Sustainable Development Goals Frequently Asked Questions
Sustainable Development Frequently Asked Questions
The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) provide basic information on Sustainable Development. Designed for the general public and to those specifically involved in development work, they describe briefly and in question-and-answer format, the structure, objectives, philosophy and activities of Sustainable Development. For ease of use, it is divided into Sub-Topics: ...See the 10 Most Viewed FAQs
The proposed goals and targets were prepared by the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) to help inform the debate around Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the work of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which has recently submitted its report to the United Nations Secretary-General, and the Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals established at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). The Leadership Council took into consideration proposals emerging from the thematic and national consultations organized by the United Nations Task Team, other processes, and numerous reports issued by civil society and research organizations. The Leadership Council also benefited enormously from hundreds of comments received during public consultations on the document.
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) outcome document refers to three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, and environmental) and emphasizes the importance of good governance as well as peace and security, which are sometimes referred to as a foundation of sustainable development. For simplicity we refer to the four societal objectives as dimensions of sustainable development: economic development (including ending extreme poverty), social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and good governance including peace and security.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) demonstrate the power of global goals, backed by quantitative targets, in building momentum for national and local action. Addressing the challenges of sustainable development requires a shared focus on ending extreme poverty in all its forms and a structural transformation in the way that national and local economies operate. The necessary focus and collaboration across actors and countries can best be achieved through shared global objectives for sustainable development. That is why the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) called for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Of course, setting global goals – even if they are based on shared values – will have little impact unless followed up by concerted action. However, averting the business-as-usual (BAU) trajectory will be nearly impossible without an ambitious and universal set of Sustainable Development Goals.
Well-crafted Sustainable Development Goals guides the public understanding of complex long-term challenges, inspire public and private action, and promote accountability. They builds on existing global initiatives and bring together ongoing efforts in sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals is a complementary to the tools of international laws, such as global treaties and conventions, by providing a normative framework for the global partnership needed to address the interconnected challenges the world faces. Children around the world will learn a simplified version of the goals as a clear introduction to sustainable development. For business people, government officials, civil society, and others, the goals will promote integrated thinking and help to stave off the futile debates that often pit one dimension of sustainable development against another. They will mobilize governments and the international system to strengthen measurement and monitoring for sustainable development.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are one part of the global policy framework for the period after 2015. Just as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were part of the Millennium Declaration, which goes well beyond the Millennium Development Goals to include issues of war and peace, the Sustainable Development Goals will be one part of the global policy agenda after 2015. The broader agenda including issues of war and peace, ridding the world of nuclear weapons as per the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and addressing major macroeconomic challenges such as reforming the global financial systems to prevent a repeat of the devastating 2008 financial crisis.
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) adopted the principle of sustainable development goals to be crafted and adopted by United Nations member states before the end of 2015. The proposed goals outlined by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) are one of many inputs into this debate.
The Sustainable Development Goals are universal, applying to all nations, rich and poor alike. They have a 15-year time frame, like the Millennium Development Goals, thereby covering the period 2015 to 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals should address all four dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, environmental, and governance) and set objectives for governments at all levels, as well as for business and civil society. Not every goal will be a “stretch goal” for every country. Rich countries, for instance, will have met goals related to ending extreme poverty. Yet all countries lag behind on some dimensions of sustainable development.
Business deserves special note as a principal engine for economic growth and job creation. The term “business” comprises a great diversity of organizations ranging from small shops to large multinational corporations and financial institutions. Collectively, businesses will develop and deliver many of the new technologies, organizational models, and management systems that are needed for sustainable development. Businesses also directly account for some two-thirds of natural resource use. If businesses embrace the Sustainable Development Goals and are supported by clear government policies and rules that align private incentives with sustainable development, then rapid positive change will become possible.1 If businesses operate under values and incentives that are misaligned with the objectives of sustainable development, then the transformations outlined in this document will be impossible.
