SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: NURTURING THE WORLD TODAY AND IN THE FUTURE

 

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

NURTURING THE WORLD TODAY AND IN THE FUTURE

SDG GOALS

The Sustainable Development Goals are an assortment of 17 interlinked worldwide objectives intended to be a "plan to accomplish a superior and more manageable future for all".

LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND

The 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted on September 25th 2015 universally. Universal adoption means that every single country including all 193 UN member states agreed. I am sure you can imagine that getting 193 countries to agree on anything is next to impossible but that's what makes this agenda so groundbreaking.

SDG

The reason we saw such broad support and adoption of the 2030 agenda is that it was built on the groundwork of two previous processes that laid a strong foundation. The first was agenda 21 that was adopted at the 1992 Rio earth summit and laid out a whole bunch of environmental priorities for the planet.

RIO EARTH SUMMIT 

 The second were the millennium development goals that were spearheaded by the UN secretary general Mr. Kofi Annan. These were eight goals targeted at developing countries and mainly focused on human development. So things like eliminating poverty, universal primary education, gender equality, child and maternal health, fighting against diseases and even environmental sustainability but at a very high level. 

MDG

So the global community had these two processes, One environmentally focused and Second human development focused: and in 2012 at the Rio Plus 20 Earth Summit world leaders agreed to bring the two processes together to create a more comprehensive framework that would be relevant to every country on the planet regardless of its level of development and to adopt it as a global community.

RIO PLUS

RIO 2012

The 2030 agenda for sustainable development is referred to as a comprehensive action plan for people, planet and prosperity. This relates directly to the three pillars of sustainable development which are Social, Environmental and Economic. Interestingly the 2030 agenda also added the notion of peace and partnership to those traditional pillars of sustainability to create the five p's which are People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership.

5 P's of SDGs

The agenda is made up of 17 goals, 169 targets and over 232 indicators for measuring progress. So to say it's comprehensive would be a bit of an understatement. In fact that is one of the biggest criticisms of the agenda is that it's so far-reaching that it's hard to prioritize and know what is the most important.

SDG INDICATORS

In these 17 goals, they touch on everything from ending poverty, achieving gender equality, protecting the planet both our land and our water, combating climate change, creating sustainable economies, limiting our consumption, Peace Promotion along with good governance.  

SDG GOALS

 4 FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES of SDG’s

You can see now what i mean by the agenda kind of including everything but in fact as i mentioned in the history this was quite deliberate it was meant to create a more comprehensive picture of sustainable development. It was also meant to be rooted in a few fundamental principles that were not included in previous agendas. 

SDG PARADIGMS

• INTEGRATION:

This means that it recognizes the systemic nature of our world and the interconnectedness between various domains of society it says we cannot make policies in a vacuum as we need to think about their effect on each other.  

INTEGRATION

•     UNIVERSALITY:

This means that it applies as much to the richest countries as it does to the poorest countries meaning that it applies equally to every single country no matter what their situation no matter what their context. The millennium development goals that came before really focused on developing countries and that was great however this agenda says to every country on the planet none of you have achieved a sustainable society and we need to get moving each of you have work to do. I like this because it creates more of a community approach and a collective effort in delivering the agenda.

UNIVERSALITY

• INCLUSIVE:

The agenda was adopted by countries yes so it's ultimately their responsibility to engage all sectors of society in order to achieve it. So whether that be NGOs in civil society, academics and researchers, the private sectors, international organizations and community and of course governments as well all of them need to be at the table.

INCLUSIVITY

• LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND

The final fundamental principle of the 2030 agenda is leaving no one behind or starting with the most vulnerable first. This comes from a big lesson out of the millennium development goals which was: while there was progress made in some countries others fell way further behind. So a lot of the success that happened in the millennium development goals was actually attributed to the economic development of china over that period, and in fact some of the more vulnerable countries fell further and further behind. So this agenda named 2030 agenda and the Sustainable development Goals focus on how you reach those furthest behind whether that be a country or groups within the country first so that our progress can be assured to be helping those who are the most vulnerable.

LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND 

As the name probably suggests the 2030 agenda will end in 2030. it's a 15-year agenda running from 2015-2030. Every single year UN high level political forum reviews progress of the agenda where global community looks at progress on certain goals and in certain countries and looks for gaps, opportunities, new solutions and ways to accelerate implementation. 

ONLY INDICATOR CONTRIBUTED ALL 17 GOALS

CONCLUSION: 

We are currently in what's being referred to as the decade of action because we were six years into the agenda and only have less than a decade left to deliver that was kicked off in 2020 and that happened right around the same time as the Pandemic, So this agenda is facing a great deal of challenges as we try and overcome the massive progress that was set back by the Pandemic. If there is one thing for certain, it’s that we need action now. As Winston Churchill Famously said “Never let a good crisis go to waste” and this applies so much to the 2030 Agenda.

COVID-19 and SDG

We have been set back very far in progress and we need action in order to make that time up and to have good results on the agenda by the time 2030 comes. Not just we can say we had good results but because it’s so fundamental to ourselves, our planet and vulnerable communities around the world.

RECOVER BETTER 

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