A Case for Compassion in Sustainable Development Goals
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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, Tavia Gilbert, and along with journalist Richard Sergay, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing.

I'm really excited to be back with the opening episode in our fourth year of programming. And I want to start with my deep gratitude for you, our listeners, for Templeton World Charity Foundation, which makes this podcast and the research projects it features possible, and for the scientists we feature in every story of impact.

These innovative thinkers constantly search for deeper knowledge about tools humans can use to create thriving lives centered in connection, meaning, and purpose. And I love telling their stories and sharing them with you. And I'm pleased that today's episode includes a friend of the podcast, Dr. David Addis, who listeners will remember from an emotional episode last year about the role of compassion in healthcare.

Dr. Addis is back for another evocative discussion about compassion, and he's joined by his research colleagues Heather Bissler, Dr. Liz Grant, and Dr. Corin Reed. In today's conversation, these four public health experts discuss their research findings around the role of compassion in the international effort to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

What are the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs? The adoption of these global goals dates back to September 2015, when the United Nations formally embraced a resolution titled "Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development." It was a plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity.

The resolution outlined a commitment to spending the following 15 years, through 2030, engaging in cooperative international efforts to achieve a better planetary future across health, infrastructure, finance, environment, equality. 17 sectors in all. Why did the United Nations General Assembly develop the goals eight years ago?

Dr. Liz Grant, University of Edinburgh Assistant Principal and Professor and Director of the Global Health Academy, shares what led to the UN members' ambition. Dr. Grant takes us back to what the UN members were thinking about and responding to. There are multiple crises going on in the world at the same time. We've got a planetary health crisis,

So biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution destroying our very planet. We've got a societal crisis of conflict.

Across the globe of economic crisis with the cost of living in every country, sort of a global economic crisis. We've also got a cyber security crisis going on, which is creating fear across. And alongside those two collections of crisis, there's a third set of crisis, which are a health crisis. We're just health metrics right across with inequity and with this fear of poverty.

future pandemics. So in 2015, 193 nations came together after a good few years of work to put forward 17 goals that would provide a blueprint of a new world, a world where poverty was eradicated, where there was food for everyone,

where water was clean, where we weren't raiding the Earth's systems and destroying the planetary boundaries. The Sustainable Development Goals are for every nation, recognising that every country needs to embed sustainable thinking, sustainable practice into the way the country functions and flourishes. So we're halfway through now, we're more than halfway through,

They have targets and indicators for every goal. And while they're separate, the last goal, goal 17, is a goal about partnership. So it's about saying to develop the goals, we have to work together. We have to fund the goals together. We have to understand what being connected means. But unless you meet all of them, you can't meet one of them. They are so interconnected.

Heather Bissler, Senior Compassion Advisor at the Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics, a project at the Task Force for Global Health, says that the goals were also… A recognition of planetary suffering, of human suffering, and articulating how that shows up in the world.

Public health expert Dr. David Addis, director of that focus area for compassion and ethics, adds: "Sustainable development goals address specific forms of human suffering: poverty, disease, inequities. And the sustainable development goals are a systematic attempt to describe those forms of suffering

the factors that contribute to it, and the factors that can be brought together to alleviate those causes of suffering. Dr. Addis believes that compassion is inherent in the goals, and that compassion should be centered in every discussion and decision about how the SDGs are met.

