Source: United Nations Development Programme
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.
In September 2015, the General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Building on the principle of “leaving no one behind”, the new Agenda emphasizes a holistic approach to achieving sustainable development for all.
17 SDGs are:
Goal-1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Important Targets:
- By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.
- By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
- Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable.
Goal-2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
- The SDGs aim to end all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, making sure all people–especially children–have sufficient and nutritious food all year. This involves promoting sustainable agricultural, supporting small-scale farmers and equal access to land, technology and markets
Important Targets
- By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people
- By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving
- By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land
- By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production
Goal-3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well being of all at all ages
Important Targets
- By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births
- By 2030, end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age
- By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases
- By 2030, reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases
Goal-4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
Important Targets
- By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education
- By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education
- By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university
- By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education
Goal-5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Important Targets
- End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
- Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation
Goal-6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Important Targets
- By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all
- By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation
- By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate
- By 2020, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers, and lakes
Goal-7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Important Targets
- By 2030, ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services
- By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix
- By 2030, double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency
Goal-8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all
Important Targets
- Sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in particular, at least 7 per cent gross domestic product growth per annum in the least developed countries
- By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
- By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training
- Improve progressively, through 2030, global resource efficiency in consumption and production and endeavour to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation
Goal-9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation
Important Targets
- Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all
- Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic produce
- By 2030, upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable
Goal-10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
Important Targets
- By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average
- By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all
- By 2030, reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent
Goal-11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Important Targets
- By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade
- By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety
- By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization
- By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities
Goal-12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
Important Targets
- Implement the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production
- By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources
- By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses
- By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle
Goal-13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
Important Targets
- Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries
- Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning
- Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020
Goal-14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
Important Targets
- By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution
- By 2020, sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts
- By 2020, effectively regulate harvesting and end overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices
- By 2020, prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing
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
Important Targets
- By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services
- By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests
- By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil
- By 2030, ensure the conservation of mountain ecosystems, including their biodiversity
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
Important Targets
- Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere
- End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children
- Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all
- By 2030, significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets and combat all forms of organized crime
Goal-17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development
Important Targets
- Strengthen domestic resource mobilization, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection
- Mobilize additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources
- Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation
- Assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring
