COP31 in Antalya: 17 goals, and one enabling goal
COP31 opened today in Antalya, Türkiye. Leadership Is Learnable proposes one enabling goal under the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals: develop leaders at every level, so commitments become results.
By Dr Craig R. Muller, founder of Big Five Group
COP31, the UN Climate Change Conference, opened today in Antalya, Türkiye. It runs from 9 to 20 November 2026. Türkiye hosts the conference and holds the presidency. Australia leads the negotiations.
For two weeks, governments will negotiate targets, finance and rules for the climate crisis. What they agree will matter far beyond the hall. It will matter in kitchens, clinics, classrooms, taxi ranks and fields. This is a note on why, and on the kind of leadership the rest of the work requires.
What COP31 is, and why it matters
COP is the conference of the parties to the UN climate convention. COP31 is this year's meeting. The task is the climate part of a much larger promise: to hold warming in check, and to help countries live with the change that is already here.
Climate does not sit in a separate box from hunger, health, water, work or peace. A failed harvest is a food problem and a climate problem. A clinic that cannot keep its power on is a health problem and an energy problem. A girl who leaves school when the family income collapses is an education problem with a climate behind it. The negotiations in Antalya are about one crisis that pulls on all the others.
Agreements set a direction. They do not, by themselves, deliver the work. Someone still has to lead it. My hope for these two weeks is simple. Alongside the commitments on emissions and finance, let us commit to building the leaders who will turn those commitments into results.
Developing leaders at every level is how the world turns commitments into results.
The 17 Goals, and the delivery gap
In 2015 the Member States of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It sets out 17 Sustainable Development Goals: a shared plan to end poverty and hunger, to give everyone health and a good education, to achieve equality for women and girls, to provide clean water, energy and decent work, to protect the climate, the oceans and the land, and to build peaceful, just societies, by 2030. The promise is simple. Leave no one behind.
The Goals are one plan, not seventeen separate plans. Progress on climate action (Goal 13) changes what is possible for zero hunger, good health, clean water, decent work and peace. And progress on those Goals changes what a country can do about the climate. That is why a climate conference is also a conversation about the whole agenda.
The world has not stood still. The UN's latest assessment, The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026, records real gains since 2015, from wider access to electricity and clean water to more births attended by skilled health workers. It is also candid about the gap. Of the 139 SDG targets with trend data, only 36 per cent are on track or making moderate progress. Nearly half, 49 per cent, are advancing too slowly, and 15 per cent have regressed below 2015 baselines. The same findings are in the Report of the Secretary-General on progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (2026).
The Goals are won or lost in ordinary rooms, every day.
Money, technology and policy matter. None of them moves without people who lead. A clinic cuts maternal deaths because a manager keeps it stocked and safe. A girl stays in school because a principal notices she is missing. A town gets clean water because an official refuses a bribe. That is the delivery gap. The targets exist. The leaders who can carry them, at every level, are still too few.
This article is not a United Nations publication. It has not been approved by the United Nations and does not reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States. The official Goals are at un.org/sustainabledevelopment.
One enabling goal
The UN has 17 Goals, not 18. I am not asking the world to add another. I am asking us to see what the 17 stand on.
Leadership Is Learnable: The Super-Cube® model, the evidence behind it, and how to develop leaders at every level makes one proposal, and it is mine, not the United Nations'. Build leadership skills for everyone, at every level. Think of that as the enabling goal underneath the other 17: the capacity a country, a company, a school or a community needs in order to deliver the rest.
Not only presidents and chief executives. Supervisors, teachers, nurses, young people and community leaders. When people learn to lead themselves, their teams and their neighbours, progress on hunger, health, education, gender equality, decent work and climate action stops depending on a few people at the top.
The Goals remain the Goals. Leadership development is how a commitment becomes a result.
Six faces, and the Goals they serve
The book, and the free introduction that came before it, set this out through the Super-Cube® model. Super-Cube® looks at the whole person, with the individual at the centre. It has six faces. Each one can be learnt. None of them is reserved for people who already hold senior office.
