What are the Sustainability Goals?

Here at Woodyfuel, we are committed to sustainability green energy efficiency. The sustainability goals are very important to us, and although we focus on biomass and wood fuel, all of the United Nations sustainable development goals matter, so that’s what this article covers!

What are Sustainability Goals?

Protecting the planet while promoting prosperity, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are a call to action to adopt sustainable practices in all countries through the sustainable development summit. As part of their strategy to end poverty, they acknowledge that sustainable economic growth and addressing a range of social needs, like education (especially for out of school children), health, and social protection, must go hand in hand, as well as addressing climate change, environmental sustainability, and environmental protection. They receive a global sustainable development report each year to see how the goals are progressing.

What are the 17 New Sustainable Development Goals?

With those basic principles out the way, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details of each sustainable development goal and how they have been and will continue to be implemented to achieve the goals. Keep in mind that all plans are trying to be completed by 2030.

Goal 1: No Poverty

• Eliminate extreme poverty worldwide, which is currently defined as anyone living on less than $1.25 per day across the globe.
• In every dimension of poverty, reduce the percentage of men, women, and children living in poverty by half.
• Ensure that the impoverished and vulnerable are adequately covered by implementing national social protection systems and measures, including floors.
• Make sure that all women and men, including those who are poor and vulnerable, have balanced access to economic resources, essential services, ownership of land, control of the inheritance, natural resources, access to appropriate new technology, and financial services.
• Build resilience among the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce exposure and vulnerability to natural disasters and shocks caused by climate change.
• Mobilise significant amounts of resources from various sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, to provide poorer countries, particularly those in the least developed world, with adequate and predictable means to implement programs and policies to stop poverty in all its forms.
• Implement pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies at the national, regional, and international levels to accelerate investment in poverty eradication.

Goal 2: Zero Hunger

• End hunger to ensure that every person has access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food throughout the year, especially the poor and the people in vulnerable situations, including infants.
• Adequately cover the poor and vulnerable, as well as undernourishment in children under five years of age, pregnant women, adolescent girls, and the elderly.
• Small-scale food producers, including women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, will double their agricultural productivity and incomes. To do this, ensure secure and equitable access to land, inputs and other productive resources, knowledge, markets, financial services, and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.
• Sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices must be implemented to increase productivity and productivity, maintain ecosystems, improve adaptability to climate change (such as limiting carbon emissions), extreme weather, droughts, flooding, and other disasters, and gradually improve land quality and soil.
• Ensure that seed, plant, animal (including farmed and domesticated animals) and wild species genetic diversity is maintained, including through well-managed national, regional, and international seed and plant banks, and ensure that genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge are used fairly and equitably, as is agreed internationally.
• Aim to enhance agricultural productivity in the developing world, especially in the least advanced countries, by increasing investment in rural infrastructure, agricultural extension services, technology development, and plant and livestock gene banks, including enhanced international cooperation.
• As part of the Doha Development Round mandate, eliminating all agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effects is necessary to correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets.
• To reduce extreme volatility in food prices, adopt policies to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives.

Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being

• Reducing global maternal mortality to less than 70 deaths per 100,000 live births.
• All countries should strive to reduce newborn and under-5 mortality to or below 12 per 1,000 live births and 25 per 1,000 live births, respectively, by reducing preventable deaths.
• AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases will end, and hepatitis, waterborne diseases and other infectious diseases will be fought.
• Reduce premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases by a third through prevention and treatment, as well as improve mental health.
• In addition, narcotic drug abuse and harmful alcohol usage must be addressed through prevention and treatment.
• Road traffic accidents will be reduced by half.
• Incorporate reproductive health into national strategies and programs, including family planning, information, and education.
• Make quality, affordable healthcare available to everyone, including essential medicines and vaccines, financial risk protection and access to essential healthcare services.
• Minimise hazardous chemical pollution and contaminant contamination of water, soil and air.
• The World Health Organization should make every effort to implement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as soon as possible in all countries where possible.
• Ensure that health financing is increased and health workers are recruited, developed, trained and retained in developing nations.
• Improve early warning systems, risk reduction strategies, and health risk management capacity worldwide, particularly in developing nations.

