THE SDGs

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
Contrary to what many believe, the SDGs do not represent the Agenda in its entirety. They are not a summary of the Agenda, but rather focus areas necessary to achieve sustainable development. The 17 goals should be seen as indispensable pieces in a big and complex puzzle.

In order to truly understand the Agenda, one needs to look at the puzzle as a whole, but at the same time, it is impossible to complete the puzzle without those pieces. SDGs are the pressure points that have the capability to affect the wellbeing of the entire planet and the people who live on it. Because the SDGs are the result of extensive political negotiations and individual consultations, they are not perfect, but inarguably represent some of the most urgent and universal needs of the world today.

The SDGs help translate the core values and principles underlying the Agenda into concrete and measurable results Not all goals have the same standing. While some goals appear more overarching or ‘final’ in nature, others can be seen as ‘means’ to those final goals. For example, we do not only pursue the water and energy goals (SDGs 6 and 7) for their own sake, but because clean water and energy are means to the true goal of health and wellbeing.1 However, clean energy and water are such crucial issues that they demand specific focus. Looking at some SDGs as means to others can help us appreciate the interlinkages of the SDGs

The 17 SDGs are interlinked global goals designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all” and are intended to be achieved by 2030. The 17 SDGs are:

1. No Poverty
What’s the goal here?
To end poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030.
Why?
In 2015, more than 700 million people, or 10 per cent of the world population, lived in extreme poverty, struggling to fulfil the most basic needs like health, education, and access to water and sanitation, to name a few. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is reversing the trend of poverty reduction with tens of millions of people at risk of being pushed back into extreme poverty – people living on less than $1.90/day – causing the first increase in global poverty in more than 20 years. Even before COVID-19, baseline projections suggested that 6 per cent of the global population would still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, missing the target of ending poverty.
So what can I do about it?
Your active engagement in policymaking can make a difference in addressing poverty. It ensures that your rights are promoted and that your voice is heard, that intergenerational knowledge is shared, and that innovation and critical thinking are encouraged at all ages to support transformational change in people’s lives and communities.

2. Zero Hunger
What’s the goal here?
To end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
Why?
Extreme hunger and malnutrition remains a barrier to sustainable development and creates a trap from which people cannot easily escape. Hunger and malnutrition mean less productive individuals, who are more prone to disease and thus often unable to earn more and improve their livelihoods. 2 billion people in the world do not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food. In 2019, 144 million children under the age of 5 were stunted, and 47 million were affected by wasting.
What can we do to help?
You can make changes in your own life—at home, at work and in the community—by supporting local farmers or markets and making sustainable food choices, supporting good nutrition for all, and fighting food waste. You can also use your power as a consumer and voter, demanding businesses and governments make the choices and changes that will make Zero Hunger a reality.

3. Good Health and Well Being
What’s the goal here?
To ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Why?
Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being is important to building prosperous societies. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated health systems globally and threatens already achieved health outcomes. Most countries, especially poor countries, have insufficient health facilities, medical supplies and health care workers for the surge in demand. The pandemic has shown that in rich and poor countries alike, a health emergency can push people into bankruptcy or poverty. Concerted efforts are required to achieve universal health coverage and sustainable financing for health.
What can I do to help?
You can start by promoting and protecting your own health and the health of those around you, by making well-informed choices, practicing safe sex and vaccinating your children. You can raise also awareness in your community about the importance of good health, healthy lifestyles as well as people’s right to quality health care services.

4. Quality Education
What is the goal here?
Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.
Why does education matter?
Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty. Education helps reduce inequalities and reach gender equality and is crucial to fostering tolerance and more peaceful societies. Over the past decade, major progress has been made towards increasing access to education and school enrollment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. Nevertheless, about 258 million children and youth were still out of school in 2018. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, countries announced the temporary closure of schools, impacting more than 91 per cent of students worldwide.
What can we do?
Ask our governments to place education as a priority in both policy and practice. Lobby our governments to make firm commitments to provide free primary school education to all, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.

