The GSDR 2023 highlights key transformations needed in different sectors and provides key findings from the literature, practical examples and tools for progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It provides a stylized model to help unpack and understand the transformation process over time and outline the roles of different levers in facilitating various stages of transformation through a systematic and structured approach. As history has shown, transformations are inevitable, and this report emphasizes that deliberate and desirable transformations are possible - and, indeed, necessary.

This report is the second quadrennial Global Sustainable Development report prepared by an independent group of scientists. The first report was published in 2019.

Key messages:

• At the half-way point toward 2030 the SDGs are far off track. Of 36 targets reviewed in the report, only 2 are on track to be achieved, while progress on eight is deteriorating.
• The crises that have wiped out years of SDG progress are interrelated, fueling intensities, but connections could be turned into opportunities. A spate of shocks - the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts in many regions including the war in Ukraine, a cost-of-living and debt crisis, and climate related disasters – are entwined through environmental, economic and social systems that create intensifying SDG backslides.
• Leaders must address medium- and long-term trends that are having systemic effects across the SDGs while dealing with immediate crises.