Goal 4: Quality Education

• To achieve relevant, equitable and effective learning outcomes for girls and boys in primary and secondary education.
• The program aims to provide girls and boys with quality early childhood development, care, and preprimary education to ready them for primary school.
• By 2030, balanced access to technical, vocational, and tertiary education, including tertiary education through colleges and universities, should be guaranteed to women and men alike.
• Assist youths and adults with various skills, including technical and vocational skills, to gain decent employment and entrepreneurship.
• To eradicate gender disparities in education, the vulnerable must have equal access to education and vocational training, including children with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and people living in vulnerable circumstances.
• Ensure that many adults, men and women, are literate and numerate.
• The program aims to provide all learners with the skills and knowledge they need to promote sustainable development, including, among others, education for sustainable development, sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality. It should also be promoting peace and nonviolence, valuing diversity, and cultivating global citizenship.
• Establish and improve inclusive, nonviolent, safe, and gender-sensitive education facilities for children, disabled, and gender-sensitive learners.
• Scholarships for under-developed countries should be made available globally, particularly those in the least advanced countries, to enable them to enrol in higher education, including vocational training, information and communications technology, and technical and engineering courses, in developed and developing nations.
• The need for qualified teachers in developing nations should be significantly increased, including through international cooperation to train teachers in those countries.

Goal 5: Gender Equality

• Every woman and girl everywhere must be free from every form of discrimination.
• To eliminate all forms of brutality against females, including trafficking, sexual exploitation, and other forms of exploitation in both the public and private spheres.
• All harmful practices, such as the practice of child marriage, early marriages, forced marriages, and female genital mutilation, should be eliminated.
• Encourage shared responsibility within the household and within the family through public services, infrastructure, and social protection policies.
• In the political, economic, and public spheres, ensure that women have equal opportunities for leadership and full and effective participation.
• The right to reproductive health and rights should be universally accessible.
• With national laws put in place, reforms will give women balanced access to economic resources, land ownership, financial services, inheritance and natural resources.
• Promote women’s empowerment through enabling technologies, mainly information and communication technologies.
• Promote gender equality at all levels and empower women and girls by adopting and strengthening sound policies and enforceable legislation.

Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

• All people should have access to safe drinking water.
• Achieving universal access to sanitation and hygiene as well as eliminating open defecation.
• Reduce pollution, eliminate dumping, minimise releases of hazardous chemicals and materials, reduce untreated wastewater by half, and increase recycling and safe reuse globally.
• The amount of water used by all sectors must be substantially increased by 2030, and the number of water-scarce people must be significantly reduced by 2030.
• Develop a transboundary system for managing water resources.
• The water-related ecosystems associated with mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers, and lakes must be protected and restored.
• Develop partnerships and support capacity-building in areas related to water and sanitation for developing nations, such as water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment and recycling.
• Water and sanitation management should be improved, and local communities should be supported and strengthened to achieve this.

Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

• The goal is to provide everyone with low-cost, reliable, and modern energy.
• The global energy mix should include substantially more renewable energy.
• Increase energy efficiency by twice as much as it is now.
• The promotion of energy infrastructure and clean energy technologies, the facilitation of international participation in the development of clean energy technology and research, as well as the developing of advanced and cleaner fossil-fuel technology and enhancing renewable energy and energy efficiency.
• According to their respective support programmes, a modern and sustainable energy service must be provided to all in developing nations, particularly the least advanced countries, small island countries, and landlocked developing countries.

For more information, look at our other article here.

Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

• In the least developed countries, at least 7% per annum growth in the gross domestic product is needed to maintain per capita economic growth.
• Invest in high-value-added and labour-intensive sectors to achieve higher levels of economic productivity.
• Encourage the formalisation and growth of smaller enterprises through access to financial services and developing policies that encourage productivity, decent employment, entrepreneurship, and creativity.
• Reducing environmental challenges such as environmental degradation while increasing economic growth and improving global resource efficiency are two of the key recommendations in the 10-year framework programme.
• Ensure all women and men are employed in full and productive work, including those with disabilities, and everyone is paid the same for equal work.
• Reduce the number of youth not in employment, equitable quality education, or training significantly.
• Human trafficking, forced labour, and modern slavery must be eradicated and prevent the most harmful forms of child labour, like the use of child soldiers.
• All workers, including migrant workers and precarious workers, should be protected against labour rights abuses and provided with safe and secure work environments through an international labour organization.
• Create sustainable tourism policies that create jobs, and promote local culture and products.
• Encourage and expand access to financial services and banking by domestic financial institutions.
• Enhance the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries to support developing countries.
• Develop and implement the ILO Global Jobs Pact and a global strategy for youth employment.

Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

• Infrastructure should support economic development and a high standard of living, including regional and transborder infrastructure, focusing on cheap and equitable access for all.
• Increase industry share in full and productive employment and GDP in the least advanced countries by roughly double and promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation.
• Access to credit and other financial services to small-scale enterprises is provided, in particular developing countries, and helps them integrate into value chains and markets.
• Achieve a sustainable infrastructure by upgrading infrastructure and retrofitting industries, increasing resource-use efficiency and adopting more eco-friendly technologies and industrial processes, with each country acting by its respective capabilities.
• In all countries, especially developing countries, improving scientific research and industries’ technological capabilities, including encouraging innovation and increasing research and development workers per million people, and public and private R&D spending is imperative.
• Improve financial and technological support to small island developing states and land-locked developing nations to facilitate sustainable and resilient infrastructure development.
• Ensure a conducive policy environment for, among other things, industrial diversification and commodity value-adding in developing countries, including by supporting domestic technology development, research and innovation.
• Ensure that least developed countries have broadband access and significantly increase information and communications technology access.

Goal 10: Reduce Inequalities

• Achieving and sustaining income growth above the national average for the bottom 40% of the population.
• Ensure that everyone is included in society, economics and politics irrespective of age, gender, ability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic status.
• Reduce inequalities of outcome, including ensuring equal access to opportunities and eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices.
• To achieve greater equality by adopting fiscal, wage, and social protection policies.
• To strengthen the implementation of global financial markets and improve their regulation and monitoring.
• To enhance the effectiveness, credibility, accountability and legitimacy of global international economic and financial institutions and make decision-making more representative of developing countries.
• Implementing well-managed and planned migration policies facilitates orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migrations and mobility.
• The World Trade Organisation has agreed that developing countries should be given special and differential treatment as defined in its agreements, particularly in the least advanced countries.
• For countries with the most need, encourage foreign direct investment and official development assistance.
• Make migrant remittances cheaper than 3% by reducing transaction costs and eliminating remittance corridors with costs exceeding 5%.

Goal 11: Sustainability Goals in Cities and Communities

• Ensuring everyone has access to adequate, safe, affordable housing and improving slums.
• As a result, all citizens should have access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems, especially improving road safety, mainly through the expansion of public transportation, with particular consideration for the needs of those with disabilities, women, and the elderly.
• Plan and manage human settlements in all countries in a participatory, integrated and sustainable manner.
• Ensure that cultural and natural heritage is protected and safeguarded.
• Deaths and people affected by disasters, including water-related disasters, should be significantly reduced. The direct economic losses relative from disasters should be substantially reduced as a percentage of global GDP, focusing mainly on the poor and vulnerable.
• Ensure that municipal and other wastes are managed properly, as well as air quality as a means of reducing cities’ adverse environmental impact.
• Ensure that all individuals, especially women and children, the elderly and persons with disabilities, ensure that green spaces and public spaces are safe, accessible, and inclusive.
• Strengthening national and regional development planning promotes sustained economic growth, social, and environmental links between urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. There should be inclusive and sustainable urbanization as well as promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization.
• Achieving inclusion, resource efficiency, climate change adaptation (like reducing carbon emissions), and mitigation in more cities and sustainable human settlement planning, as well as resilience to disasters, and developing and implementing a comprehensive disaster risk management system at all levels by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
• Providing financial and technical assistance ensures that least advanced countries can build sustainable and resilient buildings using local materials.

Goal 12: Responsible and Sustainable Consumption and Production

• Implement a 10-year plan for sustainable consumption and production, based on international agreements, involving all countries and considering development and capability of responsible consumption.
• Sustainably manage natural resources and utilise them efficiently.
• Improving the efficiency of food production and supply chains to reduce food and post-harvest losses by halving per capita global food waste, ensuring food security for all.
• As part of the global goals, ensure that chemicals and all wastes are managed in an environmentally sound manner throughout their lifecycle, based on a global indicator framework. We will minimise their adverse impacts on human health and the environment by reducing their release into the air, water, and soil.
• Identify and implement preventive, reduction, recycling, and reuse measures to reduce waste generation substantially.
• Promote eco-friendly practices and integrate sustainability information into the reporting cycle of large and transnational companies.
• According to national priorities and policies, promote sustainable public procurement practices.
• To ensure that people worldwide have access to information and awareness about sustainable development and living in harmony with nature.
• Assist developing countries in transforming their consumption and production patterns towards more sustainable ones by strengthening their scientific and technological capacity.
• The promotion of local culture and products, as well as the creation of jobs, requires the development of tools to monitor sustainable development impacts on tourism.
• By removing market distortions that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels, rationalise inefficient subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption while respecting the specific needs and conditions of developing countries and minimising any adverse effects on their development, protecting the poor and the communities affected.

