UN General Assembly: Everyone Is Talking But Who Is Listening?
With over 2,000 presentations happening during Global Goals Week can there be too many conversations?
Every September, thousands of diplomats, policy experts, scientists, development professionals, and stakeholders convene in New York for discussions about the Sustainable Development Goals. As 2023 marks the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda, these decision-makers are particularly keen to share their perspectives on the current status and the future of the Global Goals. The number of separate conversations during this week was absolutely stunning.
From September 15–25, our team at SDGCounting, along with our colleagues at StartingUpGood, researched 1,747 individual sessions and over 2,500 presentations occurring during UNGA78 related to the SDGs!
With so many people talking, one must wonder, how can they be listening? In this article we break down the numbers and discuss why it matters.
Despite the quality of content, even a casual observer would note there was simply too much going on.
Listening to the Secretary-General address the SDG Summit meant missing the star-studded opening plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative. Watching sessions from the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD) meant skipping the Gates Foundation Goalkeeper event.
While much of the content is now available for streaming, we know that many practitioners and policy makers were not able to hear the same conversations because they simply could not have been in the same rooms.
After analyzing hundreds of session descriptions, programs, and event calendars, we can now convey the extent of the congestion during Global Goals Week:
Sessions by the Numbers
The official Global Goals Week Calendar featured 78 events.
The UNGA Event Guide listed over 560 events associated with UNGA.
The Climate Week Calendar showcased over 600 activities.
UN Web TV includes recordings of 300 sessions from September 15–25.
While some of these are duplicates the vast majority are not and several are actually multi-day conferences comprised of multiple sessions:
- Business Fights Poverty held 17 sessions over three days.
- Clinton Global Initiative hosted 40 sessions over two days.
- Concordia offered 99 sessions over three days.
- Devex @ UNGA78 presented 44 conversations over two days.
- Global Compact Leader’s Summit included 20 sessions.
- Gates Foundation Goalkeeper event occurred over two days and spanned more than eight hours of content.
- ICSD had 54 sessions over four days with over 6oo presentations.
- MIT Solve provided 13 sessions and spanned an entire day.
- The Science Summit consisted of 242 sessions over a staggering eighteen days.
- SDG Action Weekend scheduled 22 events.
- The SDG Summit was comprised of 10 sessions over two days.
- WEF Impact Meetings had 12 sessions over four days.
After combining and de-duplicating all the information on events and activities, we found 1,747 individual sessions and over 2,500 presentations!
Perhaps even more telling than the sheer number of events, is how many were taking place simultaneously.
Overlapping Content
On Monday and Tuesday of Global Goals Week, over 700 events took place simultaneously. These included high-profile side events such as the Clinton Global Initiative and the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers events.
To illustrate the overlap, during the opening session of the SDG Summit on Monday from 9:00 am to 10:30 am, we counted 44 concurrent events. These included opening plenaries from Concordia, Clinton Foundation, and MIT Solve, along with two side events from the ICSD, 14 Science Summit presentations, and 16 Climate Week activities.
Looking only at the time slot between 10:00 am and noon on Tuesday, over 100 events were happening at the same time, including:
- 13 presentations at the Science Summit
- The opening of the Global Compact and initial sessions
- 10 sessions from Concordia
- 3 sessions from Business Fights Poverty
- 6 sessions from Clinton Foundation including a main stage session with President Clinton
- 8 sessions from ICSD
- 58 Climate Week activities focusing on topics like clean energy, tech, and food security
Between 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm on the same day, we found 76 simultaneous events.
Given that many of these sessions involved panels and multiple speakers, we know there were literally hundreds of people all speaking at the same time trying to have their voices heard.
Moving Forward
Clearly, the global development community should take advantage of having so many powerful and knowledgeable people in one place for one week. Additionally, the concentration of content provides essential focus to pressing global issues. But, how do we ensure the knowledge and perspectives shared are reaching those who most need it?
Given the quality and quantity of information available from Global Goals Week, our team is committed to ensuring the SDG-related material from UNGA78 is shared as widely as possible. As part of our pledge to making it as accessible as possible, we have compiled a list of all sessions from the week that is currently available online and encourage you to check it out:
We hope people will be disciplined and catch up on the conversations. However, the concern is that many might continue to talk past each other, missing important messages
We will continue to do our part to share the most important information that can be found from Global Goals Week. Be sure to follow us on social media to ensure you don’t miss anything.
SDGCounting is a program of StartingUpGood and tracks the progress of counting and measuring the success of the SDGs.
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