The Culture2030Goal Campaign has released its draft analysis of the place of culture in 2024 Voluntary National Reviews of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The analysis highlights that all countries are already reflecting on culture, with some taking a very comprehensive approach. However, an explicit goal could make the difference in generalising this good practice.

IFLA is a founder member of the Culture2030Goal Campaign, which brings together representative global and regional cultural network, focused on the objective of seeing culture recognised as a standalone goal in future development agendas, as well as treating it as a core area of policy action already today.

The Campaign reacts to the absence of a culture goal in the UN’s 2030 Agenda, a situation which we argue has led to an under-appreciation of the potential of culture to drive development, as well as mixed messages to the cultural sector about their role in supporting sustainable development.

One aspect of the Campaign’s work has been to review the Voluntary National Reviews of implementation of the SDGs that are prepared by UN Member States each year. This year, 33 of these have been published, offering a snapshot of how different governments are approaching sustainable development.

As such, they offer a useful evidence base for assessing how far – and how – governments are recognising and mobilising culture in their work, even in the absence of a goal.

The draft analysis demonstrates that all reporting Member States indeed do talk about culture, addressing all dimensions of the relationship between culture and development, as well as the interlinkages between culture and different Sustainable Development Goals. It also shows that there is reporting on all of the targets established in the zero draft for a Culture Goal issued by the Campaign ahead of the 2022 UNESCO Mondiacult Conference, as well as countries in very different regions and at different levels of development taking culture seriously.

Nonetheless, the variation in the levels of attention paid to culture between countries underlines that there is still a lot of unmet potential. The analysis therefore provides evidence for the Campaign’s argument that a dedicated culture goal is necessary in order to ensure that cultural actors and factors are being mobilised everywhere in support of sustainable development.

You can download the draft analysis here.