The 193 member states of the United Nations reached agreement on a new Sustainable Development Agenda for the next 15 years.
This agenda calls for eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, improving living standards and taking urgent action to combat climate change.
The draft agreement outlines 17 goals with 169 specific targets on issues ranging from ending poverty in all its forms everywhere to ensuring quality education and affordable and reliable energy.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the plan seeks to ensure peace and prosperity, and forge partnerships with people and planet at the core.
With this agreement, the document called “Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” will be adopted at a UN summit just before the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly in September 2015. The summit will be held between 25 and 27 September 2015 at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
The 17 new, non-binding goals will succeed the eight Millennium Development Goals adopted by world leaders 15 years ago.
The 17 proposed Sustainable Development Goals are
- End poverty in all its forms everywhere
- End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
- Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages
- Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
- Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
- Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
- Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
- Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all
- Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation
- Reduce inequality within and among countries
- Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
- Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
- Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (taking note of agreements made by the UNFCCC forum)
- Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
- Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss
- Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
- Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development
Earlier in his final report on the Millennium Development Goals, Ban had said the effort has helped lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty over the last 15 years, enabled more girls to go to school than ever before, and brought unprecedented results in fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