Similarly, sustainable development cannot occur without civil society doing its part. The Sustainable Development Goals are a guide and standard for civil society as well, including universities and other expert communities, non- governmental organizations (NGOs), philanthropies and foundations, environmental groups, social enterprises, and others. Each of these civil society actors will have their own distinctive role to play in support of the Sustainable Development Goals.
| 1 | One example of a values-based business initiative that also includes a development dimension is the United Nations Global Compact |
The Millennium Development Goals are the world’s shared goals for ending extreme poverty in all its forms and will expire at the end of 2015. They have supported tremendous progress, including the reduction by half of the poverty rate of developing countries taken as a group. However, the job of ending extreme poverty in all its forms is far from complete country by country, particularly among disadvantaged groups and regions within countries. For this reason, the Sustainable Development Goals start with a clear commitment to finishing the work of the Millennium Development Goals by resolving under SDG 1 to end extreme poverty and hunger by 2030. The Global Bank Group has committed to the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, and to achieve sustainable development in its three dimensions through promoting inclusive economic growth, protecting the environment, and promoting social inclusion. Member states may decide to include suitably updated Millennium Development Goals targets under SDG 1 as measures of extreme poverty in all its forms. Alternatively, the targets on ending extreme poverty may be distributed across the corresponding Sustainable Development Goals.
The proposed Sustainable Development Goals in such a way as to stay close to the structure of the Millennium Development Goals. They are not ordered by priority. All are very important and work in harmony with the others.
As described in this document and illustrated in Annex 2, the world’s challenges are interconnected and must therefore address all four dimensions of sustainable development (economic development and ending poverty, social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and good governance including peace and security). To reflect the need for integration, the proposed ten Sustainable Development Goals and their thirty targets have been designed to address multiple dimensions of sustainable development.
Several criteria have been identified for crafting the Sustainable Development Goals. They should be:
- Universal: The goals should be applicable to all countries. In particular they should address the needs of low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries.
- Comprehensive: Together, the ten goals should spell out the principal challenges of sustainable development and provide a normative framework for the global partnership needed to address the profound and interconnected challenges the world faces. For example, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) feels that climate change is such an important challenge that these words need to appear in the title of one of the goals.
- Operational: To the extent possible, each goal should address and mobilize clearly defined knowledge communities comprising government departments, business, civil society, international organizations, and academia/research. Some goals therefore focus on specific operational or place-based challenges, such as urban management, climate change, or sustainable agriculture. Others focus on cross-cutting issues like gender equality or water management that must be addressed in every goal, but should also be highlighted through a dedicated goal.
- Jargon-free and easy to understand: Children should be able to learn the goals at school as a clear introduction to sustainable development. To this end the wording of the goals needs to be free of jargon. Where important technical concepts (e.g. ecosystems) are needed these should be included and become part of the introduction to sustainable development.
- SMART Targets: In general, targets should be “SMART”: specific, measurable (though some targets should remain fairly general and may require the setting of national/local targets or new metrics), attainable (though some will be “stretch” goals that can be attained only with considerable effort), relevant (to the four dimensions of sustainable development), and time bound to 2030 or earlier.
- Applicable to all stakeholders: The goals should apply to governments at all levels, business, civil society, international organizations, and other stakeholders.
- Integrated: The goals should promote integrated thinking and put to rest the futile debates that pit one dimension of sustainable development against another
- Limited in number: The Sustainable Development Solutions Network believes that ten is the maximum practical number. Beyond ten, the goals would lose the benefit of public understanding and motivation.
The targets proposed should be specified at the global and national level to ensure that they can be measured in a timely and accurate way using one or more indicators. The indicators should be well designed to enable data collection and monitoring. The statistical agencies should promote the use of advanced data tools, including remote sensing, real-time monitoring with smartphones, crowdsourcing, GIS mapping, and other techniques.
Where possible, the Sustainable Development Goals should focus on outcomes, such as ending extreme poverty. Yet, the distinction between outcomes, outputs, and inputs needs to be handled pragmatically, and the design of goals and targets should be guided by approaches that are best suited to mobilize action and ensure accountability. For example, ensuring universal access to healthcare or high-quality early childhood development (ECD) are important commitments for every government. Goals and targets that focus on these outputs will ensure operational focus and accountability. In some instances it also makes sense to target inputs. For example, official development assistance (ODA) is critical for ensuring many Sustainable Development Goals and needs to be mobilized in every high-income country. Mobilizing resources for sustainable development is difficult, so subsuming official development assistance as an implicit input into every Sustainable Development Goal would make it harder for government leaders, citizens, and civil society organizations to argue for increased official development assistance. It would also weaken accountability for rich countries. Similar considerations apply, for example, to the proposed target on integrated reporting by governments and businesses on their contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Many targets call for “universal access” (e.g. to infrastructure) or “zero” deprivation (e.g. extreme poverty, hunger). For each such target, the technical communities and member states will need to define the precise quantitative standard for their commitment to “universal access” or “zero” deprivation. In most cases these standards will indeed be 100 percent or 0 percent, respectively, but there may be areas where it is technically impossible to achieve 100 percent access or 0 percent deprivation. In such cases countries should aim to get as close as possible to 100 percent or 0 percent, respectively.
