The Politics of the Sustainable Development Goals for Climate Action
In March of 2025, the United States of America rejected the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a decision made because of the unavoidable conflict and tension between the Trump administration and the framework of the SDGs (Auquan, 2025).
My journey with the SDGs goes back to 2022, when I started sixth form and first considered doing an Extended Project Qualification (EPQ). Having done some research into a variety of different topics, I decided that I wanted my EPQ to be a research project about the SDGs and their chances of success. By the time I submitted it in March of 2024, the title of my EPQ was ‘How likely is it that the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal of Climate Action will succeed by 2030?’ Having dedicated a significant chunk of my academic journey to researching and writing about the SDGs, I have followed the news about their progress and development closely. Unfortunately, it’s not good news.
The SDGs are a set of 17 goals which provide a ‘shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’ (United Nations, 2016). They were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015. The goals include targets aimed at reducing poverty, inequality, achieving responsible consumption, and building sustainable cities. My EPQ was focused on Goal 13, Climate Action - to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. When implemented in 2015, the aim was for the goals to be achieved by 2030. However, just over 4 years out from this target, it doesn’t feel as if we are anywhere close to reaching them. Poverty and inequality have been exacerbated by COVID-19 and the cost-of-living crisis. Most poignantly is the distance we are from achieving notable climate action. Only 2 weeks ago, the Climate Change Committee wrote a letter addressed to the UK government, stating that they would advise that ‘the UK prepare for climate change beyond the long-term temperature goal set out in the Paris Agreement’, which the U.S. also withdrew from under Trump in 2020 (BBC News, 2025).
Perhaps Goal 13 was simply too ambitious. Perhaps global warming was always going to accelerate and there was nothing that could be done about it. However, I find these explanations unconvincing. Perhaps I am biased as a politics student, but I relentlessly find myself turning to politics to answer the big questions that plague the world today, and climate change is no different.
Politics has, and always will, play a huge role in climate change. As I observe the changing landscape of the SDGs and reflect on what I knew as a 16-year-old college student and what I know now as a 19-year-old politics student, it seems that Trump’s decision to renege on the SDGs signals a pattern – a steadily changing political attitude towards climate change and its solutions. Not only has the salience and relevance of climate change seemingly diminished as the era of Greta Thunberg and ‘Save the Turtles’ becomes a distant memory, but the politics behind climate change is becoming increasingly more complicated as international relationships change and conflict is becoming exacerbated across the globe.
As was true in 2023 and as is true now, we have a long way to go to prevent the full effects of climate change. There are only 4 years until Goal 13 of Climate Action should be fulfilled in order to achieve the SDGs (United Nations, 2016). This was a goal of 15 years for the SDGs themselves, but it also represents a more pressing time target. We are fundamentally running out of time to combat climate change and its impacts. As I write this, Hurricane Melissa is sweeping across Jamaica, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake (BBC News, 2025). These events are not by chance – they are results of climate change and a demonstration that we are not doing enough to change its course.
In order to truly change the tide on climate change, politicians would have to implement huge overhauls to current climate policy and introduce expansive policies and projects. It would be an unprecedented level of action. It would not be a temporary solution – in order to truly combat climate change, we would have to change the way we live. We would all have to cut down on meat and dairy consumption, cut down on usage of private vehicles. An entire nation would have to undergo an entire lifestyle change, but politicians would also have to work closely with other countries at all stages of development in order to combat climate change at all levels. It would not simply be a case of an introduction of a couple of laws and a few new policies. It would be such an immense change that would affect not only policies and laws, but government systems themselves. Communities and diplomatic relations would have to change if we were to truly commit to the goal of combatting climate change and its impacts.
This, however, does not seem plausible in the political environment we are currently navigating. Democracy functions on the process of regular elections. Politicians are more often than not unwilling to commit to significant overhauls of government policy and the way in which people live. Instead, they aim to retain support and to maximise their chances of being re-elected. Climate change is a very real and visible threat but taking combative action to reduce its effects is not necessarily something that will help an incumbent government on their path to re-election.
Furthermore, climate change is not a politically salient topic in the way in which it perhaps used to be. Immigration is the topic of the day, month, and year. If a government chose to introduce the measures necessary to combat climate change and achieve Goal 13, it would be highly controversial. People do not have the desire or long-term vision to see the urgent changes that need to happen, and a government imposing such stark changes onto a nation would likely result in chaos and rioting from the majority. Solving climate change simply isn’t a politically sensible decision.
I have undeniably presented a critical and pessimistic view of the politics behind climate change. However, despite the problems that present themselves and the difficult circumstances we are navigating, I refuse to give up hope. Hope that we can and will shape a new world, hope that individual actions can still make a difference, and hope that we will one day be represented by politicians who see the bigger picture. While studying politics has allowed me to observe the barriers that prevent climate change from being solved, it also gives me the chance to discover and explore ways that we can solve climate change, and how politics has so many times throughout history acted as a force for good, a force for change and a platform for people to unite over the generation-defining issues.
Written by Sally Sheridan
References:
Auquan. (2025). U.S. Rejects the Sustainable Development Goals of UN. https://insights.auquan.com/u.s.-rejects-the-sustainable-development-goals-of-un
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2016). The Sustainable Development Agenda.
Rowlatt, J. (2025). Government told to prepare for 2C warming by 2050. BBC News.
BBC News. (2025). Four deaths from Hurricane Melissa confirmed in Jamaica as storm leaves trail of destruction across Caribbean.