The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030

Goal #5 Gender Equality. The idea here is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. There are several goals here, including ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere, eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private sector including trafficking sexual and other types of exploitation— lofty goals indeed. Elimination of harmful practices such as child and early forced marriages and female genital mutilation, recognizing and valuing unpaid care and domestic work, ensuring full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic and public life; also ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, undertaking reforms to give The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 women equal rights and economic resources as well as access to ownership and control of land forms of property, finances and inheritance. Also to enhance the use of enabling technologies, in particular information and communications technology to help promote the empowerment of women, adopting and strengthening some policies and enforceable legislation for the empowerment of women and girls at all levels.

Much of the rest of the 17 sustainable development goals are just as robust and important, I’ll just go through a few more highlights and try and summarize them here. Goal #6 above, is all about ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all; goal #7, sharing access to affordable, reliable and sustainable water energy for all; goal #8, promoting sustained inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full, productive employment and decent work for all; goal #9, ways to build infrastructures to promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization while fostering innovation; goal #10, reducing inequalities within and among all countries; goal #11, making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable; goal #12, share sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Goal #13, take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact seems like a pretty decent goal—we’ll take a little time here on this one. There are several targets for this goal; strengthening resilience, adaptive capacity to climate related hazards and natural disasters for all countries, integrate climate change messages into the national policy strategies and planning; improving education and awareness-raising, human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning. Also, implementing the commitment undertaken by the United Nations Framework to address the needs of developing countries in the context of a meaningful action and transparency; promoting mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change related planning and management in the developed countries.

Goal #14, concern and sustainably use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development; goal #15, to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage the forest, help combat desertification, and how to reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss. 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. And lastly, goal # 17, involve strengthening the means of implementation and revitalization of the Global Partnerships for sustainable development.

In conclusion, we can see that our work is cut out for us; Global Warming, Climate Change and Sustainable Development must be planned, implemented and worked out in short order! Many first steps have been taken, but let’s make no mistake about it–it can’t just be talk. We must leverage technology to help us manage our world more sustainably. Ask ourselves each day what have we personally done in the furtherance of these goals? For more information check out the interactive milestones for sustainable development topics at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/process /timeline