Sustainable Development

• MDGs

• SDGs

Sustainable Development

1. It is now being used in every imaginable context from transport to agriculture, from local to
global, from rural to urban.
2. This popularity has grown in parallel with lots of activity at
international and national levels toward promoting the concept,
particularly in officialdom, aid agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and even
the corporate sector.
3. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro resulted in a document by means of which the
goal of Sustainable development was officially adopted by the 170 governments present.
4. The Earth Summit also resulted in international conventions onbiodiversity, wetlands, and
forestry, and in starting the process for negotiating a convention on climate change.
5. This was followed by the:
a. Creation of the UN Center for Sustainable Development,
b. Adoption of sustainable development goals by the World Bank,
c. Formulation of national sustainable development strategies by many countries,
d. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002
e. That summit was a bit of a failure
6. Focus shifted back to poverty alleviation, resulting in the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) taking center stage. Global negotiation son climate change and some other related
themes continued.
7. After the Rio+20 summit in 2012, sustainable development is back in
focus in international policy discourse, with the concept of Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) set to replace or complement the MDGs that will expire in 2015.
8. SD is in real danger of becoming a cliché like appropriate technology -- a fashionable phrase
that everyone pays homage to but nobody cares to define.
9. Four years ago, Tolba lamented that SD had become "an article of faith, a shibboleth; often
used, but little explained“ (Tolba, 1984a);
10. Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently quoted
definition is from Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report:
11. "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without com
promising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
12. It contains within it two key concepts:
a. The concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor,to which
overriding priority should be given; and
b. The idea of limitations
imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's abilit
y to meet present and future needs."
13. All definitions of sustainable development require that we see the world as a system that
connects space; and a system that connects time.
14. When you think of the world as a system over space, you grow to understand that air
pollution from North America affects air quality in Asia, and that pesticides sprayed in
Argentina could harm fish stocks off the coast of Australia.
15. And when you think of the world as a system over time, you start to realize that the
decisions our grandparents made about how to farm the land continue to affect agricultural
practice today; and the economic policies we endorse today will have an impact on urban
poverty when our children are adults.
16. We also understand that quality of life is a system, too. It's good to be physically healthy,
but what if you are poor and don't have access to education? It's good to have a secure
income, but what if the air in your part of the world is unclean? And it's good to have
freedom of religious expression, but what if you can't feed your family?
17. The concept of sustainable development is rooted in this sort of systems thinking. It helps
us understand ourselves and our world. The problems we face are complex and serious and
we can't address them in the same way we created them. But we can address them.

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

1. At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering

of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations
to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-
bound targets, with a deadline of 2015 that have become known as the Millennium
Development Goals.
2. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound
and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income
poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion –while promoting gender
equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the
rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security

a. Goal 1 : Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty

b. Goal 2 : Achieve Universal Primary Education
c. Goal 3 : Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
d. Goal 4 : Reduce Child Mortality
e. Goal 5 : Improve Maternal Health
f. Goal 6 : Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
g. Goal 7 : Ensure Environmental Sustainability
h. Goal 8 : Develop a Global Partnership for Development
i. Goal 7 : Ensure Environmental Sustainability
3. The world has made significant progress in achieving many of the Goals.
4. But progress has been far from uniform across the world-or across the Goals. There are huge
disparities across and within countries. Within countries, poverty is greatest for rural areas,
though urban poverty is also extensive, growing, and underreported by traditional
indicators.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

1. This year, the millennium development goals launched in 2000 to make global progress on
poverty, education, health, hunger and the environment expire. UN member states are
finalizing the sustainable development goals that will replace them

a. Goal 1 : End poverty in all its forms everywhere

b. Goal 2 : End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and
promote sustainable agriculture
c. Goal 3 : Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
d. Goal 4 : Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all
e. Goal 5 : Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
f. Goal 6 : Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
g. Goal 7 : Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
h. Goal 8 : Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and
productive employment and decent work for all
i. Goal 9 : Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable
industrialization and foster innovation
j. Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
k. Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
l. Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
m. Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
 n. Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for
sustainable development
o. Goal 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
p. Goal 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
q. Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership
for sustainable development

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), officially known as transforming our world: the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development is a set of 17 "Global Goals" with 169 targets between
them. Spearheaded by the United Nations through a deliberative process involving its 193
Member States, as well as global civil society, the goals are contained in paragraph 54 United
Nations Resolution A/RES/70/1 of 25 September 2015. The Resolution is a broader
intergovernmental agreement that acts as the Post 2015 Development Agenda (successor to
the Millennium Development Goals). The SDGs build on the Principles agreed upon under
Resolution A/RES/66/288, popularly known as The Future We Want. It is a non-binding document
released as a result of Rio+20 Conference held in 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.

