24 Jun 2026
“WARS MUST STOP” – UN report says SDGs are Doomed Without Global PEACE
Bangkok – The 2026 Sustainable Development Report (SDR), released on 23 June by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), is set to revolutionise the entire discourse on sustainability, especially within Travel & Tourism. It says that progress on meeting by the target year of 2030 is “significantly off track,” identifies exactly why that is the case and offers an eight-point checklist of remedies which could still salvage the situation.
Authored by a team led by the eminent Professor Jeffrey Sachs, President of the SDSN, the report says in language far more assertive than the 2025 report, “Lesson 1: Peace is the foundation of every Goal.”
“Without peace, none of the other transformations are possible. War destroys infrastructure, displaces populations, diverts resources, weakens and breaks the institutions through which transformation is imple- mented, and poisons the political relationships across which cooperation must flow. War hollows out the moral architecture on which the SDGs rest.
“The wars of the SDG period – in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, the Sahel, Ethiopia and elsewhere – have together produced the highest number of armed-conflict deaths since the Second World War. Global military spending has set successive records and reached US$2.9 trillion in 2025 – more than the entire annual SDG financing gap for the developing world.
“The wars must stop. The military buildups must end. The diplomatic relationships must be repaired. The dispute-resolution mechanisms of the UN Charter, most importantly the Security Council, must be restored to operational use. Alongside this, the regression on rights – of women, of indigenous peoples and minorities, of journalists and especially of people in conflict zones – must be reversed. UN Women must not be dismantled in the name of austerity; gender equality is vital for sustainable development.”
The report says that only 16% of targets are projected to be achieved by the deadline. While the vast majority of UN Member States remain committed to the framework, “a small number of countries, most notably the United States, have moved into active opposition to the paradigm of sustainable development and the multilateral institutions that underpin it.”
The report includes a number of charts clearly identifying how the United States is a key part of the problem, legally, financially and diplomatically.
It includes an SDG Index and Dashboards, ranking all UN Member States across the 17 SDGs, and the Index of Countries’ Support for UN-Based Multilateralism (UN-Mi), which tracks countries’ engagement with the UN system. It is a significant step up from the 2025 report which had raised many of the same points, but was more directed at reforming the international financial architecture to address the funding shortfall.
For the Travel & Tourism industry, the report’s detailed charts are ready to be analysed across multiple formats to establish the key takeaways. Broadly speaking, however, here are six ready-to-use outcomes:
1) It will allow the entire UN system, especially UN Tourism, to echo the same conclusions in one unified voice.
2) It will allow the Peace agenda to get priority over the four other P’s of the development agenda: People, Planet, Prosperity, and Partnership. And it will certainly go beyond the Profit motivation of the private sector.
3) It will allow all the Travel & Tourism bodies (WTTC, PATA, IATA, ICCA, etc) to quote an authoritative source of data and analysis, and table it for discussion and debate in their own forums and events. The agendas of global travel trade shows and conferences can be similarly updated and refocussed.
4) It will allow Travel & Tourism to demand accountability from those irresponsible countries, multinational corporations (especially in the military-industrial complex) and various other “suspects” for the financial and environmental damage they are causing.
5) It will put the onus specifically on US corporate executives, consultants, academics and assorted other “visionary thought-leaders” to challenge the destabilising role of their own government.
6) It will give a powerful tool for civil society movements and responsible media groups to challenge decision- and policy-makers and make them walk the talk.
The full report can be downloaded by clicking on this link..
The following are screenshots of some key pages well worth reading and analysing, on topics of direct relevance to Travel & Tourism.
This text below shows the eight-point solutions agenda which could still help salvage the situation.
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The following text clearly shows the threat posed to the UN SDGs.
The following text identifies what the report considers to be the primary problem.
The following text shows the threat posed by the financing shortfall, comparing it to the amounts spent by global militaries and the need to address the imbalanced and dysfunctional taxation system.
The following text clearly shows the threat posed to the UN SDGs by the growing influence of AI.
The following charts specifically show the position of the United States.