So I see the Sustainable Development Goals as an expression of compassion and an attempt to deliver compassion in very tangible forms to alleviate specific forms of human suffering. I don't know all the details about how to bring compassion into the conversation. I think the first step is actually making the statement that compassion is an essential ingredient in the success

of the Sustainable Development Goals. What is it about the virtue of compassion that makes it an essential ingredient for transformative action? Compassion is a dynamic force, says Dr. Corinne Reed,

Professorial Fellow at the Global Health Academy at the University of Edinburgh. Contrary to popular view that compassion is just about warmth, I think it really gives you a clear-eyed focus on what needs to be done. And I think that's easily lost when the scale of the challenge is as large as the SDGs are. So compassion really commits us to thinking through from beginning to end

both the nature of the challenge, the inevitable impediments along the way, the scale of the task in overcoming the challenge,

what will be required of us personally and collectively to address those challenges. And it's an activating force in that way, that there are not many things that can drive us to think outside of ourselves and our own needs for long enough to see through a commitment to a challenge of global scale.

in the way that is required for the SDGs. And compassion is one of the few things, I think, that can pull us outside of ourselves for long enough and persistently enough to make that journey. It's the engine room, if you like, of change. Dr. Addis has the same idea. I see compassion more as the engine, the motivation, the source

than a particular tool. I see our many tools, whether it's a stethoscope or a surgeon's knife or a latrine, those are the tools of compassion. They're the manifestations of compassion. Dr. Grant offers her understanding of what compassion is and why it's so important. So compassion isn't pity. Compassion isn't just kindness or being nice. I use Monica Warline and Jane Dutton's definition of compassion.

And they talk about compassion being a four-part process. Being able to notice suffering, to interpret it, to understand what is driving the suffering, how does it happen? And then this fourth component, to take action to alleviate suffering. So to notice is something quite significant. It's to look beyond our own assumptions and see what is there.

It's feeling sorrow, feeling together an engagement, a sense that there is this suffering that someone else is experiencing actually is part of a suffering that I can enter into or experience if they allow me or if a system allows. The taking action to alleviate suffering is very much taking these three parts and saying it's not enough, it's not good enough. And to be honest, if you see, notice, interpret suffering

to suffering. You can do no other than take action to alleviate suffering. I am very happy with that definition of the four parts because I think it creates that sense of movement, adding into it the essence of being together. Often we can focus on the suffering but forget that the art of compassion is working together with, as opposed to

doing to people or speaking at people or trying to help

It's about being together to make a change. So that, for me, that definition encompassed or wrapped around with a strong sense of togetherness holds for compassion. Dr Reid agrees with Dr Grant's definition. So action is a very essential part of compassion. It's one thing to be concerned and to be empathic, but there has to be that action element and it has to be a willingness to

to show fierce determination in pursuing what is an equitable goal by walking alongside another. So it's not pity, it's not about doing something to or for somebody else. Despite agreement about the definition of compassion between these four researchers, there is no one universal answer to the question, what is compassion, says Dr. Addis.

And that lack of clarity can create a lack of focus. Different disciplines and even within disciplines, there are different definitions of compassion. One way of looking at compassion is it's a human response to suffering that seeks to alleviate that suffering. You could call it empathy plus action, action to alleviate suffering. I also think of compassion as what love does in the presence of suffering.

But there are also neuroscience indicators. There are brain imaging techniques that allow you to look at the neural pathways of compassion and certain parts of the brain light up when someone is experiencing compassion. So there's a lot of different ways to get at compassion. And what we lack is a universally validated measure of compassion in different settings.

Bissler will not allow her work in compassionate global health to be disrupted by the fact that there's no singularly validated definition or measure of compassion. She says, I really do see it show up as similar throughout the world. I think how it's talked about may be different. But if we can get over the semantics and the precise translation of the word compassion,

When you really begin to explore what it means and how people embody it, to me, that's really where it begins to embody more of a universal value. I believe it has a re-energizing effect.

And those who are committed to reimagining and rebuilding a better world, especially alleviating suffering through health care, need to be energized, says Bissler. The most important step when it comes to compassion is taking action. And here again is, you know, what the SDGs are doing. They've outlined the goals, the actions that we need to take in order to alleviate that suffering.

And I mean, for these reasons, this is how we are really moving forward and recentering compassion within global health, which is also a discipline that really identifies suffering in the world and is taking actions in order to alleviate it. Can we see ourselves in another's shoes and how it affects them and relate to it ourselves? We need to understand the drivers of this suffering. We need to understand its consequences and really lay out a pathway to address them.

