Summary
The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) are a framework of personal skills and qualities that its authors believe people and organisations need if the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are to be met. It began in Sweden in 2020 with the Ekskäret Foundation, 29k and The New Division, whose founding report describes “a blind spot in our efforts to create a sustainable global society”. The 2021 version, built from surveys of over a thousand people, lists 23 skills in five dimensions: Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating and Acting. A 2025 guide has 25.
Critics say it treats change as individual self-improvement and overlooks systems and culture. The report admits a probable Western bias.
Rationale
We share its starting point, that policy and technology aren’t enough, but not its remedy. Individual skills pass over Part 1’s point that dispositions “are held in place by many different aspects of our lives”.