Matt Berkley

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15m

Greta Thunberg may be more right than she realises on politicians' "blah". My research shows that the history of UN goals is a history of: - misleading the public on what goals have been agreed, - misleading the public on the evidence for progress, and - in effect distracting from accountability on existing goals by pointing to new distant ones. It's also important to recognise the context within which politicians operate. I have been surprised at the extent of failures among academics, journalists, lawyers and charities to report properly what UN goals are or challenge politicians' versions of events. Worse, universities and school examination boards, for example, have simply repeated propaganda versions when what the UN resolutions actually say is quite clear. This is in addition to, for example, the BBC, New York Times, the Lancet and so on giving a range of unconvincing excuses not to correct their erroneous claims about the baseline for pledges in the Millennium Declaration. The "transformative" Agenda 2030 in fact includes putting back water and sanitation goals from 2020 and 2025 (Least Developed Countries Programme and Agenda 21) while UN reports have simply omitted progress on the existing goals - even while member states go on "reaffirming" the conference outcomes which include them. a