It is important that every target can be measured at the national or local level, but not every target can be defined globally in a meaningful way, for three distinct reasons:
i. The starting points may differ too much across countries for a single meaningful quantitative standard at the global level;
ii. Some targets need to be adapted and quantified locally or may be relevant only in subsets of countries (e.g. those that refer to specific ecosystems);
iii. For some targets no global consensus exists today, and these still need to be negotiated, as is the case with greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. In the meantime, countries should establish their own plans and targets.
In some cases, proposed numerical targets are presented in square brackets since these numbers are preliminary and may need to be reviewed by the corresponding technical communities.
The term “extreme poverty in all its forms” for the multidimensional concept of poverty encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals, comprising inter alia income poverty, hunger, gender inequality, lack of education, poor health, and lack of access to basic infrastructure services. Extreme income poverty or “absolute income poverty” is defined by the Global Bank Group as a per capita income of less than $1.25 per day. The measure social inclusion in part by the use of “relative poverty,” defined by the (OECD) as the proportion of households with incomes less than half of the national median income.
Several arguments have prompted the Leadership Council to include hunger and nutrition under extreme poverty:
i. Hunger and malnutrition are challenges that affect rural as well as urban areas, so grouping hunger under a place-based “rural” goal might weaken the focus on urban hunger;
ii. Hunger is not only a function of food availability, which a goal focused on sustainable food production might suggest;
iii. Stunting and malnutrition are key dimensions of extreme poverty that give substance to the notion of “extreme poverty in all its forms”; and
iv. A poverty/hunger goal ensures full continuity with MDG 1.
Note that in sub-Saharan Africa, the links between hunger and low agricultural productivity are especially acute, so that, in this region, the reduction of hunger and the achievement of sustainable agriculture are deeply intertwined.
The proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deal with inequalities in several ways:
i. SDG 4 has explicit targets on ending discrimination and reducing relative poverty, which describes the proportion of households with incomes below 50 percent of the national median. Relative poverty is a widely used measure of inequality.
ii. Many of the goals emphasize universal access to various public services and infrastructure that give every person, especially women, a fair chance at prosperity (note in particular SDGs 3 to 9). Achieving universal access will require that special strategies address deep-rooted inequalities across regions, gender, ethnicities, income levels, and other dimensions.
Recommend that the Sustainable Development Goals indicators be disaggregated as much as possible by geography, income, socio-economic group, and other identifiers to track inequalities in Sustainable Development Goals outcomes. As described in Section V, for every Sustainable Development Goals call on countries to monitor and to end inequalities in outcomes across sub-populations.
Certain parts of the world, including the Sahel, the Horn of Africa (plus Yemen), the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, and parts of Central Asia, face extraordinary challenges as the result of the combination of extreme poverty, weak infrastructure, chronic violence, rapid population growth, and inherently difficult geographical conditions (such as being landlocked, small island states, extremely arid, highly vulnerable to droughts and floods, and/or having a high burden of communicable diseases such as malaria). Countries facing these tremendous and interconnected challenges need special international support, including timely and adequate external assistance. They also need a regional focus, since many of the problems (weak transportation, cross-border nomadism, displaced populations, droughts, epidemics, and conflicts) occur at the regional scale and must be addressed in part at that scale.
Modern Earth-systems science (including geology, climate science, hydrology, and ecology) makes clear that human activity is now dangerously impinging on vital Earth functions, including climate, the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, biodiversity, ocean acidification, particulate pollution, and more. Scientists are identifying certain thresholds or “planetary boundaries” beyond which human activity can have dire effects on human wellbeing and on ecosystem functions everywhere. Unless human development respects these planetary boundaries, people in all countries are likely to face severe environmental degradation that could severely set back human development. Yet it is possible for countries to grow while respecting these boundaries, mainly by improving efficiency, shifting to sustainable technologies, restraining various kinds of wasteful behaviors, and by decelerating population growth more rapidly. The proposed SDG 2 therefore underscores the right to development for all countries within planetary boundaries. It is closely related to the better-known concept of sustainable consumption and production. This goal includes a target on economic growth as a key dimension of the right to development. A second target focuses on the need to measure and track the environmental impact of growth in every country by reforming national accounting systems. A third target focuses on the rapid attainment of population stabilization. The transformations needed for the world and for every country to respect planetary boundaries are addressed in the goals below (particularly SDGs 6 to 10).