Even though the 2030 Agenda identified targets to alleviate suffering nearly a decade ago, Dr. Grant says something fundamental in the work is missing. In fact, even with all the skill and resource that went into the creation of the plan, she believes that the entire plan needs to return its focus to the human connection and empathy that were at its heart, or the plan risks failure. We have the knowledge, the technology,

But something's happening. We're not doing this. We are like watching, moving towards a cliff edge. And we can see the cliff and we know what's below. And we know that what's below, if we go over it, is disaster. And yet there's a sort of just a continual march towards it. The reason I think compassion is so important is that the bit that seems missing in the SDGs is this fundamental survival piece about care.

If we cared enough about each other, if we cared about what's happening, not just to me and my family or not just to you and your family here or not just to the people in the US or not just to the people in one country or another country, but if we cared what was happening in every country, if we cared what was happening to the planet, then we would make progress.

some difference. We would take action. The other thing that relates compassion to the SDGs is that behind every goal there's suffering. We don't think about it like that and I'm part of that whole community who speak about the stats, the figures, the indicators, the targets, but actually all of them behind them are people who are suffering. People who have no food. Malnutrition is about not having enough food to live.

Malnutrition, undernutrition means that children die. Poor health means that people scream in pain. People live their lives in agony. The climate crisis is meaning that thousands, millions are being displaced over the next while, losing everything they have. It's that level of suffering. And I think we have to be brought back to think about that, to take the actions that are necessary.

Compassion has not been at the forefront of the multinational effort to revolutionize the 17 sectors identified as those demanding transformation. The 17 global goals included...

No poverty. Zero hunger. Good health and well-being. Quality education. Gender equality. Clean water and sanitation. Affordable and clean energy. Decent work and economic growth. Industry, innovation, and infrastructure. Reduced inequalities. Sustainable cities and communities. Responsible consumption and production.

Climate action, life below water, life on land, peace, justice, and strong institutions, and the final key sector, partnerships for the goals. The word compassion is nowhere in the document that lays out the Sustainable Development Goals.

But the goals wouldn't have come into being without compassion, says Dr Grant. It was compassion that allowed the SDGs to happen. 193 countries came together, not just for the good of each and every single country, not putting a country ahead of another, but saying that across the world, we, the peoples, needed to work together. So compassion enabled the SDGs to work.

I would argue, come into being. That sense that we care enough about each other and we care enough about the world. Where and how specifically does the team imagine compassion could be reincorporated into the global goals? I think that we need compassion in every one of the SDGs. You may say, well, in the health SDG, that seems an obvious place. In education, it seems an obvious place. In employability. But actually...

I think this is about designing with compassion and for compassion. If we design for compassion for every SDG, then we bring together an opportunity to create a new type of world together. Dr. Addis adds, If we were to connect with compassion as a core motivation for even articulating the Sustainable Development Goals and trying to achieve them,

it would connect us to the essential human nature of those goals. And it may help us think more creatively. It may help us become aware of forms of suffering and barriers to achieving those goals that we might not otherwise be able to achieve.

Compassion can help build bridges and can help us connect with others, which opens a sense of creativity and collaboration that is often lost when we're jockeying for position and trying to achieve goals. I think compassion can provide a leavening force, a spaciousness for us to find more creative and effective ways of working together.

Compassion can be the central activating force of every global goal, says Dr. Addis. I believe it plays a part in all of them. I would point to several where it's particularly evident. SDG 3, healthcare, seems obvious to me as a physician and healthcare provider. Poverty also requires compassion. If we didn't have compassion, we wouldn't be concerned about alleviating poverty and its related suffering.

The Sustainable Development Goal on reducing equities, I think, is important. Another Sustainable Development Goal that I think we might not associate with compassion is Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. We had a webinar a few months ago with colleagues in the World Health Organization and elsewhere whose job it is to provide sanitation and hygiene to communities that need it.

