UN beyond 80: An opportunity to position multilevel collaboration and urbanization to save multilateralism and sustainability
UN beyond 80: An opportunity to position multilevel collaboration and urbanization to save multilateralism and sustainability Guest blog by Yunus Arikan originally published here. The United Nations marked its 80th anniversary in 2025. Over time, numerous UN Secretaries-General have sought reforms of the UN system, but were unable to achieve more than incremental progress due to limited buy-in from Member States. This year is different. The question is no longer whether the system needs reform, but whether it can deliver significant enough reform in time. With just four years until the review of the 2030 Agenda, the negotiations on what comes next will shape not only the future of sustainability, but also the credibility of the multilateral system itself. In a world shaped by overlapping crises – armed conflict, climate, biodiversity, inequality, and technological disruption – the gap between global commitments and real-world delivery is becoming almost impossible to ...