‘2030Global Agenda for Sustainable Development’crying outfor attention

In this particular piece, The Guardian is doing precisely that: repeating, with renewed vigour and emphasis, what we said – in this very column – some four years ago.

We once had the global Millennium Development Goals – eight of them, and better known as MDGs. Their lifetime ran out, with some notable achievements having been made. 

Through a declaration signed in September 2000, all 191 UN member states gave themselves until 2015 to achieve these goals.

They included eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empower women, and reducing child mortality.

Among the others were improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development.

Analysts were understandably divided on the degree of success realised at the implementation stage, but with all agreeing that it had been far from smooth sailing and many countries had not lived up to expectations.

Now we have the Sustainable Development Goals – 17 of them, and popularly known as SDGs. These are collection of global goals, each with a separate list of targets to achieve, again set by the UN – in 2015. The targets come to an awesome 169 in total.

Much like the MDGs before them, the SDGs cover social and economic development issues, among them poverty, hunger, health, education, climate change, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, urbanisation, environment and social justice.

Those who have not had occasion to make a close follow-up on these goals may wish to know that the formal name for the SDGs is: ‘Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ – which has been shortened to ‘2030 Agenda’.

Perhaps even more importantly, the UN states categorically that the SDGs are not UN goals but, rather, ought to be owned and lived by the communities and nations in which they are expected to be achieved and make a difference.

Implementation of the goals is officially described as ‘Localising the SDGs”, which is meant to highlight the role of local institutions and local actors.

Encouraging progress has been reported from many parts of the world, including in the form of having fewer under-fives in Africa suffering from stunting and wasting.

It is noteworthy that here we are talking about ending poverty and hunger, improving public health and education, ensuring gender equality, making affordable clean energy and potable water available, and ensuring decent work and economic growth as well as stepped-up innovation in various sectors.

This also means making our urban areas and communities more sustainable, ensuring responsible production and consumption, working for enhanced peace and justice, mitigating the impact of climate change, etc., etc.

This remains a tall order. But as once aptly stated by Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General from 2007 to 2016: “We don’t have plan B because there is no planet B!”