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How the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals Build on Past Goals

Sustainable Development Goals Build on Millennium Goals
In 2000, the United Nations set out to complete a long list of goals with the ultimate goal of ending global poverty. This year marks the expiration of the so-called Millennium Development Goals and the advent of the United Nations’ latest set of Sustainable Development Goals.

The United Nations set in motion eight core goals at the start of the new millennia, each with individualized target goals and ideal success rates. These broad goals were:

1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2) Achieve universal primary education
3) Promote gender equality and empower women
4) Reduce child mortality
5) Improve maternal health
6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7) Ensure environmental sustainability
8) Global partnership for development

Some of the specific rates of success targeted under individual goals include: halving the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day and the number of people suffering from hunger, eliminating gender disparity in education, reducing child mortality by two-thirds and stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. These targets were supposed to have been met by 2015.

While great strides have been made in the last decade and a half, the United Nations was not 100 percent successful in reaching their goals. With the 2000 set of goals expiring, a new set of updated goals was drafted to continue their focus effort toward ending global poverty.

The Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 build upon the foundation laid by the Millennium Development Goals of 2000 and “seek to complete the unfinished business of the MDGs, and respond to new challenges,” according to the proposal statement from the Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform.

The 2015 set of goals expands and goes beyond the original goals, addressing an updated list of challenges faced by people of developing nations. The new set of goals includes:

1) End poverty in all 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 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
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

The new and expanded list retains many of the original target goals of the Millennium Development Goals, including ending global poverty (established as living on less than $1.25 a day), ending global hunger, expanding education and enhancing women’s rights, as well as encouraging a focus on sustainable development options.

As with the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations hopes to meet their Sustainable Development Goals in fifteen years, by the year 2030.

– Gina Lehner

Sources: UN, Sustainable Development
Photo: Daily Development

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The Global Goals: Humanity’s Finest Endeavor

The Global Goals- Humanity’s Finest Endeavor

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development are running with the success brought by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs radically reduced child mortality rates from 12.7 million in 1990 to 6.3 million in 2013. The same age group felt a drop in underweight children from 28% in 1990 to 17% in 2013. HIV breaks fell by 38% from 2001 to 2013, and tuberculosis and HIV-negative tuberculosis cases declined. The MDGs achieved its safe drinking water goal early on in 2010, but did not hit its sanitation target.

The United Nations Member States agreed to accomplish the eight MDGs in a 15-year period. By 2015, they found success in most categories, but came short in others.

The MDGs signal a huge accomplishment in developmental and humanitarian progress, and the Global Goals are looking to continue its legacy.

The Global Goals (GGs) are going to make this generation “the first generation to end extreme poverty, the most determined generation to fight inequality and injustice, and the last generation to be threatened by climate change.”

With 17 goals, the GGs will tackle what no other generation thought possible.

On September 25, 2015, 193 world leaders are signing onto another 15 years of global development. The GGs are no poverty, no hunger, good health, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, clean energy, good jobs and economic growth, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption, to protect the planet, life below water, life on land,  peace and justice, and partnerships for the goals.

According to Amina Mohammed, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning, the 17 GGs will “encompass the unfinished business of the MDGs” like ending poverty, hunger, gender discrimination, water and sanitation. Seven of the GGs address a “social agenda.” The economic goals include boosting infrastructure, energy options and pushing for equality. The “environmental agenda” includes improving urban conditions, “life on earth, above earth and underwater.”

Further, the GGs look at “the whole picture.” They deal with the economic, social and environmental sectors.

The major difference between the MDGS and GGs is that now, “we are talking about the universal agenda, so it is about everybody,” shared Amina. It is also an “integrated agenda” because “we are looking at countries that are looking to transform their economies, but not do so at the expense of people delivering services in health and education, and not to the expense of the planet.”

The environmental attention also differs from the MDGs and GGs. The GGs are giving a “deeper look at the root causes.”

This year, the United Nations is responding to the greatest call to action the world has ever seen.

– Lin Sabones

Sources: YouTube, Global Goals, UN, WHO
Photo: Photo: Global Citizen

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Global Financing Conference Looks to End Poverty

Global Financing Conference Looks to End Poverty - TBPOn July 15, leaders from all over the world will gather at a global financing conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to discuss major reforms and policies to make a legitimate dent in the issue of global poverty. This meeting marks the first of three summits in 2015 that aim to lock down funding for poverty programs worldwide. World Bank leader Jim Yong Kim summarized the magnitude of the summit by saying, “If we seize this moment we can accomplish the greatest achievement in human history.” The success of this and subsequent summits may finally put humanity on the correct path for eliminating poverty.