And it was fascinating to hear them speak eloquently about the role of compassion in animating their work. That what they were delivering wasn't just clean water, or it wasn't just a sanitary place to go to the bathroom. It was actually providing human dignity. And they were surprised themselves

at discovering how compassion was a common motivating force for this work that is very technical and very basic. So I think that compassion influences all of these, and if we had an opportunity to speak with the people who were engaged in addressing the Sustainable Development Goals, each one of them, we would find compassion at the core of their motivation.

Bissler says, I think it's critically important to connect compassion to the SDGs because when we do, we can also see how each of the SDGs, which cover sectors as diverse from poverty, economic development, global health, education, life on land, life on water, peace.

It helps us to understand how all of this suffering essentially is interconnected. We can't achieve educational goals if we're not also achieving gender equality goals, health goals, goals around poverty and nutrition. You can imagine the complexity of an effort involving almost 200 competing economies, cultures, and politics to address systems as massive as these. It was never going to be easy.

But eight years later, what's gotten lost in all the work that's gone into this effort so far, says Dr. Grant and her colleagues, is that core element of compassionate motivation, the very element that matters most. We somehow, in our investment in the technologies, in the science, in understanding what we need to do, in the rush to meet the targets and the indicators, we have left out again the

This sense of connection, this sense of being together, this sense of actually working for each other. Dr. Reid agrees unequivocally that compassion must be returned to the core of the multinational effort. If global citizens have any chance of achieving the 2030 agenda, to transform our world and ensure a future for humanity and all life forms on Earth, her assessment of the effort so far...

To date, it has been really about trying to define a framework for capturing what that necessary process is like as a bedrock for sharing with others. There's an immense amount of busy work that's going on for the SDGs in all sorts of places.

Really, this is an opportunity for us to stop together as a global academic village, as a global village of concerned citizens and of practitioners, and to rethink that prioritising of economic models, of technological models, and to recentre the endeavour on a human model that is

that is very much driven by our shared collective concern for the future, a compassionate concern for the future, but also a compassionate inaction approach so that it's not just sitting and thinking and feeling together, but it's really understanding that for a compassionate outcome, we need to have that fierce determination to seek compassionate actions and to pursue and to see it through to the end.

in the absence of those human chains of action that are driven by a shared connection and commitment to caring and compassion, then we have a missing piece and we will continue to fall short of the 2030 goals.

Bissler agrees that this is key to ensuring the success of the goals. It's not going to be a technical solution that's going to get there. This is a human solution. Compassion is something that is innate within all humans. It's already something that lives within all of us, which means that essentially it's a solution that is

immediately scalable. And if we just recognize it and really harness it to do the technical work that we know we can all do, I think it can really help us get there faster. Dr. Addis says that his own experience in public health offers him insight into how UN members could have lost the sense of urgency that drove their commitment to the agenda.

He understands how addressing the suffering of humans might start to feel routine, disconnected, and bureaucratic. One of the things that we struggle with in healthcare, and particularly in global health, is that the work itself can become quite mechanical.

We're trained in certain techniques. We're trained to hear a set of symptoms and offer a diagnosis. In global health, we're trained to develop programs to address certain causes of suffering. It's very easy as we get busier and busier doing those mechanical things, which themselves are an expression of compassion.

We get caught up in the mechanics and we forget why we're doing this. We forget that essential human element. And that's where compassion can come in to help us remember why are we here? Can we pause and establish a connection, a personal connection?

In a sense, it's a paradigm shift. In a sense, it's always been the basic motivation. But we've lost our way as the systems have become for-profit, technologically oriented, and particularly with COVID and all the challenges that brought.

So in a sense, we're talking about remembering why we're here and then questioning the foundations of why things are so mechanical. Can we change the system in ways that makes it easier to come back to that essential compassionate impulse? So how can people keep vital work, like achieving the SDGs, from becoming mechanical?

