The SDG Pulse: May 2025
Place-based Innovation and it’s National Security Implications
Without resilient communities, the United States will be ill-equipped to safeguard against great power competitors in the future. Leveraging place-based innovation policy could transform historically underserved, left-behind communities across the nation into resilient centers of innovation and stability. Common ingredients for successful place-based innovation include strong local leadership, anchor institutions, innovation hubs, and public-private partnerships — all critical elements of PDPX's approach.
Photo: NewUrbanism
From Saving Buildings to Building Resilience
Preservation and sustainability can work hand in hand to embed sustainability, drive economic development, strengthen neighborhoods, and provide practical solutions to the biggest challenges cities face. A recent report advocates for a reframing of preservation to being more people-centered in its approach. Such a shift would enable preservation to become a tool for resilience, help address the climate crisis, expand affordable housing, and promote economic stability.
Mel Evans / AP Photo
Cracking the Climate Apathy Code
In a groundbreaking new study, scientists found that emotionally resonant, hyper-local data can help cut through climate apathy. By visualizing disappearing frozen lakes—an indicator many people have a personal, seasonal connection to—researchers noticed a measurable increase in public concern and willingness to act. The study highlights the power of connecting global climate issues to familiar, tangible experiences. Instead of overwhelming people with abstract doom, well-framed local impacts can foster understanding, urgency, and even hope. This offers a valuable communication strategy for climate advocates struggling to inspire engagement across ideologies or generations.
Energy Transitions Need Complexity—Here’s How to Manage It
This report advocates for a holistic approach to just transition, one that examines interdependencies and tradeoffs embedded in solutions head on. The dominant narratives around climate solutions should be challenged to ensure the benefits continue to outweigh the costs. This can be done through a multidimensional framework that investigates the problems embedded in current solutions without undermining the urgency of or commitment to climate action.
The Dark Side of the Energy Transition: A Human Rights Reckoning
As the demand for transition minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel surges, so too do reports of human rights abuses linked to their extraction. A recent analysis reveals a disturbing rise in violations—ranging from forced displacement to child labor—by companies supplying renewable energy industries. The findings challenge the “green” credentials of clean tech and raise urgent questions about accountability in the global supply chain. Without enforceable safeguards and greater transparency, the path to decarbonization risks replicating the same extractive injustices that have long defined fossil fuel exploitation. A just transition demands scrutiny not just of outcomes, but of methods.
Source: Winnod/Shutterstock
Beyond USAID: Plugging a $200M Hole in Global Sustainability Funding
Beyond humanitarian aid, USAID was also the leading provider of foreign aid across the spectrum of sustainable development, partnering with major private companies to advance solutions from agriculture to energy to waste management. The agency's dissolution means enormous disruption for efforts to integrate sustainability into global supply chains and emerging markets, with a loss of investment of about $200 million in matching funds per year through vital private-public partnership mechanisms. There is a growing opportunity for innovative blended financing partnerships, which allow companies to partner with public capital to de-risk their sustainability investments in emerging markets, to help meet this deficit. Private-private and cross-industry collaboration around sustainability solutions at various points in the supply chain will also be key.
Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media via AP
A New Pope, an Urgent Call for Climate Justice
On May 8, the Catholic Church elected Robert Francis Prevost as its first American leader, and there is hope that he will continue Pope Francis' legacy of advocating for environmental stewardship and just transition. Pope Leo has spoken in support of Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si, which laid out the Catholic case not just for climate action but for climate justice. In November, he took it even further, advocating for a more reciprocal relationship with the environment and stressing that it is time for the world to move from "words to actions" in combating climate change. The Peace Department helped bring the Ten Principles of Climate Repentance to fruition, long acknowledging the important role faith plays in bringing climate resilience and hope to structurally disadvantaged communities most impacted by climate change.
Embracing Circular Economy to Address Overtourism
A circular economy offers a promising framework for transforming urban areas into more sustainable ecosystems that minimize waste, optimize the use of resources, and enhance the well-being of residents and visitors alike. For cities like Venice, which are grappling with the pressures of overtourism, embracing circularity offers a way to reimagine tourism not merely as an economic activity, but as a sustainable, value-driven system that benefits all stakeholders.
