Everything about the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created in September 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda. They are the result of governments working together towards a shared vision for all of humanity, a list of actions to take into account for sustainable development.

What is the 2030 Agenda?

Before we get to the SDGs, it is worth being clear about what the 2030 Agenda actually is.

It is a plan of action built on 17 Sustainable Development Goals, 169 targets and 230 indicators. This universal and ambitious agenda takes in the three dimensions of sustainable development, social, economic and environmental.

It recognises that ending poverty and other deprivations has to go hand in hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality and drive economic growth, while tackling climate change and working to preserve the planet’s ecosystems.

The agenda was adopted by every United Nations member state, each taking on a central role in delivering it, because this is not something to be implemented only in developing countries, but globally.

What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and they set out the priorities and ambitions of global sustainable development for 2030. Across those 17, the areas cluster around the five Ps:

• People: ending poverty and hunger in order to promote dignity and equality.
• Planet: sustainable consumption and production, tackling climate change, and managing natural resources.
• Prosperity: personal fulfilment, and economic and social progress.
• Peace: promoting just, inclusive societies free from fear and violence.
• Partnership: encouraging joined-up work across sectors and collective mobilisation on behalf of the most vulnerable.

“The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are our shared vision of humanity and a social contract between the world’s leaders and the people.”

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

There is now a dedicated department assessing how the 2030 Agenda is being implemented across the whole United Nations system, along with the outreach and awareness work around the SDGs. The Division for Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) exists to support engagement and to make sure governments and citizens turn the 2030 Agenda into something real.

What are the 17 goals?

1. No poverty: end poverty in all its forms everywhere;
2. Zero hunger: end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture;
3. Good health and well-being: ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages;
4. Quality education: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all;
5. Gender equality: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls;
6. Clean water and sanitation: ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all;
7. Affordable and clean energy: ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all;
8. Decent work and economic growth: promote sustained, inclusive economic growth through full and productive employment;
9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure: build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation;
10. Reduced inequalities: reduce inequality within and among countries;
11. Sustainable cities and communities: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable;
12. Responsible consumption and production: ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns;
13. Climate action: take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts;
14. Life below water: conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development;
15. Life on land: protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, manage forests sustainably, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss;
16. Peace, justice and strong institutions: promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions;
17. Partnerships for the goals: strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.

Every one of us has a part to play in meeting this agenda and these goals. The same holds for organisations, which should be promoting, communicating and running projects aligned with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda.

Governments matter here, through policies, laws and funding aimed at sustainable development in the short and long term. So do schools, through educating and raising the awareness of future generations. And companies, as sources of technology and innovation, have the chance to work on actions and strategies that contribute to national and global targets, and to become more competitive in the process.

Examples of projects under the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda

There are already plenty of projects out there pushing these goals forward.

SDG 12, turning banana peel into bioplastic

Elif Bilgin, a young Turkish student, realised at 16 that a lot of the pollution in Istanbul came from producing petroleum-based plastics. The problem gave her the urge to look for an answer, and she had the brilliant idea of making a bioplastic from banana peel, something thrown away in large quantities every day.

It took study and a great many experiments to work out how banana peel could be turned into an environmentally friendly plastic. Elif designed the chemical process herself, having understood that the starches and celluloses in the peel could be turned into plastic threads. The innovation won her the Scientific American Science in Action award, and may also have found a way to reduce how much petroleum goes into making plastic.

SDG 6, a sanitation fix that cuts water use

In Bangalore, India, the city’s population is growing fast, which drives up consumption of essentials like water and increases waste. Rohit Fenn noticed that most of the cisterns in his city used around 6 litres of water.

So at 16 Rohit took on a project aimed at cutting water use, and built the Vacu-Flush. It is a very simple mechanism: added to the cistern, it creates a partial vacuum when the lever is pushed, bringing consumption down from 6 litres to 3. In a country where drinking water is scarce, that adds up to an enormous saving. The project won Rohit a Google science prize in 2011.

SDGs 11 and 16, building a safer, more inclusive community

A group of teenagers calling themselves The Urban Creators took over an abandoned plot in Philadelphia and started by building a vegetable garden. The food went to local homes and restaurants. Since 2010 they have used food, art and education as tools to build the community’s resilience and self-determination.

Life Do Grow (LDG) is a neighbourhood and a living ecosystem: an urban farm, a public park, an outdoor classroom, a community market, a place for artistic and cultural expression, and a shared workspace for local businesses, growers and artists. It has become a safe space for the community to explore what it cares about, build equity and open up economic opportunity.

SDG 13, activist sisters cutting plastic use

Sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen live in Bali, Indonesia, and became activists when they found their island’s tropical beaches covered in plastic. They could not stay indifferent to the sheer quantity being thrown away, and ending up in the ocean and its ecosystem. So they took the initiative: organising activities, mobilising people to clean the beaches, running educational workshops, and working with the government to reduce plastic use. All of it led the Balinese government, in 2018, to ban all single-use plastic.

The Wijsen sisters’ impact has been such that they have been invited to speak at events including United Nations World Ocean Day in New York and the World Economic Forum in Davos. TIME also named them two of the 25 Most Influential Teens of 2018.

So we can see why the Sustainable Development Goals matter: they are what will sustain the quality of life of future generations, and the ecosystems of our planet, over the long term. I hope this leaves you with some inspiration to help turn our world into a fairer and more sustainable one, or even to start a project of your own that feeds into the 2030 Agenda. Who knows. 😊

All the information in this article comes from research across various United Nations sources.