UN sustainable development goals: How can sustainable/green chemistry contribute? By doing things differently

Until now, much Green and Sustainable Chemistry has been focused on how chemicals are made. Here we suggest that, if chemistry is to contribute effectively to achieving the SDGs, we need to change the way that things are done at both ends of the chemical supply chain. For chemical research at the start of the chain, we need to rethink how we build the laboratories in which we carry out the research so as to minimize the use of energy. At the other end of the chain, we advocate the adoption of a Moore's Law for Chemistry (MLFC), which we recently proposed that, wherever possible, the amount of chemical(s) used to achieve a given effect should be decreased by a factor of 2 every five years

Partnerships for Sustainable Development Goals 2016

This present document is the fourth edition of a report that has been prepared by the Division for Sustainable Development of UN-DESA as a follow up the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, as an effort to provide status of progress multi-stakeholder partnerships and voluntary commitments have in realizing sustainable development. This current 2016 edition reviews a number of action networks and multi-stakeholder partnerships, with a particular focus on how they support the theme of the 2016 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) - "Ensuring that no one is left behind". Information in the report is largely based on submissions from the Partnerships for SDGs online platform, which was originally developed following the Rio+20 Conference in 201. The platform was recently redesigned ahead of the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017 reviews progress made towards the 17 Goals in the second year of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The reportis based on the latest available data. It highlights both gains and challenges as the international community moves towards full realization of the ambitions and principles espoused in the2030 Agenda

Sustainable development goals

It is incrеаsingly rеcognizеd thаt humаn rights plаy аn importаnt rolе in еnsuring sustаinаblе dеvеlopmеnt. Thе Millеnnium Dеvеlopmеnt Goаls (MDGs) sеrvеd аs vеhiclеs for somе еconomic аnd sociаl rights, but ignorеd othеr importаnt humаn rights issuеs. In contrаst, thе nеw аmbitious univеrsаl dеvеlopmеnt progrаm Thе Аgеndа for Sustаinаblе Dеvеlopmеnt until 2030 fully еmbodiеs thе principlеs аnd stаndаrds of humаn rights

Sustainable development goals

Botswana has embraced sustainable development as its development approach, and is fully committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, its principles, goals, targets and indicators. This report provides an overview of Botswana’s progress in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since their adoption, with a particular focus on the theme - “Eradicating Poverty and Promoting Prosperity in a Changing World”. This report has been prepared with the full participation of Government, private sector, civil society, local authorities, development partners, UN, academia and other interest groups. Data was collected through workshops, focus group discussions, key informer interviews and literature reviews. The main report will highlight the positive experience to date and the challenges encountered in the efforts made to eradicate poverty

Groundwater and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Groundwater is an important part of the water cycle, but this don’t reflects at all in the indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN). Facing some logistical issues in what relates to data gathering and data treatment, the indicators, used to monitor objectives defined by UN for all the 17 SDGs, must be, for the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), reasonable maintained under 100 to be treatable and useful for all the UN member states. As always, groundwater, as the major part of the available freshwater resources on the world, but also as the less understood part of the same cycle, has been somehow forgotten. Our aim must be to turn groundwater a priority in the international decisions, documents and governance. An example is the SDGs, on its goal 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, dedicated to the topic “Ensure access to water and sanitation for all”, the following targets related with clean water are appointed: by 2030 to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all, to improve water quality, to substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity, to implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation, to expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water-related activities; by 2020, to protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including aquifers. There is also an indication to support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management. To accomplish these targets in what respects groundwater, more efforts must be done to indicate to the countries the kind of data that must be collected and analysed in order to inform better the state of our groundwater resources

Collaborative governance for the sustainable development goals

The advent of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals has refocused global attention on the roles of business and other nonstate actors in achieving global goals. Often, business involvement takes the form of collaborations with the more traditional actors—governments and non‐governmental organizations. Although such partnerships for development have been seen before, the scale and expectations are new. This paper explores how and why these cross‐sector collaborations are evolving, and what steps can or should be taken to ensure that partnerships create public and private value. The arguments are illustrated with reference to cases of market‐driven partnerships for agriculture in Southeast Asia that are intended to engage marginalized smallholder farmers in global value chains in agriculture. The aims of these cross‐sector collaborations coincide with several targets of the Sustainable Development Goals such as poverty alleviation, decreasing environmental impact, and achieving food security. This is a hard case for mechanisms intended to protect public interests, given that the target beneficiaries (low‐income smallholder farmers and the environment) are unable to speak effectively for themselves. We find that structures and processes to align interests in ways that protect the public interest are both necessary and feasible, though not easy to achieve

Open Working Group Proposal for Sustainable Development Goals

The outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, entitled "The future we want", inter alia, set out a mandate to establish an open working group to develop a set of sustainable development goals for consideration and appropriate action by the General Assembly at its sixty-eighth session. It also provided the basis for their conceptualization. The document gave the mandate that the sustainable development goals should be coherent with and integrated into the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015

Partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals: Synthesis of Consultations

The Partnerships for SDGs online platform was launched as a beta/draft version in the lead-up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit for the adoptation of the post-2015 development agenda. The platform, managed by the Division for Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DSD/DESA) and initially developed in response to a mandate set out by the Rio+20 Conference (paragraph 283, Future We Want), is currently being improved to better respond to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in order to function as a tool to inform all stakeholders on initiatives carried out by multi-stakeholder partnerships in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and for linking progress of those initiatives to various follow-up mechanisms of the 2030 Agenda, in particular to the High-level Politician Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF)

Education & the Sustainable Development Goals

Background paper prepared for the 2016 Global Education Monitoring ReportThe review conducted here is not a “systematic review” in the technical sense, with a fixed set of search and selection criteria applied to a defined set of potential sources. One of the aims was of this review was to capture insights from across a large range of disciplines, many of which use their own language and terminology for phenomena that are educational in fact but not in name. In addition, in the area of educational development itself, “grey” literature is common, which ordinarily would not be included in a scientific review. Accordingly, we proceeded through a combination of “snowball” sampling, starting from key studies or review articles, purposive searching to close specific gaps (or to verify the absence of evidence), and by consulting our extensive professional networks. This approach allowed us to identify a diverse range of important items, which would have been missed had we taken a more systematic, scientific approach. An important limitation is that a review of the present scope and ambition can never be fully comprehensive, and that the selection and choices made inevitably partly reflect our own particular areas of expertise and interest, as well as a certain amount of chance. In addition, the timing of the work relative to the SDG process means that only the draft targets were available when we began our review, and also that keeping up to date with other related efforts has been a “moving target”. Around the formal adoption of the SDGs, relevant documents, reports, and data were published almost on a daily basis. At the same time, one strength of our approach has been precisely to be able to take advantage of our networks and social media to learn of such publications almost immediately