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The UN working group responsible for crafting the sustainable development goals (SDGs) has handed down its final proposal, adding a goal to address domestic and global inequality.
The recommendations include 17 goals and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. The list includes a reworking of the eight millennium development goals that expire next year, such as eradicating poverty and hunger, improving education, and achieving gender equality, as well as new goals on water and sanitation, affordable energy, safer cities and climate change. The recommendations will be shared with the UN general assembly (UNGA) next month for members to debate the goals, which will be universal. The UNGA is expected to adopt the new set of goals in September 2015.
The proposed SDGs
- 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 life-long 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 industrialisation 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 revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.
The targets include eradicating extreme poverty – defined as people living on less than $1.25 a day – and halving the number of people living in poverty according to national definitions.
On hunger, the goals call for doubling agricultural productivity and the incomes of small-scale farmers. The health targets include ending preventable deaths of newborns and children under five years old.
The final proposal received varied responses, including praise for a more extensive list of goals and disappointment at the relegation of issues including governance and land rights. Here is a selection of people’s thoughts on Twitter:
Proposed #SDGs leave out critical component of improving rural livelihoods - securing community land rights http://t.co/UQVoNLr7IN
— Pieter Terpstra (@pqterpstra) August 1, 2014
We're pleased to see disability so prominent in #post2015 development priorities: http://t.co/Qae7cBY7jq #SDGs
— Leonard Cheshire (@LeonardCheshire) July 25, 2014
I'm torn: it's good that science is in the #SDGs but worried that it's just buried in the 170-odd targets. http://t.co/AHNBMG4ke5
— Tamzin Byrne (@tamzin_byrne) August 1, 2014
To end #poverty, you have to end #corruption. A #governance goal needs 2 be included in the #SDGs via @anticorruption http://t.co/LMFUtSikQw
— Maria Rubi (@rubicitotuitero) July 31, 2014
Post-2015: so far 17 goals and 169 targets! How much resources are we willing to spend on measurement? #SDGs http://t.co/Cu910xWKnE
— Morten Jerven (@MJerven) August 3, 2014
We want to hear your thoughts on the SDGs. What deserves to be on the list? What’s missing? What should be higher up? Share your ideal list in the comment thread below. If you have any problems posting, or would prefer to comment anonymously, email us at development@guardian.co.uk and we’ll add your views to the thread.
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