The SDGs were in large measure informed by the perspective reflected in the often quoted
assertion by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary-General from 2007 to 2016, that "we
don’t have plan B because there is no planet B".

On 19 July 2014, the UN General Assembly's Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) forwarded a proposal for the SDGs to the Assembly. The proposal
contained 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues.
These included ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more
sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests. On 5 December 2014,
the UN General Assembly accepted the Secretary-General's Synthesis Report which stated that
the agenda for the post-2015 SDG process would be based on the OWG proposals.

The Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Post 2015 Development Agenda (IGN) began in
January 2015 and ended in August 2015. Following the negotiations, a final document was
adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit September 25–27, 2015 in New York,
USA. The title of the agenda is Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development

BACKGROUND

The history of the SDGs can be traced to 1972 when governments met in Stockholm, Sweden, for
the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, to consider the rights of the human
family to a healthy and productive environment. It was not until 1983 that the United Nations
decided to create the World Commission on Environment and Development which defined
sustainable development as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs". In 1992 the first United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development was held in Rio. The first agenda for Environment and
Development, also known as Agenda 21, was developed and adopted in Rio.

Official logos for each of the Millennium Development Goals - the predecessors for the SDGs
which were valid until 2015

In preparation for the Rio+20 Conference, Indonesia held a July 2011 government retreat in Solo,
Indonesia. At this event, Colombia proposed the idea of the SDGs. This was picked up by the
United Nations Department of Public Information 64th NGO Conference in September 2011 in
Bonn, Germany where the outcome document proposed 17 sustainable development goals and
associated targets. In the run-up to Rio+20 there was much discussion about the idea of SDGs. At
the Rio+20 Conference, a resolution, known as The Future We Want was reached by member
states. Among the key themes agreed on were poverty eradication, energy, water and sanitation,
health, and human settlement.

Paragraph 246 of the Future We Want outcome document forms the link between the Rio+20
agreement and the Millennium Development Goals: "We recognize that the development of
goals could also be useful for pursuing focused and coherent action on sustainable development.
The goals should address and incorporate in a balanced way all three dimensions of sustainable
development (environment, economics, and society) and their interlink ages. The development
of these goals should not divert focus or effort from the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals". Paragraph 249 states that "the process needs to be coordinated and
coherent with the processes to consider the post-2015 development agenda".

Taken together, paragraph 246 and 249 paved the way for the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs). The MDGs were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the
United Nations in 2000 and the agreement in the Future We Want outcome document. The
Rio+20 summit also agreed that the process of designing sustainable development goals, should
be "action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in
nature and universally applicable to all countries while taking into account different national
realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities".

Because the MDGs were to be achieved by 2015, a further process was needed. Discussion of the
post-2015 framework for international development began well in advance, with the United
Nations System Task Team on Post 2015 Development Agenda releasing the first report known
as Realizing The Future We Want. The Report was the first attempt to achieve the requirements
under paragraph 246 and 249 of the Future We Want document. It identified four dimensions as
part of a global vision for sustainable development: Inclusive Social Development, Environmental
Sustainability, Inclusive Economic Development, and Peace and Security. Other processes
included the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel on the Post 2015 Development
Agenda, whose report was submitted to the Secretary General in 2013.
THE PROCESS (FOR ARRIVING AT THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA)

Since Rio+20 - the Earth Summit of 2012 - did not elaborate specific goals, a 30-member Open
Working Group (OWG) was established on 22 January 2013 by the decision of the UN General
Assembly. The OWG was tasked with preparing a proposal on the SDGs for consideration during
the 68th session of the General Assembly, September 2013 – September 2014.

The OWG used a constituency-based system of representation: most of the seats in the working
group are shared by several countries. After 13 sessions, the OWG submitted their proposal of
17 SDGs and 169 targets to the 68th session of the UN General Assembly in September, 2014.

The Rio+20 outcome document mentioned, “at the outset, the OWG will decide on its methods
of work, including developing modalities to ensure the full involvement of relevant stakeholders
and expertise from civil society, the scientific community and the United Nations system in its
work, in order to provide a diversity of perspectives and experience”.