Current U.S. Government Officially Rejects UN Sustainable Development Goals

   

     In August 2023, I wrote about UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) when reviewing and summarizing  Bjorn Lomborg’s excellent book, Best Things First, which presented a smart way to prioritize these goals for the most positive effect at the lowest cost. I was a bit shocked when Marco Rubio and the Trump administration decided to totally gut USAID, with stores of food and supplies to help the poor and destitute in developing countries being burned and otherwise destroyed, instead of being distributed, even when it would cost more to destroy the aid. I find that to be rather disgusting and disheartening. Are people dying due to the loss of U.S. aid? Rubio says no, but several reports say yes. The goals themselves have been marginally successful and continue to be, but a pullback in spending, especially from the U.S., threatens them further and guarantees that they will be slowed.

     I thought that the Trump administration simply gutted USAID, but they did more than that. They also officially rejected the UN’s SDGs. These are things like preventing malaria and giving nutritional assistance to young mothers and their babies. Back in March 2025, the U.S. said it “rejects and denounces” the SDGs. That, to me, is quite shocking. More specifically, the U.S. said:

“Although framed in neutral language, Agenda 2030 and the SDGs advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans.”

     Giving aid to poor and desperate mothers and babies is “adverse to the interests of Americans?” I don’t think so, bud.

     The statement also said that the SDGs were pervaded with climate and gender ideology and that the U.S. needed to focus on America First and the needs of Americans rather than the needs of non-Americans. In the 7 or 8 months since then, has there been more focus on helping needy and suffering  Americans? I don’t see any evidence of that. While I understand that there are many concerns about the U.N. that I completely agree with, such as problems with the International Criminal Court, the Human Rights Council, and the pervasive anti-Israel focus, I have never considered the SDGs as part of those issues.

     According to Sustainability News:

“The SDGs, unanimously adopted by all 193 UN member nations in 2015, established an ambitious global framework comprising 17 interconnected goals to be achieved by 2030. The goals include eliminating global hunger, protecting the planet, ensuring prosperity for all people, and promoting peace.”

     The March statement, made by Edward Heartney, Minister Counselor to ECOSOC at the US Mission to the United Nations, emphasized America First principles and sovereignty concerns:

“We must care first and foremost for our own – that is our moral and civic duty.”

     Speak for yourself. My moral duty does not have borders or hierarchy based on nationality.

     While I am a patriotic American and I love my country, I must disagree with the selfishness of such a statement. I hold no such hierarchy of concern for one individual over another based on nationality. The statement also had legitimate concerns about China’s influence at the UN. I agree that we must curb the influence of countries that routinely flout international norms and particularly human rights, such as China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and other regimes. We also need to keep in mind that the UN seeks to engage and get input from all countries since it is all-inclusive in that sense. I may agree with the U.S. that a few of the SDGs, especially those related to climate, are not useful; others, like feeding starving people, are clearly in everyone’s best interest. Going through the 2024 UN SDG report and Lomborg’s 2023 book, I didn’t see any focus on climate and gender ideologies. There was one small section in the report about climate education that I agree is not a pressing need. Most of the other environmental issues had to do with very significant health threats like air pollution, including the indoor air pollution from cooking fires that harm mostly women and children. Other environmental issues, like access to safe drinking water and sanitation, are an important focus as well.  The gender focus is on women who are mistreated in several countries through poverty, severe inequality, unpaid labor, sexual and reproductive health, and degrading practices like female genital mutilation. The UN SDGs also promote things like electricity and energy access, which officials like Energy Secretary Chris Wright have worked in the past to help. I do disagree with some UN energy actions like the promotion of inadequate renewable energy in countries that would better benefit from more cost-effective and more reliable energy from fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

     I believe that the UN should separate basic human needs from extraneous issues like reducing CO2 emissions. Thus, I would support a reform of the SDGs to focus exclusively on basic human needs and relegate emissions and renewable energy development to a different classification. Indeed, in Lomborg’s book, Best Things First, he focused on prioritizing the most important and most solvable issues that could have the most, fastest, and best benefits. Climate issues are potential future issues rather than immediate needs. The concern about climate ideology might be valid, but I saw nothing at all in the report that could be construed as gender ideology.

     The bottom line is that the U.S. should be ashamed of its selfish stance and its abandonment of struggling and suffering people who clearly need help, our help. Instead, we seem to be more worried about people being indoctrinated with liberal ideas about climate and gender. A big part of the denial of funds seems to have to do with the possibility that those poor and desperate people might adopt liberal viewpoints on such issues. Who the fuck cares about that? Apparently, our current government does. I am ashamed of them.  

References:

 

US abandons UN Sustainable Development Goals. Dashveenjit Kaur. Sustainability News. March 11, 2025. US abandons UN Sustainable Development Goals: Policy reversal explained

Sustainability Without the SDGs: US Policy Shifts and Corporate ESG. Matteo Tonello. Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Development. April 3, 2025. Sustainability Without the SDGs: US Policy Shifts and Corporate ESG

Remarks at the UN meeting entitled 58th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly. United States Mission to the United Nations. March 4, 2025. Remarks at the UN meeting entitled 58th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly - United States Mission to the United Nations

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024. United Nations. The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2024.pdf