With just four years remaining until 2030, this year’s High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) could easily have been a story of despair. Instead, across nearly two weeks of plenary sessions, side events, and conversations with Member States and civil society actors, one theme kept resurfacing: the tools for transformation already exist — what’s needed now is the political will to connect them and the funding to make action a reality.
The 2026 HLPF examined five of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in greater depth: SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (modern and affordable energy), SDG 9 (industry, innovation, infrastructure), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals).
Cities – and the interconnections between all of the goals – were a main feature of the HLPF. As one urban planner put it, “we don’t lack ambitious ideas or solutions” — Singapore’s integrated governance, Medellín’s people-centred infrastructure, and Copenhagen’s twin focus of climate action and competitiveness prove transformation is achievable.
The obstacle isn’t imagination; it’s implementation.
Mayors from Yorkton, Saskatchewan to Zarrentin am Schaalsee, Germany described the same tension: aging infrastructure, constrained budgets, and a housing crisis compounded by disaster risk — up to 60 per cent of losses in any disaster fall on housing. Yet the same conversations were full of hope. Devolving financial responsibility to cities, pairing national resources with local knowledge, and simply planning with people rather than for them were repeatedly cited as the difference between a bold idea on paper and a bold idea actually delivered.
That same spirit animated discussions on innovation and multilateralism. On SDG 9, for example, panelists argued that small and medium enterprises — the backbone of every economy — need not fear frontier technology like AI but should harness it responsibly to address longstanding barriers to inclusion.
On the future of the UN itself, voices from Kenya, Peru, the Philippines, and beyond called for a “We the Peoples” reborn: decentralized, co-created with civil society, and honest about where power still sits unfairly. The Pact for the Future, Declaration on Future Generations, and the UN80 reform agenda were framed not as bureaucratic exercises but as real opportunities and pathways to transform a system and institution many feel has left them behind.
Even the data-focused sessions carried optimism. Germany’s use of the Multidimensional Poverty Index to design integrated social protection, and its candid reckoning with the “spillover” effects its consumption has on other countries, showed that honest measurement — not just good intentions — can guide fairer and more equitable and effective policy.
The throughline across every room was partnership: between generations, between cities and national governments, between civil society and multilateral institutions. As one Vancouver housing advocate said, “it always seems impossible before it’s done.” With four years left, the 2026 HLPF made the case that the Sustainable Development Goals are not a lost cause — they are an unfinished, collaborative project still very much within reach.
—I would like to say a special thank you to the Congregation of Jesus delegates who joined me for the HLPF: Clare Tuckwell (NGO youth intern from Australia), Prakash Lohale OP (Social Justice Animator at the Mary Ward Centre in Canada), and Eugenia Lapania (Intern at the Mary Ward Centre in Canada). Your contributions and energy made the HLPF meaningful, productive and fun!
Author: Sarah Rudolph, CJ
