The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were formulated in 2015 by the United Nations to improve human health and achieve sustainable existence at a global level. Failure to reach the SDGs will cause not only increased morbidity and mortality worldwide but also a depletion of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and irreversible climate warming. Apart from structural and financial barriers, human behavioral reluctance to implement the SDGs is a major challenge. We narratively reviewed and analyzed such behavioral barriers from an evolutionary perspective. One potential explanation of the reluctance to implement the SDGs might be evolved behavioral predispositions that are not consistent with modern, indirectly perceivable threats such as pandemics and climate change. Furthermore, human cooperative behavior did not evolve for long-term cooperation on a global scale. To improve the implementation of the SDGs, it is necessary to develop strategies that are consistent with evolved human behavioral traits.
Policy implications
- The human tendency to collaborate should be reinforced, such as stronger interconnections between the SDGs and the involved stakeholders at all stages.
- Extreme solutions might tend to fail in application, while moderate recommendations might have a better chance for success. SDGs should therefore be consistent with regional and culturally feasible steps and with according evolved human behavioral features.
- SDG policies should make use of innate human needs and responses, such as short-term and individual incentives, and peer-group influences. Different approaches should be applied for high income countries and low-income countries in order to be more successful in achieving their goals.
- Peer-group effects such as prestige-bias (to imitate the behavior of an individual perceived as successful) and conformity-bias (to copy the most common behavior in the neighborhood) should be used purposefully in public campaigns to create spillover-effects to achieve behavioral change at the population level.
- Educational equity can help to reach health equity. The mitigation of social gradients in societies might help to reduce rule-breakers and non-compliers.
- Trade-offs, barriers, and feedbacks of adaptations to new policy environments should be documented in order to learn and improve implementation.
Photo by Fino Tereno