5. Gender Equality
What’s the goal here?
To achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Why?
Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and therefore also half of its potential. But, today gender inequality persists and stagnates social progress. Women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership. Across the globe, women and girls perform a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic work. Inequalities faced by girls can begin right at birth and follow them all their lives. In some countries, girls are deprived of access to health care or proper nutrition, leading to a higher mortality rate.
What can we do to fix these issues?
If you are a girl, you can stay in school, help empower your female classmates to do the same and fight for your right to access sexual and reproductive health services. If you are a woman, you can address unconscious biases and implicit associations that form an unintended and often an invisible barrier to equal opportunity. If you are a man or a boy, you can work alongside women and girls to achieve gender equality and embrace healthy, respectful relationships.

6. Clean Water and Sanitation
What’s the goal here?
To ensure access to safe water sources and sanitation for all.
Why?
Access to water, sanitation and hygiene is a human right. The demand for water has outpaced population growth, and half the world’s population is already experiencing severe water scarcity at least one month a year. Water is essential not only to health, but also to poverty reduction, food security, peace and human rights, ecosystems and education. Nevertheless, countries face growing challenges linked to water scarcity, water pollution, degraded water-related ecosystems and cooperation over transboundary water basins.
What can we do?
Civil society organizations should work to keep governments accountable, invest in water research and development, and promote the inclusion of women, youth and indigenous communities in water resources governance. Generating awareness of these roles and turning them into action will lead to win-win results and increased sustainability and integrity for both human and ecological systems.

7. Affordable and Clean Energy
What’s the goal here?
To ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
Why?
A well-established energy system supports all sectors: from businesses, medicine and education to agriculture, infrastructure, communications and high-technology. Access to electricity in poorer countries has begun to accelerate, energy efficiency continues to improve, and renewable energy is making impressive gains. Nevertheless, more focused attention is needed to improve access to clean and safe cooking fuels and technologies for 2.8 billion people.
What can we do to fix these issues?
Countries can accelerate the transition to an affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy system by investing in renewable energy resources, prioritizing energy efficient practices, and adopting clean energy technologies and infrastructure. Businesses can maintain and protect ecosystems and commit to sourcing 100% of operational electricity needs from renewable sources.

8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
What’s the goal here?
To promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all.
Why?
Sustained and inclusive economic growth can drive progress, create decent jobs for all and improve living standards. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, one in five countries were likely to see per capita incomes decline in 2020. Now, the economic and financial shocks are derailing the already tepid economic growth.
What can we do to fix these issues?
Providing youth the best opportunity to transition to a decent job calls for investing in education and training of the highest possible quality, providing youth with skills that match labour market demands, giving them access to social protection and basic services, as well as levelling the playing field so that all aspiring youth can attain productive employment.

9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
What’s the goal here?
To build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
Why?
Economic growth, social development and climate action are heavily dependent on investments in infrastructure, sustainable industrial development and technological progress. Sustained growth must include industrialization that makes opportunities accessible to all people, and is supported by innovation and resilient infrastructure.
How can we help?
Establish standards and promote regulations that ensure company projects and initiatives are sustainably managed. Collaborate with NGOs and the public sector to help promote sustainable growth within developing countries. Use social media to push for policymakers to prioritize the SDGs.

10. Reduced Inequality
What’s the goal here?
To reduce inequalities within and among countries.
Why?
Inequalities based on income, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, race, class, ethnicity, religion and opportunity continue to persist across the world. Inequality threatens long-term social and economic development, harms poverty reduction and destroys people’s sense of fulfilment and self-worth. This can breed crime, disease and environmental degradation. We cannot achieve sustainable development and make the planet better for all if people are excluded from the chance for a better life.
What can we do?
Greater efforts are needed to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and invest more in health, education, social protection and decent jobs especially for young people, migrants and refugees and other vulnerable communities. Within countries, it is important to empower and promote inclusive social and economic growth. Among countries, we need to ensure that developing countries are better represented.

11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
What’s the goal here?
To make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
Why?
Even before the coronavirus, rapid urbanization meant that four billion people in the world’s cities faced worsening air pollution, inadequate infrastructure and services, and unplanned urban sprawl. Successful examples of containing COVID-19 demonstrate the remarkable resilience and adaptability of urban communities in adjusting to new norms.
What can I do to help achieve this goal?
Advocate for the kind of city you believe you need. Develop a vision for your building, street, and neighborhood, and act on that vision. Are there enough jobs? Can your children walk to school safely? How far is the nearest public transport? What’s the air quality like? What are your shared public spaces like? The better the conditions you create in your community, the greater the effect on quality of life.

