The new Global Goals Yearbook 2023 closes this gap: Sustainability projects are linked to the specific SDG sub-goals and concrete indicators are used to measure success. The Global Goals become performant and the answer to one of the most important practical questions comes closer: How much perfection is needed and when is ‘good’ good enough?”

Climate change, Covid-19, wars, supply chain problems, hunger, mass migration from the east and south – the world as we know it is changing rapidly. Much optimism has been burnt in the process in recent weeks and months. The idea of shaping the future as a continuation of the present has faltered, and with it, the political and economic architecture of an era that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

“We are experiencing a decade of crises and setbacks. The future is ‘VUCA’ – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. And so is globalization,” says the publisher of the Global Goals Yearbook, Dr. Elmer Lenzen

In the professional world, the term ESG (environment, social, and governance criteria) is increasingly gaining acceptance. The term comes from the world of finance and is still very closely linked to it today, for example in the context of the EU financial taxonomy. In this chapter, the Global Goals Yearbook highlights the most important factors to keep in mind.

– How to Revive Multilateralism in a Multipolar World? The world today is becoming more multipolar and less multilateral.

– Open Societies versus Digital Autocratic Experiments: The illusion of control: Autocratic regimes are convinced that they can control not only human behavior on a large scale, but also the course of a society as a whole.