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Returning to core principles to advance the 2030 Agenda

Principles underpinning the 2030 Agenda — indivisibility, integration and universality — can safeguard against inaction or unsustainable practices but have not yet come into effect. We propose measures to strengthen alignment with them as the world gears up to accelerate implementation at the 2023 SDG Summit.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of SDG interlinkages and the goals’ systemic impact.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Järnberg for comments on earlier versions of this paper. This work was partially funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS) grant number 2022-02643, and Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research (MISTRA) grant number 2016/11.

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Correspondence to Nina Weitz.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Luis Roman Carrasco and Sander Chan for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Weitz, N., Carlsen, H., Bennich, T. et al. Returning to core principles to advance the 2030 Agenda. Nat Sustain 6, 1145–1148 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01212-7

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