A topic of discussion at this summit will be on how to expand on the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight target goals set in 2000 to combat poverty. These goals were set to expire after fifteen years, when a new summit would meet to establish new goals moving forward. The upcoming summit in Addis Ababa will spend time creating what will be known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs will be designed to reflect the changes in the global economy that have occurred since the initial MDGs were created. An excerpt from the World Bank’s website says, “The global development landscape has changed since the MDGs were adopted in 2000. Middle-income countries now account for a much larger share of global GDP. At the same time, inequality within many countries is on the rise and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.” World leaders will assess a variety of new data to develop effective plans to reduce future poverty.

In order to make the eradication of poverty a reality, nations participating in this summit are preparing to raise the amount of money contributed to fighting poverty from billions to trillions of dollars. The funds necessary to achieving this goal will come “from private investment and domestic tax revenues. Foreign aid is already dwarfed by private financial flows, but it is still a precious resource, important because it reaches people and challenges that private finance alone cannot,” as reported by The Guardian.

This summit may be key in setting the stage for an entirely new era in our planet. The results of this summit and the ones that follow might be the pivotal step for stepping out of the overbearing shadow of poverty and into a bright future for generations to come.

– Diego Catala

Sources: The Guardian, World Bank
Photo: UN

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UN Launches New Deal to End Global Poverty

new_deal_to_end_global_poverty

After three days of negotiations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the United Nations has established a new deal that will finance the U.N.’s new Sustainable Development Goals. Ultimately, these goals set a 2030 deadline to greatly reduce global poverty.

The negotiations in Addis Ababa involved representatives from around 200 different countries. Seventeen goals make up the new U.N. plan, which mainly includes large, overarching goals such as completely eliminating global poverty and hunger, obtaining gender equality worldwide, creating environmentally sustainable cities and ensuring everyone quality education.

These goals also come with a hefty price tag. U.N. experts estimate that the Sustainable Development Goals will cost around $3 trillion each year in order to properly finance each goal. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim also estimates that along with billions of dollars in foreign aid, these goals will require “trillions in investments.”

“This agreement is a critical step forward in building a sustainable future for all,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. “The results here in Addis Ababa give us the foundation of a revitalized global partnership for sustainable development that will leave no one behind.”

– Alexander Jones

Sources: BBC, Cheyne, Solomon
Photo: BBC

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$400 Billion and a Change of Plans for Financing the SDGs

On July 10th, a consortium of development banks—the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund—released a statement laying out plans to “extend more than $400 billion in financing over the next three years.” They are also committing to working “more closely with private and public sector partners to help mobilize the resources needed to meet the historic challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

$400 billion over the next three years averages out to slightly more than $133 billion per year, not significantly more than the $127 billion in available financing for 2015. The World Bank recognizes that much more is needed. Infrastructure investment alone is estimated at $1.5 trillion per year for developing economies.

One strategy that the multilateral development banks, or MDBs, will employ for bridging the investment gap is capacity building: working with developing nations on devising smarter tax systems and improving government procurement processes. These will make better use of existing money, and open up new sources of national revenue.

It may seem counterintuitive to tax poor nations to fund development, but the high levels of informal sector employment and low tax collection by developing nations, relative to developed ones, suggest otherwise. A study that looked at a sample of 31 low-income and 32 high-income countries put informal sector employment 20% higher in the low-income group. The low-income sample posted government revenue as a percent of GDP at 18%, while the high-income countries averaged 33%.

Although the negative correlation between tax collection and informal sector employment seems to work both ways, development economists agree that boosting national tax revenues in developing countries, if done correctly, will provide a source of necessary development financing and reduce poverty.

These development banks are also increasingly looking toward the private sector to raise the level of financing. Five of the seven heads of the banks spoke about the role that the private sector needs to play, and how they plan on engaging with it.

The proposals include investing more in private enterprises, connecting private investors with opportunities and helping countries make investments more attractive, effectively opening the tap for foreign capital flows.

More than a feel good story of throwing money at the SDGs to help them meet their laudable goals, the statement released by the MDBs hints at a more systemic change to how the SDGs will be financed. More technical assistance for capacity building and a greater inclusion of the private sector will change the landscape of development financing and the field of development itself.

