A/HRC/44/40 observer has described the HLPF as “a platform that welcomes all and challenges none,” criticized the “cherry picking, self-promotion and self-positioning” of stakeholders and emphasized the need to add “quality and independent oversight, and robust accountability.”84 52. National accountability mechanisms have not fared much better. While few independent assessments have been undertaken, available reports are not encouraging. 85 Given the resources and energies invested in the overall enterprise, it could and should do far more to hold governments and other stakeholders to account. 53. Instead of promoting empowerment, funding, partnerships, and accountability, too much of the energy surrounding the SDG process has gone into generating portals, dashboards, stakeholder engagement plans, bland reports, and colorful posters. Official assessments are rarely critical or focused, and they often hide behind jargon. C. Revisiting the agenda 54. The dramatic uptick in poverty from COVID-19 and the accompanying economic debacle should provide an impetus to revisit the 2030 Agenda. The official response to date has been that “[t]he 2030 Agenda must be preserved, and the SDGs must be reached.” 86 But doubling down on an inadequate and increasingly out-of-date approach is especially problematic. First, the SDGs’ commitment to at least 7 percent annual GDP growth in least developed countries is both likely unattainable and at odds with emerging challenges to the traditional growth paradigm.87 Rapidly growing debt in low- and middle-income countries and the demands for fiscal consolidation that will follow COVID-19 support packages also need to be factored into a new equation. 55. Second, the past five years have brought a much broader awareness of the perils of climate change and the need to infuse the entire development process with a new environmental urgency. Continuing resistance in most countries to decoupling economic growth from fossil fuels, despite the opportunities presented by the COVID-19 emergency, makes the SDG growth targets almost impossible to achieve without far exceeding the Paris Agreement’s inadequate limit of 2°C of global warming by 2100.88 Climate change is already exacerbating poverty and threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress in development and poverty reduction. 89 Overreliance on emissions-intensive economic activity to combat poverty is self-defeating.90 56. Third, the SDGs were drawn up without reflecting the potentially game-changing impact of digital technologies across many key development sectors. This is now recognized by the Inter-Agency Task Force on financing the SDGs and is the subject of extensive analysis by the Bank and others.91 The undoubted benefits need to be very carefully weighed against many potential abuses and the risk of exacerbating marginality, inequality, and exclusion.92 57. The SDGs should not be abandoned but nor should the status quo be set in stone. The pressing challenge is to reflect on ways in which the overall package, including targets and 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 Adams, “Democratic global governance.” Hannah Birkenkotter et al., A Tale of Multiple Disconnects: Why the 2030 Agenda Does Not (Yet?) Contribute to Moving German Gender Equality Struggles Forward (2019); Cameron Allen et al., “Assessing National Progress and Priorities for the SDGs: Experience from Australia,” Sustainability Science (2019). UN, A UN framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19 (2020), p. 3. Sam Adelman, “The Sustainable Development Goals, Anthropocentrism and Neoliberalism,” in D. French and L. Kotzé (eds.), Sustainable Development Goals: Law Theory and Implementation (2018), p. 34. Jason Hickel, “The Contradiction of the Sustainable Development Goals: Growth versus Ecology on a Finite Planet,” Sustainable Development, vol. 27 (2019), p. 873. A/HRC/41/39 (2019). International Energy Agency, Sustainable Recovery (2020). UN, Financing for Sustainable Development, pp. 15-36; World Bank, World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives (2020). A/74/493 (2019). 13