The lines below are my own mapping, from the book. They are not part of the UN framework.
Choices
Goals 12 and 13
Responsible decisions, for what we consume and produce, and for climate action. Both depend on people who can choose well when the easy path is the costly one.
Principles
Goals 16 and 10
Peace, justice and strong institutions, and less inequality, need leaders who will not trade a principle for a shortcut.
Mental
Goals 4 and 9
Quality education, and industry and innovation, need clear thinking, a direction, and the habit of learning.
Emotional
Goals 17 and 5
Partnerships and gender equality are built on trust, inclusion, and the ability to bring other people with you.
Physical
Goals 3 and 2
Good health and zero hunger start with the energy to keep going, in the leader and in the people beside them.
Spiritual
All 17 Goals
Every Goal needs purpose. A leader who serves something larger than one term, or one quarter, can hold the work for the next generation.
The model comes from my Doctor of Business Administration at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The question was whether leadership can be developed on purpose. Leadership is not a trait some people are born with. It can be taught, practised and measured. The Emotional face improved by +39.5% (UKZN).
Why Big Five Group is in this work
Big Five Group exists to feed, educate and empower. That is not a slogan beside the Goals. It is a way of taking a share of them, in particular places, with particular tools.
Feed
Big Five Foods™ makes fortified porridges and OnePot meals for people who need a reliable plate: school kitchens, families and community programmes. A meal is Goal 2, zero hunger, and it is Goal 3, good health. A child who has eaten can learn. See Big Five Foods.
The same mission is now at the taxi rank. With the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO) and Vodacom, Big Five Direct is putting containers where commuters already stand. The point is a healthy meal for people on the move, and especially for young people travelling to school or to work, before the day begins. The same hubs create jobs and income for women and youth. That reaches Goals 1, 2, 4, 5 and 8: less poverty, food, education, equality, and decent work. See Big Five Direct.
Educate
Big Five Learn is the Educate pillar of Big Five Group, beside Feed and Empower. It develops leaders with the Super-Cube® model, including through the Super-Cube® LMS at super-cube.me: a way for a child, a student or an adult to see where they stand and to practise. Quality education, Goal 4, is not only literacy and numeracy. It is also learning how to lead. Explore Big Five Learn.
Empower
SupplierAdvisor®, run by Big Five Connect, helps African SMEs get found, verified, trusted and paid. A business that can reach a buyer, and be believed, can hire and grow. That is decent work and economic growth (Goal 8), industry and innovation (Goal 9), and partnership (Goal 17). See Big Five Connect.
Feed. Educate. Empower. Three words, one Group, and a practical answer to the question COP31 cannot answer alone: who will do the work?
What I am asking
The 2030 deadline is close, and the need for leaders will not end there. The ask is different for each of us.
- Governments: recognise leadership as a learnable skill in national qualifications. Invest in the leaders closest to service delivery, not only in those already at the top. Back programmes that measure before and after, and publish what they find.
- Companies: give every employee a way to grow as a leader, not a course reserved for a few. Develop leaders along the supply chain. Report leadership growth beside the sustainability numbers.
- Schools: teach leadership as a skill from the early years, across all six faces. Tie projects to a Goal in your own community.
- Individuals: take a six-face look at yourself. Practise the face you most need. Choose one Goal and do one thing for it. Teach one skill to someone younger.
If you lead people, develop people or set policy, I would like to hear how you are building that capability where you work. Write to us.
The Sustainable Development Goals are the world's to-do list. Leadership is how the list gets done.
Get the book
Leadership Is Learnable is the full account: the Super-Cube® model, the evidence behind it, and how to develop leaders at every level. It is out now on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.
If you want to start before you buy, the short book is free.
Buy the paperback on Amazon · Buy the Kindle e-book on Amazon · Explore Big Five Learn
Feed. Educate. Empower.