These new changes are coming just in time for rigorous debate at the set of international conferences taking place this year, and their potential to reduce poverty and help meet the SDGs is hopeful.

– John Wachter

Sources: Chatham House, World Bank
Photo: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images

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Musicians Raise Awareness Through Global Citizen Festival

Global_Citizen_Festival
The 2015 Global Citizen Festival seeks to spread awareness of world poverty through music. The concert takes place on September 26 on the Great Lawn in Central Park, New York City.

In 2000, countries around the world joined together to create the Millennium Development Goals, a kind of 15-year checklist for tackling world issues such as hunger, disease, lack of shelter, education and gender equality. For four years, the Global Citizen Festival has sought to engage citizens and world leaders with pressing world issues. This year, the concert aims to bring attention to the United Nations’ Global Goals, which are 17 new objectives for ending extreme poverty by 2030. World leaders from 193 countries will solidify these objectives in September.

Performers at the concert include Beyoncé, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Pearl Jam.

Beyoncé’s organization, Chime for Change, partners with the event. The group strives to empower, educate and protect women and girls around the world. Beyoncé hopes the concert will bring hundreds of initiatives that are dedicated to changing lives.

Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, agreed be the creative curator of the festival for the next 15 years, the same amount of time that the United Nations hopes to completely eradicate poverty.

English singer-songwriter, Ed Sheeran says, “I look forward to sharing the stage with such an amazing lineup of artists in an effort to raise awareness, educate others and work toward the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030. I truly believe it’s possible if we all work together.”

“People living on less than $1.50 a day deserve the opportunity to lift themselves up out of extreme poverty,” added Pearl Jam guitarist, Stone Gossard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rLHBQ282xE

Tickets to the concert are free. All that is required is a promise to take action against injustices around the world. Some of these actions could include sending emails to political leaders, signing petitions or making phone calls or sending tweets to senators.

The steps to earn tickets are called Action Journeys. By completing each action, participants are entered into a drawing to receive two tickets. After each drawing, new Action Journeys are opened. Not only will participants increase their chances of winning tickets by completing more Action Journeys, but they will also be increasing awareness of world issues.

The Global Citizen Festival will be targeting six essential world problems: girls and women, food and hunger, education, global health, water, sanitation and hygiene, and financing.

Chief executive of the Global Poverty Project, Hugh Evans, says, “The world has halved extreme poverty in the last 15 years, but to end it in the next 15, there’s a whole lot of things we need to make that a reality.”

To participate in the Action Journeys or to see more information, visit globalcitizen.org.

– Kelsey Parrotte

Sources: ArtsBeat, BBC, Cosmopolitan, Global Citizen, Rappler, Rolling Stone
Photo: Digital Trends

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Sustainable Development Goals: Why They Matter

Sustainable_Development_Goals

In 2000, the United Nations set the Millennial Development Goals. Ambitious proposals that sought to improve the lives for the billions of impoverished around the world. Fifteen years later, many of those goals have been accomplished.

Globally, 700 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty. Millions were saved due to vaccinations for malaria, tuberculosis and other non-communicable diseases. The number of people who didn’t have access to freshwater dropped significantly and the disparity of boys to girls enrolled in school dropped in every region on earth.

This was all accomplished before 2015.

Some goals are still in progress. For example, efforts to lift people out of poverty can result in environmental degradation. The rate of hunger, while dropping, is not falling quickly enough to meet the goal set in 2000.

Despite this, the United Nations is now going even bolder. Set to be adopted by world leaders in September, the new Sustainable Development Goals seek to finish what the Millennial Development Goals started, while adding their own components.

The seventeen goals are comprehensive, and apply to individuals as well as countries. Despite their broadness in scope, these goals demonstrate that poverty, climate change, health and economic wellbeing are all interconnected issues.

These are the seventeen 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 quality 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 sustainable 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

Indeed, ambitious.

The United Nation website has a more comprehensive explanation of how each of these goals are to be accomplished by 2030.

It is estimated that these goals will cost roughly one trillion dollars a year. However with international tax reform, developing countries will generate more domestic tax revenue and be able to meet their own development agendas with less foreign aid. Members of the United Nations believe this will allow international aid to become a thing of the past.

In an interview with the BBC, International Development Secretary Justine Greening said the Sustainable Development Goals are different from other United Nation initiatives because it harnesses the private sector investment, in addition to developing country’s domestic resources.

She believes this will “turbo charge” development.

