concrete and quantifiable framework that can help companies understand, structure, and disclose their sustainability performance, while also making visible their alignment with the SDGs. By building bridges between the SDG targets and the ESRS indicators, we create a clearer pathway from intent to action and allow companies better to understand the impact of their activities and strategies.
The future of the 2030 Agenda — or any successor framework — depends on our collective ability to learn and adapt. Revising the SDGs does not mean weakening them; it means empowering them with better tools, clearer language, and stronger partnerships. The private sector must be at the heart of this renewed global agenda — not as a bystander, but as a co-creator of solutions.
Let’s continue this conversation. Join us on July 10 for a special webinar where we will discuss the future of the SDGs and how businesses can take a leading role in shaping the next global development agenda. Register for free here.
Have a great and impactful week!
Natália Cantarino
Operations Manager and Researcher at the Center for Responsible Business & Leadership