The Sustainable Development Goals
At Pico Analytics, our mission is to ensure a better world through data-driven decisions and ESG bench-marketing. One of the biggest advancements in the recent years is the development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Over the coming weeks we will be looking into these goals and analysing their global progress, in totality and individually. This article introduces the SDGs, their origins and the process of implementation that created these goals in the first place.
The current activity of the seven billion people around the world is unsustainable over time and will completely change the world we as we know it. There is a need to manage our natural resources at a global level and a lot of effort will need to be invested into the management of the human communities in order to achieve sustainable development.
How can we build a society and world that is fair and equal, and is also sustainable? Are we doing enough as it stands?
It wasn’t until 2015 that a global convention led by the United Nations discussed problems related to our limited recourses. As part of this convention, Agenda 2030 was developed with an aim to make change towards a more sustainable future, which included a number of goals for countries to achieve, called the Sustainable Development Goals. These ate intended to be achieved by the year of 2030. Essentially, these goals aim to find solutions to the limitations of our recourses, focusing on a fairer distribution focusing on social, economic and environmental sustainability, while making sure that everyone benefits from development and progress. The ultimate goal being to improve human welfare.
The Sustainable Development Goals
Mentioned above are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the SDGs, adopted by 193 countries worldwide. Associated with each goal is number of sub goals or targets - in total 169 targets. The first eight goals address humans and their immediate human condition and the remaining nine target recourses or social constructs that provide support for the development of the human condition. These are believed to be a blueprint for a more sustainable world.
Follow this link for more information on the SDGs and their targets and sub-targets: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
How were the SDGs created?
As we know, the creation of these goals is imperative, but when embarking on this mission, the UN was faced with a big challenge. These will influence the evolution of the Earth’s systems, the communities and economies. But how could they have decided what is most important?
Together, 193 governments and eight million civilians participated in the development of the Agenda. These were agreed through political negotiation and are a product of compromise.
All the 17 goals and all are essential, interrelated and do not happen in isolation.
How will the implementation of the sustainable development goals affect us?
Mogewns Lykketoft, a Danish member of parliament, who was chairing the UN General Assembly during the creation of the Agenda 2030, stresses that it is existential for humanity to achieve these goals in order to keep good functioning.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, an international leader known as the “mother of sustainable development”, defines it as the “development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Brundtland, alongside her colleagues from the UN created the Brundlant Report which emphasizes, firstly, the importance of intergenerational equity and secondly, that sustainable development must consider the environment, the economy and the social aspect in unison.
How can we measure the progression of the goals?
How can we be certain we are measuring the progress on the SDGs to the best of our ability? When measuring the SDGs, it is challenging to relate them to everyday decisions. This is because most governments do not consider the SDG’s when evaluating legislations for the country, what they do consider, in contrary, are sectors such as Agriculture, Health and Finance.
As a result, the UN created the SDG Report for support in the implementation and measurement of the outcomes of the 17 goals. This report was a data-based assessment and indicators were allocated to each target towards assessing their global status. Yet most of these indicators have to be continuously worked on as the world evolves. SDG 17 (specifically, 17.19) targets the development of new measures for assessing sustainable growth, supporting statistical capacity and improved metrics. In such manner, most of the SDGs have big gaps in information due to the difficulty in gathering information in some remote places in the world. Surely, with the evolution of our understanding of the SDGs also comes an increased ability to quantify them and know where the gaps are, facilitating their implementation.
The SDGs are all interlinked
The SDGs should be considered as “One for all and All for One!”
Even though the goals a formulated globally, their interaction can lead to different outcomes in different regions. Making it extremely important to think about them as a whole. It is necessary to think about the negative and positive effects on the overall SDGs simultaneously as they are all interlinked. The interactions can be negative, positive and not all have equal weight, meaning that some are more important than others in achieving sustainable development. Nevertheless, progressing on one of these goals will most likely impact positively the others.
Pico Analytics and the SDGs
At Pico Analytics, we are constantly monitoring updates with regards to the SDGs. In future, we aim to conduct detailed research on individual goals to provide a wholesome review of progress in relation to these markers.
What to do if you want to get involved with the Agenda 2030?
- Find out what is already happening in your community and how you can get involved
- Spread the word
- Be politically involved – voting, writing to policy makers, demanding, etc.
- Practice a more sustainable way of living – recycling and reducing; saving energy, swapping your one time use items to reusable items, etc.
- Ethical finance:
o Green ISAs or LISAs allow you to invest in a socially responsible manner with a healthy return on investment – there are plenty of asset managers in the UK which provide this service
o Personal investments in companies with good ESG ratings
www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
https://coursera.org/share/cb1eb231e3fe0c2c6d26bff5f67686f1
https://coursera.org/share/3685126f3676b34b2a4622e894aea073
https://coursera.org/share/9fb05cad83520960b8cda93e680b5d2c
https://council.science/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/SDGs-Guide-to-Interactions.pdf