Again, Dr. Addis answers that by drawing a parallel to his experience in public health. It means connecting, connecting as human beings. We all suffer. And one of the things that we are taught in medical school is to ignore our own suffering. And in many ways, that comes in handy when we're up on a all-night shift and we have to attend to someone who needs our help.

But as a daily habit and a yearly habit that just accumulates over time, we become out of touch with our own humanness. We see ourselves as the fixer, as the person who's there to serve. Rather than establish a communication, we become caught up in the role of helper.

And we lose touch again with we are human and we need the human connection with ourselves and with our patients and our colleagues.

Addis Bissler, Grant, and Reed made a public case for compassion to be centered in the remaining years of work before 2030. They collaborated on writing a piece titled, A Compassion Narrative for the Sustainable Development Goals, Conscious and Connected Action, which was published in the respected medical journal, The Lancet, in summer 2022.

The Lancet article made the case that compassion is at the core of the SDGs, that in a sense we've lost our way. We have focused on the mechanical aspects of achieving those goals, which are absolutely necessary, but we've lost this essential human connection

And that has allowed us to overlook forms of suffering. And essentially, it was a call to open our hearts and our minds for the reality of compassion at the core of sustainable development goals and to bring compassion into our conversations and dialogue and planning so that we can try to achieve them. What was the response to their call to action?

Dr Reid says, "Every time we start to have this conversation with other researchers or practitioners or community members that we work with, there is a shared aha moment of that's it, that's right. Yes, we've lost the human part of this. We've lost the power of human compassion along the way. We've got very caught up in the day-to-day, in ticking the boxes, in making sure that we follow the checklist.

But we've somehow along the way become siloed in doing that and disconnected from one another, disconnected from the larger purpose, but also disconnected from the criticality of that lens, of that compassionate lens. So designing, co-designing systems that really are about understanding

developing compassionate partnerships at all levels of the system and also how to engender within a system compassionate chains of human action so that it's not just an individual working away at their desk trying to progress things, but it's a chain of human action that is connected up foundationally by compassion.

What if that chain of human action never becomes foundationally connected by compassion? And that undermines the achievement of the goals? What if the goals fail? Dr. Grant answers: So the implication of not meeting the goals is hugely serious. We are in the process of crossing a red line for a planet that will implode. Now that sounds very Armageddon-like and fearful,

But there is a recognition that if the SDGs are not met, the reason they're not being met is because we're not putting the care that we need into each one of them, the care for people that we need. So the implications for compassion are that we've got to make compassion something that's not seen as an added extra, but that it's seen as the driver of

of life. It is the survival mechanism. Darwin actually talked about compassion, he used the word sympathy, but as you describe it, it's that sense of connectedness together. He said it's that that has enabled the human race to survive. It's the one thing also that all of us have. It's the one free thing, the one component, the one way of being that we can all practice and

without anything additional. And then a world which is breaking and out of balance to come into balance again in ourselves and with each other in that togetherness is absolutely imperative at this point. Is it realistic to imagine that the member nations will reprioritise? That they will reassess and centre compassion over the coming years of work?

Dr. Grant doesn't believe it will be easy to gain the buy-in of people in power, but she does think it's possible. I think it's realistic because it's not a cost mechanism. It doesn't need financial regulation. It doesn't need funding. It needs leaders to come together to make that call, to say, "We care enough about each other."

We care enough about how each of these SDGs are impacting on people and planet. It also requires, I think, business leaders to speak up about compassion, to say this matters, that in the world where money has become the goal or in the world where we have become in service to the economy, we've got to stand back and say, what would it be like to have the economy

what shapes and changes the very social fabric of who we are, how we live, to be in service of humanity and have those global assets that are our health and our education and the way we live, to have those shared for every day. Because if they were,

then we all would benefit. Now, how do you do that when you're up against leaders who are destructive rather than constructive? I don't have a good answer other than recognising that compassion in action shows us that a world is very different or could be very different.