12. Responsible Consumption and Production
What is the goal here?
To ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Why?
Economic and social progress over the last century has been accompanied by environmental degradation that is endangering the very systems on which our future development and very survival depend. COVID-19 offers an opportunity to develop recovery plans that will reverse current trends and shift our consumption and production patterns to a more sustainable course. A successful transition will mean improvements in resource efficiency and active engagement in multilateral environmental agreements.

How can I help as a consumer?
There are two main ways to help: 1. Reducing your waste and 2. Being thoughtful about what you buy and choosing a sustainable option whenever possible.

13. Climate Action
What’s the goal here?
Taking urgent action to tackle climate change and its impacts.
Why?
The climate crisis continues unabated as the global community shies away from the full commitment required for its reversal. 2010-2019 was warmest decade ever recorded, bringing with it massive wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, floods and other climate disasters across continents.
What can I do to help achieve this goal?
We can all live sustainably and help build a better world for everyone. This means taking a look at how we live and understanding how our lifestyle choices impact the world around us. We make hundreds of thousands of decisions during the course of our lives. The choices we make and the lifestyles we live have a profound impact on our planet.

14. Life Under Water
What’s the goal here?
To conserve and sustainably use the world’s ocean, seas and marine resources.
Why?
Oceans and fisheries continue to support the global population’s economic, social and environmental needs. Despite the critical importance of conserving oceans, decades of irresponsible exploitation have led to an alarming level of degradation. Current efforts to protect key marine environments and small-scale fisheries, and to invest in ocean science are not yet meeting the urgent need to safeguard this vast, yet fragile, resource.
So what can we do?
For open ocean and deep sea areas, sustainability can be achieved only through increased international cooperation to protect vulnerable habitats. Establishing comprehensive, effective and equitably managed systems of government-protected areas should be pursued to conserve biodiversity and ensure a sustainable future for the fishing industry.

15. Life On Land
What’s the goal here?
To sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss.
Why?
Forests cover nearly 31 per cent of our planet’s land area. From the air we breathe, to the water we drink, to the food we eat – forests sustain us. Forests are home to more than 80 per cent of all terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects. However, biodiversity is declining faster than at any other time in human history. Globally, one fifth of the Earth’s land area is degraded. Land degradation is undermining the well-being of some 3.2 billion people, driving species to extinction and intensifying climate change.

What can we do?
Some things we can do to help include recycling, eating a locally-based diet that is sustainably sourced, and consuming only what we need. We must be respectful toward wildlife and only take part in ecotourism opportunities that are responsibly and ethically run in order to prevent wildlife disturbance.

16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
What’s the goal here?
Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Why?
People everywhere need to be free of fear from all forms of violence and feel safe as they go about their lives. Conflict, insecurity, weak institutions and limited access to justice remain threats to sustainable development. In 2019, the number of people fleeing war, persecution and conflict exceeded 79.5 million, the highest level ever recorded. One in four children continues to be deprived of legal identity through lack of birth registration, often limiting their ability to exercise rights in other areas. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to amplify and exploit fragilities across the globe.
What can we do?
Exercise your right to hold your elected officials to account. Exercise your right to freedom of information and share your opinion with your elected representatives. Promote inclusion and respect towards people of different ethnic origins, religions, gender, or different opinions. Together, we can help to improve conditions for a life of dignity for all.

17. Partnerships for the Goals
What’s the goal here?
To revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
Why?
In light of the consequences of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen that strengthening multilateralism and global partnerships are more important than ever if we are to solve the world’s problems. The Sustainable Development Goals remain the framework for building back better. We need everyone to come together—governments, civil society, scientists, academia and the private sector.
What can we do to help?
Join or create a group in your local community that seeks to mobilize action on the implementation of the SDGs. Encourage your governments to partner with businesses for the implementation of the SDGs.