Eight global millennium development goals were established in 2000 by member states of the United Nations (UN) and endorsed by other multilateral organisations. They ranged from eliminating hunger to empowering women, and from reducing child mortality to environmental sustainability.
The millennium development goals were not fully achieved by 2015, so 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) were devised to be reached by 2030. The longer list responded mostly to growing climate threats and urbanisation and included aspects of wellbeing and healthy living.
The focus now is on developing the next agenda after 2030. There is a growing drive to include culture as a goal. Nowhere was the bid more pronounced than at the recent global cultural policy meeting called Mondiacult, held every three years by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco).
Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse is a scholar of cultural development. We asked him why a culture SDG matters.
Why should culture be an SDG in its own right?
Since 1982, several of these meetings have emphasised the link between culture and sustainable development. Now there’s a call for it to be a standalone SDG in the post-2030 development agenda.
A strong argument is made in the Unesco global report on cultural policies, released in Barcelona during Mondiacult in September 2025. According to this report, 93% of responding member states affirm that culture is a central point in their national sustainable development plans. This is an increase from 88% four years ago.
The document reports also that cultural and creative industries account for 3.39% of the global gross domestic product (a measure of the health of an economy) and 3.55% of jobs. That makes it comparable to the automotive sector. Cultural tourism generates US$741.3 billion in 250 cities each year.
Given this, there’s a broad consensus that culture is one of the keys to sustainable economic development. But it goes deeper.
Unesco defines culture as:
A set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterise a society or social group including not only arts and letters, but modes of life, value systems, traditions and beliefs.
From this definition, culture is a human right. The final declaration of Mondiacult 2025 recognises it as such, alongside other human rights. Indeed, many countries’ constitutions and other international conventions, like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, recognise this.
If the 17 SDGs (like education, gender equality and healthy living) are related to human rights, why should culture, which is also a human right, not be an SDG?
To get there, the Mondiacult declaration reinforces that culture needs to be emphasised and endorsed in the 2030 development agenda.
Read more:
What is Mondiacult? 6 take-aways from the world’s biggest cultural policy gathering
The Culture Committee of the United Cities and Local Governments organisation campaigned for culture to be included in the post-2015 development agenda. (Since its 2004 Agenda 21 for Culture initiative, the organisation has worked to include culture in local and regional development.)
In 2022, a network of leading global cultural organisations began an advocacy campaign for culture to be a dedicated SDG. The #Culture2030Goal campaign’s draft zero has five focus areas:
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adequate attention to culture at the highest level of government
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recognise connections between culture and other policy areas
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the culture sector must feel a sense of engagement in and ownership of the goal
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mobilise power of culture for all other goals
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achievement of all goals through a cultural lens.
The campaign formulated culture as an SDG as follows:
Ensure cultural sustainability for the wellbeing of all.
Sustainability is culture’s capacity to endure over time and also speaks to new thinking about sustainability for a healthier future for the world.
What difference would it make if it was an SDG?
A standalone SDG would recognise culture as a global public good that all countries should protect.
This would draw attention to culture as an area of intervention. Justin O’Connor, a professor of cultural economy, writes in the Cultural Policy Forum that:
A specific goal is needed to better coordinate culture’s contribution to each and every goal, and to make it mandatory for governments and agencies to pay attention to it, and hopefully direct resources to it.
So, it would also encourage governments to take culture into account in their national economic development agendas.
What are the obstacles?
There are two main constraints in the path to culture becoming an SDG: the understanding of its role for development; and the capacity of policymakers to give it the necessary space.
Mondiacult 2022 recommended including culture in the UN’s 2024 Summit of the Future and that was successful. In fact, Action 11 of the summit’s final document Pact for the Future includes culture. However, it is associated with sport, and is not considered a stand-alone issue.
Read more:
Culture can build a better world: four key issues on Africa’s G20 agenda
Against this backdrop, the ambition of having culture as an SDG still has a way to go. There is no set timeline. It all depends on how negotiations evolve among multiple UN stakeholders (international agencies and member states) in the preparation process for the post-2030 agenda.
Although South Africa is leading the 2025 G20 meetings, where culture is firmly on the agenda, Africa can still play a far stronger mobilising role among the world’s leaders, to convince them to come on board.
