13 Aug 2015
17 sustainable development goals for the world
In early August the United Nations agreed on 17 sustainable development goals and 169 specific targets for the post-2015 UN development agenda. It has a strong focus on ending poverty and hunger, ensuring equity, promoting sustainable patterns of consumption and production, and protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the new development agenda “will chart a new era of Sustainable Development in which poverty will be eradicated, prosperity shared and the core drivers of climate change tackled.”
The document, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, resulted from two years of negotiations that had unprecedented participation by civil society. The agenda is to be formally adopted in late September by a summit meeting of some 150 world leaders at the UN headquarters in New York.
The new agenda with its 17 “integrated, interlinked and indivisible goals” is a successor to the eight Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000. That global agreement covered an array of issues including slashing poverty, hunger, disease, gender inequality, and access to water and sanitation by 2015.
The 17 sustainable development goals
| 1 | End poverty in all its forms everywhere |
| 2 | End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture |
| 3 | Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages |
| 4 | Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all |
| 5 | Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls |
| 6 | Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all |
| 7 | Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all |
| 8 | Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all |
| 9 | Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation |
| 10 | Reduce inequality within and among countries |
| 11 | Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable |
| 12 | Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns |
| 13 | Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts |
| 14 | Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development |
| 15 | Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss |
| 16 | Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels |
| 17 | Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development |