A love letter, a critique, and a call for something more honest
I was fifteen when I first heard the phrase “Sustainable Development Goals.”
It sounded hopeful. Urgent. Global.
There was a shiny UN poster on the wall, and the icons looked like emojis with a moral compass. Climate Action was Goal 13, tucked between Responsible Consumption and Life Below Water. The colors were vivid. The language felt universal.
At that moment, I believed—this was the blueprint.
That if we could just work toward the goals, change would come.
But nearly a decade later, I’ve begun to ask harder questions.
Not because I don’t believe in the vision.
But because I’ve seen what it leaves out.
📦 Boxes That Don’t Fit the Story
The SDGs are powerful because they’re digestible.
They give us targets, indicators, frameworks. They allow global coordination across issues that otherwise feel fragmented.
But they are also flattening.
They compress complex lived realities into checklists.
They turn movements into metrics.
They ask: How many trees planted? instead of Who owns the land?
How many girls educated? instead of Who wrote the curriculum?
In youth climate action spaces, I’ve often felt the tension.
We’re asked to “align with SDG 13,” but not to question why heatwaves hit marginalized communities harder.
We’re told to “address water access,” but not to challenge the industries draining aquifers behind closed doors.
The SDGs give us a stage—but sometimes, not the mic.
🧠 The Metrics of Belonging
I’ve sat in conferences where young people—brilliant, brave, burning with purpose—are invited to speak for 5 minutes between two keynote addresses by people twice their age and ten times removed from the frontlines.
We are visible, yes. But are we heard?
We are told we are the “leaders of tomorrow,” but rarely the co-creators of today.
And even when we do have data, projects, research, impact—our value is often reduced to how neatly we can package it under an SDG label.
But change doesn't happen in boxes.
It happens in between them. In the messy, overlapping, beautiful intersections of race, class, gender, ecology, and identity.
And youth climate action?
It lives in those intersections.
🌿 Beyond Goal 13: Where the Work Actually Happens
Let’s be honest: Goal 13 is not enough.
“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” is a starting point, not a destination.
Where is the language of repair? Of grief? Of accountability?
Where are the indicators for generational trauma or ecological memory?
When I worked on a safety and vulnerability analysis of student housing (PG accommodations) in Delhi, the findings touched on fire risk, groundwater scarcity, urban flood exposure, and policy neglect—all intertwined. Yet no single SDG fully captured that reality.
Was it Goal 6 (Clean Water)? Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities)? Goal 13? Or something between them?
The point is—real environmental work resists compartmentalization.
It stretches across goals. It bleeds between themes.
It’s never just one color from the SDG wheel.
🔥 What We Need
So what do we need?
More than seats at the table—we need power to shape the agenda.
More than representation—we need redistribution.
More than alignment with global goals—we need space to define our own.
The SDGs are not the enemy. They’re a map.
But every map must be updated as the terrain shifts.
And the terrain has shifted.
What we need now are tools that evolve.
Indicators that include.
Frameworks that feel alive.
✨ A Better Way Forward
Let me be clear: I still believe in the SDGs.
I believe in what they tried to do.
But I believe even more in the people quietly doing the work they never fully captured.
The climate doesn’t wait for frameworks.
Neither should we.
So let’s keep building.
From the ground up. With roots and nuance. With care and critique.
Let’s move from symbolic inclusion to structural imagination.
And if the SDGs can't hold all of us—
Let’s outgrow them, together.
— Sneha 🌾