Do you agree that 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets are too many, too ambiguous and way unrealistic? Probably yes maybe not. You might be in the camp of sustainability experts like Bjorn Lomborg and his colleagues at Copenhagen Consensus Center who suggest that focusing development on a simple list of 19 targets would outperform anticipated results from all the existing 169 targets. Or, just like me, you might find views from experts like May Miller-Dawkins as quite relatable. May argues that the SDGs were specifically designed to cover the complexity of the sprawling agenda of sustainable development, therefore, our concerns shouldn’t be about practicality and achievability but on experimentation with new innovative approaches to SDGs implementation.It is now a widely accepted concept in the global community that achieving the ambitious 2030 agenda for sustainable development requires new innovation pathways that are not only socio-economically inclusive but also ecologically benign. This is a hot issue, especially, in Africa where a rapid shift in innovation landscape has been recently witnessed. New sustainable ideas are being conceived at an increasing pace both in the formal and informal organizations across the continent. This is especially true with my experience at the leadership of Kenya Climate Innovation Center where more than 200 innovative ideas have been brought into the foreground of sustainable development in Kenya.
By: Edward Mungai
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