SDG 18, a Sustainable Development Goal for Culture
Design by City Art
SDG 18 at MONDIACULT 2022
Held in Mexico City, MONDIACULT 2022 was the largest ministerial meeting on culture in the last 40 years. It brought together nearly 2,600 participants, including 135 ministers.
In September 2022, UNESCO organized the World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – MONDIACULT 2022. It resulted in a historic Declaration adopted unanimously by 150 countries. The declaration recognizes culture as a ‘global public good’ and calls for its inclusion ‘as a specific objective in its own right’ in the post-2030 global development framework.
UNESCO/Juan Luis M. Acevez
The Declaration advocates for creating an enabling environment for the respect and exercise of cultural rights. This includes the social and economic rights of artists, indigenous communities’ rights to their cultural expressions, and the protection and promotion of cultural and natural heritage. Strong regulation of the digital sector is also urged to benefit online cultural diversity, artists’ intellectual property rights, and equitable access to content for all.
Ministers of Culture placed high importance on other issues like promoting freedom of expression, the role of culture in climate action and quality education, and the creative economy. Governments pledged to intensify the fight against illicit trafficking in cultural property and advocated for an open and inclusive dialogue for the return and restitution of cultural property.
At MONDIACULT 2022, UNESCO and INTERPOL announced plans to establish a virtual museum of stolen cultural property by 2025. It will serve as an educational and research tool.
The Declaration highlighted the need to develop data on culture’s impact on sustainable development. UNESCO will produce a Global Report on Cultural Policies every four years starting in 2025. This will inform the World Forum on Cultural Policies, held by UNESCO every four years.
> Press release
> Read the text of the Declaration
> MONDIACULT 2022
EU countries approve Cáceres Declaration for culture to become the 18th SDG
Sep 27, 2023 – The Ministers of Culture of the European Union approved the Cáceres Declaration, by which they commit to defend culture as “an essential public good and a global public good at the highest political level” and to work to make it the eighteenth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).
#culture2030goal
Our story began when cultural networks united in 2013 to launch a global campaign entitled #culture2015goal. This called for culture to be included in what would become “Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015. With implementation of the Agenda underway, the campaign evolved into #culture2030goal.
A Culture Goal is Essential for Our Common Future
Culture is effectively missing from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet no one would argue that culture is irrelevant to the 2030 Agenda. Indeed, the United Nations General Assembly Declaration enshrining the 2030 Agenda refers to its importance, but there is no language specifying this “contribution” is, detracting from the Agenda’s supposedly “integrated and indivisible” character.
As reflection starts on the challenges and terms of reference of a post-2030 Agenda for the international community and for humanity as a whole, it is timely to consider how culture could, as early as possible, take its proper place in the commitments, goals and targets to be adopted in due course through the mechanisms of the United Nations.
Culture in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
In the context of the advocacy work conducted since the adoption of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015, and aiming at its full localisation and implementation at the local level, the Committee on Culture of UCLG has been working on a new document: “Culture in the Sustainable Development Goals: A Guide for Local Action”.
Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2015, Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the global agenda on sustainable development until 2030. Building on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the global agenda that was pursued from 2000 to 2015, the new 2030 Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 specific targets. This is, indeed, a global agenda, the aims and themes of which should be taken into account in all world regions, countries and cities.
The 2030 Agenda amounts to a minor step forward in the consideration of cultural aspects in sustainable development. In the years leading to the adoption of the SDGs, several global networks campaigned, under the banner ‘The Future We Want Includes Culture’, for the inclusion of one specific goal devoted to culture, or for the integration of cultural aspects across the SDGs. Four documents, including a manifesto, a declaration on the inclusion of culture in the 2030 Agenda, a proposal of possible indicators for measuring the cultural aspects of the SDGs, and an assessment of the final 2030 Agenda, were produced between 2013 and 2015. The Committee on Culture of UCLG was one of the lead networks of the campaign.