Sustainable Development Report 2025

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN): “Ten years after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress remains alarmingly off-track, with less than 20% of targets projected to be achieved by 2030…The SDR includes the SDG Index and Dashboards, which rank all UN Member States on their performance across the 17 Goals, and this year’s report features a new Index (SDGi), which focuses on 17 headline indicators to track overall SDG progress over time…This year’s SDR highlights five key findings:

The Global Financial Architecture (GFA) must be urgently reformed to finance global public goods and achieve sustainable development. Roughly half the world’s population resides in countries that cannot adequately invest in sustainable development due to unsustainable debt burdens and limited access to affordable, long-term capital. Sustainable development is a high-return investment, yet the GFA continues to direct capital toward high-income countries instead of EMDEs, which offer stronger growth prospects and higher returns. Global public goods also remain significantly underfinanced. The upcoming Ff4D offers a critical opportunity for UN Member States to reform this system and ensure that international financing flows at scale to EMDEs to achieve sustainable development…

At the global level, SDG progress has stalled; none of the 17 Global Goals are on track, and only 17% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030. Conflicts, structural vulnerabilities, and limited fiscal space continue to hinder progress, especially in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs). The five targets showing significant reversal in progress since 2015 include: obesity rate (SDG 2), press freedom (SDG 16), sustainable nitrogen management (SDG 2), the red list index (SDG 15), and the corruption perception index (SDG 16). Conversely, many countries have made notable progress in expanding access to basic services and infrastructure, including: mobile broadband use (SDG 9), access to electricity (SDG 7), internet use (SDG 9), under-5 mortality rate (SDG 3), and neonatal mortality (SDG 3). However, future progress on many of these indicators, including health-related outcomes, is threatened by global tensions and the decline in international development finance.

Barbados leads again in UN-based multilateralism commitment, while the U.S. ranks last. The SDR 2025’s Index of countries’ support to UN-based multilateralism (UN-Mi) ranks countries based on their support for and engagement with the UN system. The top three countries most committed to UN multilateralism are: Barbados (#1), Jamaica (#2), and Trinidad and Tobago (#3). Among G20 nations, Brazil (#25) ranks highest, while Chile (#7) leads among OECD countries. In contrast, the U.S., which recently withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) and formally declared its opposition to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda, ranks last (#193) for the second year in a row…(More)”

From Safer Cities to Healthier Lives: The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

World Economic Forum: “As cities become more connected, collaborative sensing is enabling vehicles, traffic systems and emergency services to coordinate in real time – improving safety and easing congestion. This is just one of the World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025 that is expected to deliver real-world impact within three to five years and address urgent global challenges….The report outlines what is needed to bring them to scale: investment, infrastructure, standards and responsible governance, and calls on business, government and the scientific community to collaborate to ensure their development serves the public good.

Trajectory of emerging technologies in healthcare overtime.
Trajectory of emerging technologies in healthcare overtime.

This year’s edition highlights a trend towards technology convergence. For example, structural battery composites combine energy with storage design, while engineered living therapeutics merge synthetic biology and precision medicine. Such integration signals a shift away from standalone innovations to more integrated systems-based solutions, reshaping what is possible.

“The path from breakthrough research to tangible societal progress depends on transparency, collaboration, and open science,” said Frederick Fenter, Chief Executive Editor, Frontiers. “Together with the World Economic Forum, we have once again delivered trusted, evidence-based insights on emerging technologies that will shape a better future for all.”

The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025

Trust and safety in a connected world:

1. Collaborative sensing

Networks of connected sensors can help vehicles, cities and emergency services share information in real time. This can improve safety, reduce traffic and respond faster to crises.

2. Generative watermarking

This technology adds invisible tags to AI-generated content, making it easier to tell what is real and what is not. It could help fight misinformation and protect trust online…(More)”.

AI-enhanced nudging in public policy: why to worry and how to respond

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Stefano Calboli & Bart Engelen: “What role can artificial intelligence (AI) play in enhancing public policy nudges and the extent to which these help people achieve their own goals? Can it help mitigate or even overcome the challenges that nudgers face in this respect? This paper discusses how AI-enhanced personalization can help make nudges more means paternalistic and thus more respectful of people’s ends. We explore the potential added value of AI by analyzing to what extent it can, (1) help identify individual preferences and (2) tailor different nudging techniques to different people based on variations in their susceptibility to those techniques. However, we also argue that the successes booked in this respect in the for-profit sector cannot simply be replicated in public policy. While AI can bring benefits to means paternalist public policy nudging, it also has predictable downsides (lower effectiveness compared to the private sector) and risks (graver consequences compared to the private sector). We discuss the practical implications of all this and propose novel strategies that both consumers and regulators can employ to respond to private AI use in nudging with the aim of safeguarding people’s autonomy and agency…(More)”. See also: Engagement Integrity: Ensuring Legitimacy at a time of AI-Augmented Participation

The Devil’s Advocate: What Happens When Dissent Becomes Digital

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Anthea Roberts: “But what if the devil’s advocate wasn’t human at all? What if it was an AI agent—faceless, rank-agnostic, apolitically neutral? A devil without a career to lose. Here’s where the inversion occurs: artificial intelligence enabling more genuine human conversation.