The ambitiousness of the Sustainable Development Goals is daunting. However the past fifteen years saw so much progress that the world can be cautiously optimistic.

– Kevin Meyers

Sources: BBC, Post2015.org, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Photo: Fiinovation

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Cooperatives are the Future for UN’s Success

cooperatives

The United Nations has proposed the Sustainable Development Goals to bring people out of poverty and address the issues that keep them there. These tasks were set down after the Millennium Development Goals, which were supposed to be accomplished by this year but were not entirely fulfilled. The United Nations sat down and looked at the programs that they had implemented to eliminate poverty to see what worked and what did not. The conclusion was that cooperatives saw the most success in raising people out of poverty.

That is the direction the United Nations has decided to go in when figuring out how to make the new Sustainable Development Goals a success.

Cooperatives are community driven; the focus is on the people. They combine the resources of several people/groups in the community, forming bonds and creating businesses that one person could not do alone. It allows people who had never had a say in running things to speak. More importantly, cooperatives allow those who are most affected—the poor—a say in the outcomes. Local people are tied together, and thus, want to work for the betterment of their community.

Research that the United Nations conducted also concluded that cooperatives increased employment (especially in the areas that they were located), improved gender equality, used more clean energy, bettered food security and provided social protection. Generally speaking, cooperatives create 100 million jobs worldwide, which is more than any multinational enterprise. Another economic gain is income protection, as the people earn what they make and no big cooperation takes a cut.

In order to monitor the future success of the cooperatives, the United Nations created the Division for Social Policy and Development. The department is to aid in the formation of cooperatives across poverty-stricken areas.

In conclusion, the cooperatives not only bring economic success to poor areas, but also develop many other aspects of the community—something the United Nations wants to see happen. They want to give people the skills and resources to better themselves not just economically but socially and politically. Cooperatives can do this.

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: UN 1, UN 2, UWCC
Photo: UN

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United Nations Sets Sustainable Development Goals to End Global Poverty

sustainable_development_goals
The United Nations released the first draft of their Sustainable Development Goals this month in preparation for the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals, which were established in 2000.

In 17 simple steps, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to eliminate poverty, grow economies, increase equality and promote sustainable industry.

The overall goals, as defined in the official draft of the United Nations Development Agenda, are:

1) End poverty and hunger

This specifically aims to “end poverty in all forms everywhere.” According to an article published by The Guardian, Goal 1 seeks to reduce global poverty by at least half by 2030. The drafted plan calls for establishing equal access to economic resources, equal rights of ownership, and the creation of a firm policy framework at all levels in order to promote sustainable and accelerated economic growth.

2) Secure education, health and basic services for all

Goal 2 seeks to eliminate global food insecurity and promote sustainable agriculture. Again by 2030, the United Nations hopes to establish sustainable and year-round access to nutritious food, especially for the most poor and vulnerable. The goal is to establish sustainable agriculture and encourage investment in rural areas. The details of Goal 2 also include measures to address inequality among markets and trade restrictions, and to ensure the proper operation of food markets.

3) Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

This goal is to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” This goal broadly encompasses many aspects of health and well-being across society. These aspects include reducing maternal mortality and the preventable deaths of newborns and infants, ending epidemics caused by communicable diseases, achieving universal healthcare coverage and more.

4) Combat inequalities within and between countries

5) Foster inclusive economic growth, shared prosperity and sustainable lifestyles for all

Goal 4 and 5 address access to education and gender equality. These goals include guaranteeing free and quality primary and secondary education for all children, providing equal educational opportunities to both boys and girls, eliminating violence against women and undertaking reform to ensure equal economic opportunity for women. The fifth goal goes further and calls for the creation of enforceable policies to protect the rights of women.

6) Promote safe and inclusive cities and human settlements

7) Protect the planet, fight climate change, use natural resources sustainably and safeguard our ocean

The remaining goals outline plans to create and maintain sustainability in multiple sectors. These goals include sustainable energy, sustainable agriculture and industry, sustainable use of the environment and sustainable economic structures. Some of the goals also specifically address the idea of “sustainable societies” and outline measures to reduce violence, increase equality between nations and promote global connections.

Although the initial response to the United Nations’ plan has been mixed, and some, according to another article by The Guardian, have warned that the plan has some serious holes, the ambitious set of goals sets a precedent for efforts to end global poverty and will serve as a benchmark for future endeavors.

– Gina Lecher

Sources: Sustainable Development, The Guardian 1, The Guardian 2
Photo: Flickr