Millennium Development Goals out, Sustainable Development Goals in

The United Nations General Assembly this weekend in New York will put an end to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG 2000-2015) – by celebrating their successes – and decide on a new sets of global aid development goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030).

The event is being called Global Development Week, but it is actually the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, 25-27 September 2015.

The UN Member States will narrow down the SDGs that have been in draft form for years in preparation for this year. In 2012 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed 26 public and private leaders to advise the UN on the post-MGD global agenda. In 2014 the UN’s Commission for the Status of Women confirmed the need for a stand-alone goal on gender equality post-2015 that would underpin all other SDGs.

However, already the draft SDGs are said to be ‘cumbersome, complex, and ambitious.’ This is because there were 8 MDGs and now there are 17 drafted SDGs, as follows, with 169 proposed targets for these 17 goals and 304 proposed indicatators to measure their progress:

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

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

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

17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

To kickoff the events this week, Pope Francis will address the UN Assembly.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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