The Secretary-General’s First Test Is Post-2030
Preparing the UN for what comes next
Built for a Different Flood
In 2024, floodwater tore through southern Brazil so fast that in one town a horse ended up stranded on a rooftop.
That was the image Next Generation Fellow Renata Koch Alvarenga brought with her to the We the Peoples Global Leadership Awards in New York.
Around it, she described a familiar pattern of modern crisis: the water rose faster than government systems could move, so people moved first. Neighbors loaded trucks with food and water. Volunteers drove toward the disaster. Young people stepped in to support the most vulnerable, especially girls and women facing violence in shelters and lacking basic supplies. When the flooding receded, communities rebuilt one block at a time.
What stayed with her was not only the scale of the disaster, but also what it revealed about systems built for a different era. The flood walls had been constructed after the great flood of 1941. They held for decades. Then they failed. As Renata put it, they were “built in a different world from today.”
The same, she argued, is true of many international institutions. “The United Nations was born in that world,” she said. “To hold back a different flood.”
For Renata, the question is whether these institutions can still hold up against the conditions they now face. This may be the next Secretary-General’s first real test.
The Post-2030 Question Is Already Here
It may not be one war, one summit, or one headline crisis.
It may be whether the UN can prepare itself for the transition already underway: from the unfinished business of the Sustainable Development Goals to the argument about what comes after them; from a system built for one era of risk to one that can function against the unknown risks of the future.
That is what “post-2030” means. It is the conversation about the next global development agenda after the SDGs expire in 2030. It is not only a question of new goals. It is a question of how the world designs a process credible enough to learn from what worked, confront what failed, and guide the decisions, investments, and accountability needed for whatever comes next.
And that future isn’t as far away as it may seem. Post-2030 may have once felt like a distant policy conversation, but as conversations at this year’s ECOSOC Youth Forum made clear, it’s the next phase that the next Secretary-General will be asked to help shape.
Across ECOSOC week, the Next Generation Fellows helped drive two conversations that are often treated separately but are now colliding.
On April 14, aYouth Dialogue with Member States on the next Secretary-General created an early opportunity for governments to hear directly from young people before the formal candidate process moved ahead. The stakes were made clear: the selection is happening at a moment of transition for the multilateral system, shaped by rising geopolitical tension, declining trust in institutions, and demographic change.
On April 16, a dialogue unfolded between ministers and young leaders that put an even blunter question on the table: what comes next? The final SDG Summit in 2027 will act as a bridge between the 2030 Agenda and whatever follows it, urging governments to start thinking ahead – not just to what they will prioritize after 2030, but also what they will need to put in place first.
The Fellows carried the April 16 conversation forward in the letter they later sent to the ECOSOC President. Writing directly from the logic of that discussion, they argued that the 2027 ECOSOC Youth Forum should help “shape how the post-2030 conversation begins.”
They also proposed a different role for the Forum itself: it should be designed “less as a showcase and more as a working bridge to the High-Level Political Forum (the UN’s main platform for reviewing SDG progress) and the SDG Summit.” In other words, to turn the ECOSOC Youth Forum into an institutional next step — a short, usable output that could travel into the 2027 HLPF and SDG Summit in a form Member States can use.
Ready the System for What Comes Next
That is why post-2030 may be the next Secretary-General’s first serious test. The office will not define the next global agenda alone, a sentiment stated plainly by the Fellows in their letter to the ECOSOC President.
The next Secretary-General’s role is “not to define the post-2030 settlement, but to help ready the system for it.”
That means asking practical questions early.
Who gets heard before the agenda is negotiated?
How does public input travel into formal UN processes? How do governments avoid repeating consultation exercises that generate energy but little influence? How are young people, especially from young countries, involved before options are locked in? How does the UN bring evidence, foresight, financing, and delivery lessons into the same conversation? And how does the system make sure whatever comes next is not only more inclusive, but more effective?
This is a more disciplined way to think about leadership. The next SG does not need to arrive with a finished blueprint for the future. But they do need to ready the system before the outcomes are decided. That means helping Member States lead and create a process that is early enough to shape, open enough to hear from people beyond the usual rooms, structured enough to turn input into decisions, and honest enough to confront where the SDGs have fallen short with tangible ideas and solutions.
The Fellows’ own reflections emphasize that point.
António Pinho said it succinctly: “young people are not stepping away from global institutions. They are asking them to evolve.” He shared that the future of multilateralism will depend on “how seriously institutions are willing to share power, rebuild trust, and create real pathways for youth perspectives to shape decision-making.” He also made the timing question impossible to dodge:
“The conversation on what comes next cannot wait until after 2030.”
Renata Koch Alvarenga described this as the first ECOSOC Youth Forum where she felt “most connected to the conversations shaping the future of multilateralism.”
What made the difference, she said, was being “in the rooms where key decisions are discussed,” in direct exchange with senior UN leadership and Member States on the future of the Secretary-General’s role and the direction of global governance. That is more than just attendance, it is proximity to the places where decisions are actually being made.
Desiree Junfijiah pushed the argument furthest. Reflecting on three events across the Forum said that they forced her to think more seriously about “what it actually means to build institutions that serve the future.” She shared a reflection that should by heard by anyone thinking about the next phase of multilateralism:
“The one action I’d call for in the next 12 months? Create real spaces for youth to fail.”
Her point was not rhetorical. It came from her own attempts to break into AI policy, where she kept running into the same barriers: “the world accelerates, resources stay concentrated, and the cost of being wrong falls hardest on those who already had the least runway.” In that setting, she shared, “innovation cannot be unlocked in a scarcity environment where failure is treated as disqualifying rather than formative.”
That may be the boldest idea to come out of the Fellows’ work this April.
A credible post-2030 transition will require more than consultation. It will require institutions that can absorb unfinished ideas, make room for experimentation, and enable the next generation to shape processes before outcomes become fixed. That means testing proposals before they become negotiated text, showing what public input changed, and giving Member States usable options rather than another long consultation report.
Adapt Before Pressure Becomes Failure
That is what gives the ECOSOC letter its weight. It argues not only that young people should be included in conversations about the future of post-2030, but that the next phase will be more credible if it begins early, under Member State leadership, with a process open enough to absorb public input, but structured enough to turn it into real action.
Renata’s closing line at the We the Peoples Awards now lands with even more gravitas:
"This is not about finding one person to save the world.
It is about choosing someone who can move the world to act.”
That is why the Secretary-General’s first test is post-2030. Not because one person will design the future alone. But because the office can help determine whether the system enters that transition with enough honesty, openness, and discipline to make the next phase more credible than the last.
The flood walls in southern Brazil held until they no longer matched the world pressing against them. The warning in Renata’s story was simple: adaptation delayed becomes adaptation forced.
The question for the UN is whether the next Secretary-General helps the system learn before pressure becomes failure. It rests on whether the people closest to the future are brought in early enough to help shape what comes next.
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