Most simply because it is the essence of proposed SDG 2. As emphasized throughout this document and in the “Framework of Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns” adopted at United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the use of environmental resources and pollution must be brought down to levels that can be sustained over the long run. This in turn will require a major decoupling of pollution and environmental resource use from rising living standards and economic growth, consistent with achieving a net reduction in both aggregate pollution and resource use. In many areas consumption and production patterns will need to change significantly. Yet, the key question is not the level of “consumption” or “production” per se, but their primary resource, pollution, and ecosystem implications. Consumption and production in an economic sense (i.e., improvement of material conditions) can grow provided they are decoupled from pollution and unsustainable natural resource use. This is the normative essence of SDG 2.
Decoupling means a drop in primary resource use and pollution as economic growth proceeds. It is achieved through a combination of new technologies (e.g. photovoltaic electricity and wind power substituting for fossil fuels), investments in energy efficiency (e.g. reduced losses on the power grid, improved insulation for homes), the dematerialization of production (e.g. the shift from vinyl albums to online music and from books to e-books), and proper economic incentives for individuals, businesses, and governments.
Resource efficiency (more output per unit of resource input) is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Greater efficiency in oil and gas extraction (e.g. hydrofracking) can expand rather than reduce CO2 emissions. Greater efficiency in internal combustion engines can lead to larger cars rather than fuel savings. Thus, technological changes need to be combined with appropriate policy incentives.
There are many pessimists regarding decoupling who feel that the only way to limit resource use is to limit overall economic growth. We disagree. Decoupling has not yet been tried as a serious global strategy, and we believe that advances in areas such as information and communications technologies, energy technologies, materials science, advanced manufacturing processes, and agriculture will permit continued economic growth combined with a massive reduction in the use and waste of key primary commodities, a sharp drop in greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution.
Reducing youth unemployment is a core priority for most countries. The proposed SDG 3 focuses on high- quality primary and secondary education and on effective institutions (such as apprenticeships) that can help youth prepare for decent work. The third target focuses directly on the youth unemployment rate. Likewise, the agriculture goal (SDG 6) includes the need for rural job creation and development, whereas the urban goal (SDG 7) addresses urban employment under its first target.
Many scholars and an increasing number of governments now collect data on subjective wellbeing (SWB). SWB refers to an individual's own report of his or her sense of happiness or life satisfaction. These subjective accounts have been shown to be systematic and informative of the individual and social conditions in a country that are conducive to a high quality of life. The proposed numerical targets for reducing tobacco use and harmful use of alcohol derive from the World Health Assembly resolution 66.10.2 propose the 2025 target of reducing harmful use of alcohol by 10% be increased to 20% by 2030.
Access to infrastructure is essential for ending extreme poverty in all its forms and promoting sustainable development. The proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) divide the challenges of providing access to infrastructure between urban (SDG 7) and rural (SDG 6) areas. This division is motivated by the fact that infrastructure technologies, delivery models, and responsible actors vary significantly between urban and rural areas.
Providing access to safe water and sanitation, ensuring sound management of freshwater resources, and preventing water pollution are inter-related priority challenges of sustainable development that must be met for other goals and targets to be achieved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Water access: Delivery models, technologies, and responsible actors for access to water and sanitation differ between urban and rural areas, so we propose to assign these challenges to the urban and rural goals, respectively. This has the added advantage of combining water supply and sanitation, which are often closely linked.
Water resources management: Integrated water resources management and the allocation of water across different uses is a cross-cutting requirement for all goals. Freshwater needs for agriculture (accounting for some 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals), industry, households, and the healthy functioning of ecosystems (sometimes referred to as “green water”) stand out as major challenges. Moreover, water-related disasters, such as floods and droughts, account for a large share of damage from natural disasters. Water resources management and associated disaster risk management cannot be pursued in isolation from the management of agriculture, cities, and ecosystems, so water is part of several goals. The proposed SDG 9 emphasizes the need for integrated water resources management. A suitable indicator for Target 9c might include the ratio of freshwater withdrawals to renewable freshwater supply which should be lower than one.
