While nearly every indicator for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is off track at the halfway point for achieving them by 2030, there are opportunities to accelerate progress toward ending poverty, fighting inequality, and reducing the impacts of climate change, a report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation argues.

Now in its sixth edition, the 2022 Goalkeepers Report: The Future of Progress analyzed data on 18 key SDG indicators and found that global shocks including the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts, economic crises, and subsequent food insecurity have limited opportunities for poverty reduction. The data projected little progress on increasing the agricultural productivity of small-scale food producers, improving sanitation, and reducing stunting, maternal and neonatal mortality rates, prevalence of smoking, or new cases of HIV infections, malaria, and tuberculosis. Nor are indicators for family planning on track, with only 77.9 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 projected to meet their family planning needs with modern methods in 2030. The report also found that math and reading proficiency for second and third graders fell short of the levels needed to meet the target for 2030.

“The truth is, we were never on track to reach SDG 5—global gender equality—by 2030,” Gates Foundation co-chair Melinda French Gates wrote in her essay for the report. “We can’t just talk about empowering women without making sure they are actually gaining power in their families and communities.” To that end, mobile payments would give women more control over their money than a cash payment and enable them to access other financial services, while investment in childcare infrastructure would help address a systemic barrier to women working.

In his own essay, Bill Gates argued that the impact of the war in Ukraine on food aid for sub-Saharan Africa illustrated “a much bigger problem”: climate change and the need for “magic seeds” that are “more resistant to hotter, drier climates.” “To address the current food crisis and increase agricultural productivity, one important solution is…big funding increases for magic seeds—and other fundamental investments in agriculture, too,” he wrote. “We need to speed this plant breeding work up, and one solution is what researchers call ‘predictive modeling’ [to] identify the optimal plant variety for a particular place.”

“The world faces many challenges—some of which may seem insurmountable. Yet, despite the setbacks, I’m filled with hope that we can solve these problems together and save millions of lives through human ingenuity and innovation,” said French Gates. “We know progress is possible because the global community has faced difficult odds before and won. And we can do it again.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/boezie)