The UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM):
A Civil Society Guide for Action
ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration)
October 2016
We need technology assessment if we want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals
In September 2015, UN Member States adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These seventeen goals outline an ambitious plan to address the world’s most urgent challenges before 2030, including ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, and combatting climate change and protecting ecosystems. In the SDGs, technology is understood as a cross-cutting means of implementation that is essential to achieving the SDGs (and the broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development).(1) Technology is referenced frequently throughout the Goals—13 of the 17 SDGs specifically mention that technological innovation will play a vital part in solving each development challenge.
- The other three means of implementation are financing, capacity building, and global partnership. It is important to remember that the 2030 Agenda, the SDGs, and the means of implementation are considered “universal, indivisible, and interlinked”: the SDGs cannot be achieved without means of implementation, and means of implementation must not compromise any of the SDGs.