Water pollution: Water pollution is a separate management challenge. Although not limited to urban areas, water pollution is a significant urban challenge and is therefore included under SDG 7.
The question of how to deal with water challenges in the proposed Sustainable Development Goals has been intensely discussed in the Leadership Council. Some have argued for a stand-alone water goal partly to draw attention to the importance of water management. Overall, though, the proposals provide a sound basis for managing the various water challenges within the framework of ten Sustainable Development Goals, particularly if suitable indicators track the sustainable use of water resources, access to water supply, and water quality.
Urban2 sustainable development is a central challenge and a major opportunity for most countries, as urban and slum populations are rising rapidly. The urban share of the world’s population is expected to rise from 52 percent in 2010 to around 67 percent in 2050, and the urban share of GDP and employment will rise commensurately. If managed well, urbanization can create employment and prosperity, and become a central driver for ending extreme poverty and for strengthening social inclusion. If managed poorly, cities will deepen social exclusion and fail to generate enough jobs.
Urban sustainable development is complex, involving not only many sectors but also many political entities, including local neighborhoods, city governments, metropolitan areas, and national governments, which must empower cities and link them to rural areas. As a result, strategies for cities pose highly complex yet crucial challenges. An urban Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is therefore important to mobilize and bring together the efforts of multiple actors and stakeholders (e.g. local authorities, national governments, businesses, knowledge institutions, and civil society) across a range of urban issues (e.g. urban jobs, housing, infrastructure, governance, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation and mitigation) and mobilize the financial, institutional, and human resources to make this possible.
| 1 | In this document we use the terms “cities” and “urban areas” interchangeably to denote metropolitan areas and all urban centers that have economic or political importance |
The world has adopted the Aichi Biodiversity targets as quantitative outcome targets for biodiversity and ecosystems. These 20 targets include outcome objectives to be achieved by 2020. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets cannot replicate the full set of Aichi targets, and it strikes us as impossible to pick one ecosystem or one quantitative target over the others. Countries therefore need to set their own quantitative targets under the Sustainable Development Goals, which should ideally be consistent with the Aichi targets. It was proposed to distinguish between ecosystem management at the national and subnational level (first target) and regional or global efforts (second target). The latter are inherently more complex and require different institutional arrangements. Both are critical for sustainable development.
The proposed Sustainable Development Goals targets call for policies to ensure resilient and productive ecosystems. A central objective of such policies must be to address the drivers of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss, which includes applying the “polluter pays” and “payment for ecosystem services” principles. Suitable indicators, including halting the loss of biodiversity, can and should be constructed at national/local and regional/global levels to measure the achievement of this target across a broad range of ecosystems.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will set legally binding targets among nations. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will not be legally binding and will not replace or hinder the work of the UNFCCC. Rather, the Sustainable Development Goals, like the Millennium Development Goals today, will provide a global, easily understood, normative framework to mobilize all stakeholders in the fight for sustainable development, which must include efforts to curb human-induced climate change. The Sustainable Development Goals should therefore help the public to understand the critical issues, the solutions, and the urgency of changing course. Similar considerations apply to biodiversity, human rights, and other areas where legally binding international conventions have been adopted, but which also need to be addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals. The Sustainable Development Goals need to get to the crux of the matter on climate change: that is, heading off the rapidly growing dangers. Because the science of climate change continues to evolve, it is important to define the related Sustainable Development Goals so that it can evolve with the progress of scientific understanding and reflect new and hopefully stronger commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Today’s consensus on avoiding a 2°C increase in temperature, for example, may not be ambitious enough according to a growing body of scientific evidence. This is especially troubling since the world is far off course from even achieving the 2°C target.
To underscore the importance of peace and security as a central component of the four dimensions of sustainable development. Goal 1 includes a focus on vulnerable regions, including post-conflict regions, and a target to address conflict and violence. Goal 4 includes a target on reducing violence against individuals, especially women and children, which needs to be operationalized at the country level. This target addresses issues of gender-based violence and child protection, as well as personal security, which represent a critical challenge in conflict and post-conflict settings. Indeed, many of the proposed goals address the structural causes of conflict such as inequality and exclusion, extreme poverty in all its forms, and poor governance.
The broader political issues of peace and security, which are typically addressed by the Security Council of the United Nations, go beyond the scope of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The post-2015 global policy framework, which will include more than the Sustainable Development Goals themselves, should also draw attention to the long-standing but still unfulfilled objective of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.