Perhaps one of the deepest inequalities exposed by these turbulent moments is the inequality of being able to imagine the future. Some societies possess the stability and material security to debate what their economies should look like in 2040 or 2050: Artificial Intelligence, green industry, electric mobility, energy storage, and the infrastructure of the next technological era. Elsewhere, the questions are more immediate. They are thinking of whether a hospital will have electricity tomorrow, whether a school will remain standing, whether food can reach a community, or whether families will once again have to flee their homes. The interdependence of systems that move the world, in this case, deepens that inequality further.

This divide is not only about income, technology, or fiscal capacity. It is also about how much space societies possess to think beyond survival.

One, All, None?

That divide shadowed this year’s UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Sure, the familiar architecture of the Sustainable Development Goals was everywhere. Present were targets, indicators, financing gaps, implementation pathways, and the approaching deadline of 2030.

These conversations are necessary. Progress must be measured, commitments reviewed, and governments held accountable. But the world discussing sustainable development today is also the same world living through wars, disasters, displacement, destroyed infrastructure, food insecurity, and geopolitical fragmentation.

The duality is particularly striking at the 2026 HLPF. The forum focused on water, energy, infrastructure, cities, and global partnerships—those are the very systems whose interdependence becomes most visible when shocks arrive and tear them apart. And from conflicts to disasters, the world today is an age of disruptions.

UNICEF’s mid-2026 update on the global humanitarian situation paints a grim picture. In Gaza, around 1.9 million of 2.1 million people are displaced, while essential services remain severely disrupted. Meanwhile, repeated attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine affect hospitals, schools, households, and other essential services. In Sudan, drone attacks continue to kill civilians, damage infrastructure, and obstruct humanitarian relief. In Myanmar, more than 16 million people need humanitarian assistance as conflict and access constraints deepen vulnerability.

Additionally, the escalating climate change has been driving more frequent and more extreme natural hazards. More often than not, they become disasters as mitigation efforts remain insufficient.

The Interdependence of Tomorrow

These crises differ profoundly in their histories, actors, responsibilities, and political circumstances. They should not be collapsed into a single narrative. Yet, they reveal a common developmental reality: a crisis does not merely destroy what has already been built. It destroys the capacity to build what comes next.

A damaged power grid is more than an infrastructure loss. It can disrupt hospitals, schools, businesses, water systems, employment, and household security at once. Displacement affects poverty, hunger, health, education, decent work, inequality, and institutions simultaneously. It reminds us that the SDGs were never truly seventeen separate problems. They describe an interconnected system of conditions that make a dignified human life possible.

A child growing up with reliable electricity, functioning schools, public safety, and social protection inherits more than material advantages. That child inherits a longer horizon of possibility. Meanwhile, a child growing up amid repeated displacement or conflict inherits uncertainty itself.

Sustainable development is, therefore, not only about distributing resources more fairly. It is also about protecting the human capacity to believe that tomorrow can be planned.

Beyond Borders and Systems

Furthermore, the destruction of that capacity rarely remains confined within national borders. When food production collapses, energy routes are disrupted, infrastructure is destroyed, or millions of people are displaced, the effects spread. They move through commodity markets, migration routes, supply chains, public finances, and political systems. A crisis may be experienced locally, but its consequences are increasingly global and systemic.

That is why interdependence is not an aspiration of multilateralism. It is already a structural fact of the world economy. Climate systems ignore borders. Pandemics travel through human networks. Wars and disasters reshape food prices, shipping routes, investment decisions, and political stability far beyond where violence occurs.

The harder question is whether responsibility has matured as quickly as interdependence. Supply chains connect continents. Financial markets transmit risk within seconds. However, costs remain remarkably easy to push elsewhere: environmental damage to another community, labor vulnerability to another country, carbon emissions to another generation, and humanitarian pressures to neighbouring states.

The world has become highly sophisticated at sharing economic connections while remaining far less sophisticated at sharing responsibility for their consequences. Interdependence is a fact. Responsibility for interdependence is a measure of maturity.

Sustainable Development that Leaves No One Behind

Governments understandably pursue national priorities. Companies have commercial obligations. Financial institutions operate within mandates and risk frameworks. But sustainable development becomes impossible when every actor optimises only its own part of an interconnected system.

An energy transition that secures critical minerals while leaving producing communities more vulnerable is incomplete. An investment that generates attractive returns while undermining ecological resilience may simply convert environmental risk into future financial risk. Prosperity built by shifting social or ecological costs elsewhere does not eliminate those costs. It relocates them.

Seen in this light, “leave no one behind” is more radical than an instruction to help those who have fallen behind. It challenges the definition of progress itself. Progress cannot be judged only by how far an economy moves. It must also ask who moves with it, who pays for that movement, which risks are transferred elsewhere, and what remains for the next generation.

If the SDGs are a test of global maturity, that maturity must become visible in decisions. For instance, development finance should ask beyond whether projects generate returns, but whether they strengthen the social and ecological foundations on which those returns depend. Supply chains should be judged not only by efficiency, but by whether vulnerable communities are being asked to absorb hidden costs. Of course, reconstruction should restore roads, power plants, and buildings. But it should also restore schools, health systems, livelihoods, institutions, and confidence in the future.

Three questions should become harder to avoid: does a decision strengthen or weaken the resilience of the communities it touches? Who bears its social and environmental costs? And does it expand or narrow people’s ability to plan a future?

SDGs for the Future

As 2030 approaches, there will inevitably be scorecards. Some targets will advance; many will remain unfinished. Financing gaps will be calculated, and new frameworks proposed for the post-2030 agenda. But perhaps the more important test will resist quantification: has this journey changed the way the world understands progress? Has it expanded the circle of people whose futures matter when decisions are made?

The SDGs may ultimately be judged not only by the targets achieved, but by whether they changed our understanding of our obligations to one another. Sustainable development is not only about building a better future. It is about ensuring that more people are able to imagine themselves having one. In an increasingly interconnected world, the moral question is becoming harder to avoid: will interdependence remain merely a reality we manage, or become a responsibility we are mature enough to share?

Editor: Nazalea Kusuma

Views expressed are personal of the author.

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Setyo Budiantoro

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Setyo Budiantoro is the Manager of Economic Development Pillar at the National SDGs Secretariat of BAPPENAS and a part of Green Network Asia's Advisory Network. He is also active as a Sustainable Development Strategist at The Prakarsa, MIT Sloan IDEAS Fellow, Advisory Committee Member at Fair Finance Asia, and SDGs–ESG Expert at the Indonesian ESG Professional Association (IEPA).