You may know that on September
25, 2015 at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, 193 countries of
the United Nations adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, including
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as Global Goals. The
adoption makes it a transition and continuation from, and upgrade to the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which started from 2000 to end in 2015.
The SDGs is a set of seventeen
goals, with 169 targets and 304 suggested indicators, intended to be achieved
by 2030, from 2016. That is a span of another fifteen years. Its implementation
approach is supranational, integrated, inclusive, sustainable and centralized.
The SDGs have been purposed and designed to generally end poverty, deal with
inequality and injustice and fight climate change by 2030.
SDGs
The 17 goals of the SDG with its
169 targets adopted by countries of the United Nations were proposals of a 30
member committee-Open Working Group- established by a decision of the United
Nations Assembly. The 17 goals for the 2030 agenda are as follows:
- End poverty in all its forms everywhere
- End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
- Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
- Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
- Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
- Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
- Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
- Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
- Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
- Reduce inequality within and among countries
- Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
- Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
- Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
- Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
- Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
- Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
- Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
Of the above goals which are meant to transform the world, the following
four have direct bearing on the natural environment:
- Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
- Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
- Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
- Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
PROSPECTS
What is to be expected of the 17 point goal agenda, going forward through
another fifteen years to 2030? The strategy I am going to use to determine
expectation is to relook at the performance of the Millennium Development Goals
as a yardstick for extrapolation.
The MDG, upon which the SDG is built, has an eight point goal. The eight
goals are: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve
universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce
child mortality, improve maternal health, combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability
and develop a global partnership for development .
They were meant to be a primer for world development.
Of the eight goals, only one
deals directly with the environment.
Some of the targets were met,
others could not be achieved. Reducing poverty by half has been achieved. With
maternal mortality, mortality ratio of women between the ages of 15-49 has been
cut by nearly half by 1990 standards yet it fell short by 25% by MDG
expectation, globally. Sub- Sahara Africa generally did not do well, more so
using the MDGs as targets to be met, rather than guides to development. Of course
if targets were met that should be great. In some cases MDG targets were not
met but there were improvements on previous standards, even if within MDG
framework.
MDG 7 is one of the eight MDGs
dealing with the environment. In the list it is titled: Ensure environmental
sustainability. Let us use MDG 7.C as an example. It aims to reduce by a half,
by 2015, the number of people in the world without sustainable access to safe
drinking water and basic sanitation.
According to WHO/UNICEF report
titled “Progress on drinking water and sanitation: 2014 Update, between 1990
and 2012, almost 2 billion people in the world has gained access to improved
sanitation, and 2.3 billion have gained access to drinking water from improved
sources. 1.6 billion of them had pipe-borne water in their homes.
The report says further that
those in urban areas are better supplied with improved sanitation and water
than those in the rural areas. However, the gap is reducing because in 1990
more than 76% of urban dwellers had access to improved sanitation as against 28%
for rural dwellers. By 2012, 80% of urban dwellers and 47% of rural dwellers
had access to improved sanitation.
In 1990 95% of urban people could
take improved water compared with 62% of people in rural areas. In 2012 the gap
narrowed with 96% of people living in towns and 82% of folks in rural areas
having access to improved water.
“Too many people
still lack a basic level of drinking water and sanitation. The challenge now is
to take concrete steps to accelerate access to disadvantaged groups. An
essential first step is to track better who, when and how people access
improved sanitation and drinking water, so we can focus on those who don’t yet
have access to these basic facilities,” says Dr. Maria Neira, WHO Director for
Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.
Going forward, implementation of
the natural environment components of the SDGs in particular, should be based
on a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat) analysis of the MDGs,
their philosophy, database, data processing, technology, implementation,
structure and context of implementation, financial outlay, processes,
procedures, monitoring, evaluation and outcomes, after all, the SDGs are offshoot of the MDGs, and their root. Findings
from the SWOT analysis could then become the driving force behind the
implementation of the SDGs.
If we play our cards well, 2030 should be a happy year for all of us. We
should remember that the natural environment is the only source of our
sustenance, materially.
Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2014/jmp-report/en/
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