At Dragonfly Thinking, we’ve been experimenting with this concept. We call this Devil’s Advocate your Critical Friend. It’s an AI agent designed to do what humans find personally difficult and professionally dangerous: provide systematic criticism without career consequences.

The magic isn’t in the AI’s intelligence. It’s in how removing the human face transforms the social dynamics of dissent.

When critical feedback comes from an AI, no one’s promotion is at risk. The criticism can be thorough without being insubordinate. Teams can engage with substance rather than navigating office politics.

The AI might note: “Previous digital transformations show 73% failure rate when legacy system dependencies exceed 40%. This proposal shows significant dependencies.” It’s the AI saying what the tech lead knows but can’t safely voice, at least not alone.

Does criticism from code carry less weight because there’s no skin in the game? Counterintuitively, we’ve found the opposite. Without perceived motives or political agendas, the criticism becomes clearer, more digestible.

Ritualizing Productive Dissent

Imagine every major initiative automatically triggering AI analysis. Not optional. Built in like a financial review.

The ritual unfolds:

Monday, 2 PM: The transformation strategy is pitched. Energy builds. Heads nod. The vision is compelling.

Tuesday, 9 AM: An email arrives: “Devil’s Advocate Analysis – Digital Transformation Initiative.” Sender: DA-System. Twelve pages of systematic critique. People read alone, over coffee. Some sections sting. Others confirm private doubts.

Wednesday, 10 AM: The team reconvenes. Printouts are marked up. The tech lead says, “Section 3.2 about integration dependencies—we need to address this.” The ops head adds, “The adoption curve analysis on page 8 matches what we saw in Phoenix.”

Thursday: A revised strategy goes forward. Not perfect, but honest about assumptions and clear about risks.

When criticism is ritualized and automated, it stops being personal. It becomes data…(More)”.

How to Make Small Beautiful: The Promise of Democratic Innovations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christoph Niessen & Wouter Veenendaal: “Small states are on average more likely to be democracies and it is often assumed that democracy functions better in small polities. ‘Small is beautiful’, proponents say. Yet, empirical scholarship shows that, while smallness comes with socio-political proximity, which facilitates participation and policy implementation, it also incentivizes personalism, clientelism and power concentration. Largeness, instead, comes with greater socio-political distance, but strengthens institutional checks and entails scale advantages. In this article, we depart from this trade-off and, wondering ‘how to make small beautiful’, we examine a potential remedy: democratic innovations. To do so, we first show that representative institutions were adopted in small polities by replication rather than by choice, and that they can aggravate the democratic problems associated with smallness. Subsequently, we draw on four usages of direct and deliberative democratic practices in small polities to explore which promises they offer to correct some of these pitfalls…(More)”.

Government at a Glance 2025

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Governments face a highly complex operating environment marked by major demographic, environmental, and digital shifts, alongside low trust and constrained fiscal space. 

Responding effectively means concentrating efforts on three fronts: Enhancing individuals’ sense of dignity in their interactions with government, restoring a sense of security amid rapid societal and economic changes, and improving government efficiency and effectiveness to help boost productivity in the economy, while restoring public finances. These priorities converge in the governance of the green transition.

Government at a Glance 2025 offers evidence-based tools to tackle these long-term challenges…

Governments are not yet making the most of digital tools and data to improve effectiveness and efficiency

Data, digital tools and AI all offer the prospect of efficiency gains. OECD countries score, on average, 0.61 on the Digital Government Index (on a 0-1 scale) but could improve their digital policy frameworks, whole-of-government approaches and use of data as a strategic asset. On average, only 47% of OECD governments’ high-value datasets are openly available, falling to just 37% in education and 42% in health and social welfare…(More)”.

Why PeaceTech must be the next frontier of innovation and investment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stefaan Verhulst and Artur Kluz: “…amidst this frenzy, a crucial question is being left unasked: Can technology be used not just to win wars, but to prevent them and save people’s lives?

There is an emerging field that dares to pose this question—PeaceTech. It is the use of technology to save human lives, prevent conflict, de-escalate violence, rebuild fractured communities, and secure fragile peace in post-conflict environments.

From early warning systems that predict outbreaks of violence, to platforms ensuring aid transparency, and mobile tools connecting refugees to services: PeaceTech is real, it works—and it is radically underfunded.

Unlike the vast sums pouring into defense startups, peace building efforts, including PeaceTech organizations and ventures, struggle for scraps. The United Nations Secretary-General released in 2020 its ambitious goal to fundraise $1.5 billion in peacebuilding support over a total of seven years. In contrast, private investment in defense tech crossed $34 billion in 2023 alone. 

Why is PeaceTech so neglected?