Re-centering compassion would reinvigorate the remaining years of work on the Sustainable Development Goals. It would re-prioritize collaboration, cooperation and community. It would allow for greater meaning and purpose. I think it would put people in the forefront again. It would change this conundrum of what do we value in life and the values of our lives. It would, I hope, help people

changed the way that we made political decisions, that we made economic decisions to deliver to the SDGs. So it would give us a more rounded, holistic view. You know, oddly, we're coming to that anyway, because with thinking about the climate crisis, there's such a movement now to actually think, what are the co-benefits if we invest in

tackling the climate crisis, could that also enable us to invest in reducing poverty, in alternative energy systems, in new employability, in improving health gains? So there is, in a way, I think, a movement that is around co-benefits, win-wins, that has at its heart compassion.

Even within such a detailed document as the 2030 Agenda, with 169 targets across the 17 sectors, there's not much guidance about how to achieve any kind of partnership at all, even though that's key to the Agenda's success. So this team of four global health researchers hopes that their understanding of the importance of compassion and the role of partnerships can help fill that leadership gap.

SDG 17 is focused on partnerships as being core to the means of implementation of all of the other SDGs. But it's pretty silent on the way of working to develop strong partnerships. It's very much a transactional statement about needing more people in the room because of the scale of

of the task. And I guess what we are bringing to this conversation is that in fact, those partnerships need to be courageous partnerships. They cannot be transactional partnerships. It won't be adequate for the scale of the problem. And so defining the nature of those partnerships is our entry point here and that compassion is the thing.

more than anything else, that drives powerful partnerships, that develops that potent social architecture, if you like, that is the heartbeat of significant change. UN members who set the goals were aware of how much the final sector, SDG 17, Partnerships for the Goals, would impact whether or not the goals could be achieved.

Dr. Reid says that not only do members need to be reminded of their compassion, but they need to understand that thriving partnerships are compassionate, and it is only through thriving partnerships that the SDGs will be realized. Compassion is inherently relational. It presupposes that all solutions will involve you and another.

that there is a sense of caring and connection for the other that is inherent to the idea of compassion. Whereas our traditional models very much have the minimum unit of consideration as the individual. It's your individual KPIs. Have you individually met your goals? Have you individually fulfilled whatever it is that you've committed to fulfill? So the priority of all those working to meet the Sustainable Development Goals should be

How do you create a culture within partnerships that identifies, nourishes, promotes, recognises and celebrates compassion as an activating force from the beginning of a project through co-design, through implementation to the end and also through to the legacy of the project. Compassion is going to be an important part of the legacy of the project so that future...

Community challenges will have a resource, a human resource that is part of the legacy. After today's discussion, I hope you're inspired to think about the role of compassion in your own life, family, and community. I am. So we'll be back in two weeks with the second half of our conversation with Dr. Addis, Dr. Reed, Dr. Grant, and Heather Bissler about the power of compassion to help each one of us thrive as human beings.

A quick announcement before we conclude. Templeton World Charity Foundation is sponsoring its second annual Global Flourishing Conference on November 29th and 30th. And the call for abstracts is now open with a deadline of Friday, September 15th. TWCF invites abstracts from researchers, scientists, economists,

entrepreneurs, educators, philosophers, technologists, theologians, activists, policymakers, and other stakeholders with a keen interest in human flourishing research and innovation. The conference will award 10 prizes of $1,000 each to top-scoring abstracts, as determined by the independent jury. You can find more information at humanflourishing.org forward slash abstracts.

If you enjoy the stories we share with you on the podcast, please follow us and rate and review us. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and at storiesofimpact.org. And be sure to sign up for the TWCF newsletter at templetonworldcharity.org.

This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with Richard Sergei and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by TalkBox Productions and Tavia Gilbert. Senior producer Katie Flood. Music by Alexander Filipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michelle Cobb. The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.