One reason PeaceTech is so neglected is cultural: in the tech world, “peace” can seem abstract or idealistic—soft power in a world of hard tech. In reality, peace is not soft; it is among the hardest, most complex challenges of our time. Peace requires systemic thinking, early intervention, global coordination, and a massive infrastructure of care, trust, and monitoring. Maintaining peace in a hyper-polarized, technologically complex world is a feat of engineering, diplomacy, and foresight.

And it’s a business opportunity. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, violence costs the global economy over $17 trillion per year—about 13% of global GDP. Even modest improvements in peace would unlock billions in economic value.

Consider the peace dividend from predictive analytics that can help governments or international organizations intervene or mediate before conflict breaks out, or AI-powered verification tools to enforce ceasefires and disinformation controls. PeaceTech, if scaled, could become a multibillion dollar market—and a critical piece of the security architecture of the future…(More)”. ..See also Kluz Prize for PeaceTech (Applications Open)

The war over the peace business

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Tekendra Parmar: “At the second annual AI+ Expo in Washington, DC, in early June, war is the word of the day.

As a mix of Beltway bureaucrats, military personnel, and Washington’s consultant class peruse the expansive Walter E. Washington Convention Center, a Palantir booth showcases its latest in data-collection suites for “warfighters.” Lockheed Martin touts the many ways it is implementing AI throughout its weaponry systems. On the soundstage, the defense tech darling Mach Industries is selling its newest uncrewed aerial vehicles. “We’re living in a world with great-power competition,” the presenter says. “We can’t rule out the possibility of war — but the best way to prevent a war is deterrence,” he says, flanked by videos of drones flying through what looked like the rugged mountains and valleys of Kandahar.

Hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project, a think tank led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the expo says it seeks to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Washington policymakers to “strengthen” America and its allies’ “competitiveness in critical technologies.”

One floor below, a startup called Anadyr Horizon is making a very different sales pitch, for software that seeks to prevent war rather than fight it: “Peace tech,” as the company’s cofounder Arvid Bell calls it. Dressed in white khakis and a black pinstripe suit jacket with a dove and olive branch pinned to his lapel (a gift from his husband), the former Harvard political scientist begins by noting that Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine had come as a surprise to many political scientists. But his AI software, he says, could predict it.

Long the domain of fantasy and science fiction, the idea of forecasting conflict has now become a serious pursuit. In Isaac Asimov’s 1950s “Foundation” series, the main character develops an algorithm that allows him to predict the decline of the Galactic Empire, angering its rulers and forcing him into exile. During the coronavirus pandemic, the US State Department experimented with AI fed with Twitter data to predict “COVID cases” and “violent events.” In its AI audit two years ago, the State Department revealed that it started training AI on “open-source political, social, and economic datasets” to predict “mass civilian killings.” The UN is also said to have experimented with AI to model the war in Gaza…(More)”… ..See also Kluz Prize for PeaceTech (Applications Open)

The Reenchanted World: On finding mystery in the digital age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Karl Ove Knausgaard: “…When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about alienation in the 1840s—that’s nearly two hundred years ago—they were describing workers’ relationship with their work, but the consequences of alienation spread into their analysis to include our relationship to nature and to existence as such. One term they used was “loss of reality.” Society at that time was incomparably more brutal, the machines incomparably coarser, but problems such as economic inequality and environmental destruction have continued into our own time. If anything, alienation as Marx and Engels defined it has only increased.

Or has it? The statement “people are more alienated now than ever before in history” sounds false, like applying an old concept to a new condition. That is not really what we are, is it? If there is something that characterizes our time, isn’t it the exact opposite, that nothing feels alien?

Alienation involves a distance from the world, a lack of connection between it and us. What technology does is compensate for the loss of reality with a substitute. Technology calibrates all differences, fills in every gap and crack with images and voices, bringing everything close to us in order to restore the connection between ourselves and the world. Even the past, which just a few generations ago was lost forever, can be retrieved and brought back…(More)”.

2025 State of the Digital Decade

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The European Commission: “…assessed the EU’s progress along the four target areas for the EU’s digital transformation by 2030, highlighting achievements and gaps in the areas of digital infrastructure, digitalisation of businesses, digital skills, and digitalisation of public service.

Digital Decade logo

The report shows that although there are certain advancements, the rollout of connectivity infrastructure, such as fibre and 5G stand-alone networks, is still lagging. More companies are adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud and big data, but adoption needs to accelerate. Just over half of Europeans (55.6%) have a basic level of digital skills, while the availability of ICT specialists with advanced skills remains low and with a stark gender divide, hindering progress in key sectors, such as cybersecurity and AI. In 2024, the EU made steady progress in digitalising key public services, but a substantial portion of governmental digital infrastructure continues to depend on service providers outside the EU.

The data shows persisting challenges, such as fragmented markets, overly complex regulations, security and strategic dependence. Further public and private investment and easier access to venture capital for EU companies would accelerate innovation and scale up…(More)”.