Goal 13: Climate Action

• Ensure that all countries are resilient and adaptive to natural disasters and climate-related hazards.
• Policy, strategy, and planning should incorporate climate change measures.
• Educate the public, raise awareness, and improve human and institutional capacity for mitigating, adapting, reducing the impact, and detecting climate change.
• The needs of developing nations should be addressed from all sources while ensuring that mitigation actions are meaningful and that implementation is transparent to fulfil their commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As soon as possible, operationalise the Green Climate Fund by capitalising it.
• Enhance the capacity of least developed countries and small island developing States to effectively plan and manage climate change, specifically focusing on women, youth, and marginalised communities.

Goal 14: Life Below Water

• Ensure that marine pollution is prevented and significantly reduced, mainly marine debris and nutrient pollution caused by land-based activities.
• Achieve healthy and productive oceans by sustainably managing and protecting marine and coastal ecosystems, including strengthening and restoring their resilience.
• Enhanced scientific cooperation at all levels is essential for minimising and addressing the effects of ocean acidification.
• Harvesting will be effectively regulated, and overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices will be ended. Science-based management plans will be implemented, restoring fish stocks to levels at least capable of producing maximum sustainable yields per their biological characteristics in the shortest time possible.
• As a result of the best available scientific information and in compliance with national and international law, at least 10% of coastal and marine areas should be conserved.
• To prevent overfishing, prohibit fisheries subsidies and overcapacity, eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and refrain from adding new offerings of this kind. Negotiating fisheries subsidies at the World Trade Organization should include assuring that developing and least developed countries receive effective and appropriate special treatment.
• Expand the economic benefits of sustainable marine resource use to Small Island developing States and least developed countries, including through sustainable fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism management.
• The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission’s Criteria and Guidelines for Marine Technology Transfer have been adopted to improve ocean health and enhance marine biodiversity’s contribution to developing countries. To improve ocean health, we must strengthen the contribution of marine biodiversity to their development.
• Afford small-scale artisanal fishers’ access to market opportunities and marine resources.
• Conservation and sustainable use of ocean resources under a legal framework should be provided, so international law must be implemented to enhance ocean conservation and sustainable use.

Goal 15: Life on Land

• Following international agreements, conserve, restore, and utilise terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services for safely managed drinking water.
• Assist forest communities worldwide in implementing environmentally sound management, stopping deforestation, restoring degraded forests, and significantly increasing reforestation and afforestation.
• Continually strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world, including combating desertification, restoring soil and reclaiming degraded land.
• Assuring the conservation of mountain ecosystems and their biodiversity will enable sustainable development by enhancing their ability to provide essential benefits.
• By reducing habitat degradation, halting biodiversity loss, and protecting and preventing the extinction of threatened species, we can prevent the extinction of threatened species.
• Share the benefits of genetic resources fairly and equally, and ensure appropriate access to these resources, following international agreements.
• Ensure that protected species of flora and fauna are not poached or trafficked, as well as the illegal wildlife products that are also being supplied and demanded.
• Eradicate or control the priority species in land and water ecosystems by introducing measures that prevent the introduction of invasive alien species and reduce their impact.
• Plan, develop, account for, and integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values nationally and locally.
• Biodiversity and ecosystems should be conserved and used sustainably by mobilising and increasing financial resources from all sources.
• Incentives should be provided to developing countries to promote sustainable forest management, including conservation and reforestation, from all sources and levels.
• Providing sustainable livelihood opportunities to local communities to combat poaching and trafficking of protected species.

Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

• Reduce deaths caused by brutality.
• Protection of all children from abuse should be ensured including exploitation, trafficking, and any other acts of violence against or torture of children.
• Ensure everyone has equal access to justice at the national and international levels.
• Reducing illicit financial and arms flows, improved recovery and return of stolen assets, and reducing all forms of organised crime are key objectives.
• Reducing corruption and bribery to the greatest extent possible.
• Create institutions at all levels that are accountable, transparent, and effective, creating peaceful and inclusive societies.
• Incorporate responsiveness, inclusion, participation, and representation into all levels of decision-making.
• Significant contribution to the development of global governance institutions by encouraging developing countries to participate more fully.
• Ensure legal identification and birth registration for all.
• Protect fundamental freedoms and ensures public access to information.
• Build capacity at all levels, particularly in developing nations, to prevent and combat violence and terrorism by strengthening relevant national institutions, including international participation.
• Ensure that sustainable development laws and policies are non-discriminatory and enforced.

Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Finance

• Increase the ability of the global gross domestic product and revenue collection system to collect taxes and other revenues by strengthening domestic resource mobilisation, including international support.
• Commitments made by developed countries must be fully implemented by providing official development assistance, including achieving the target of 0.7% of official development assistance/GNI for developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20% for least developed countries.
• Organise multiple sources of funding to help developing countries.
• Develop coordinated policies for debt financing, debt relief, and debt restructuring in developing countries to reduce debt burdens on developing countries and help them achieve long-term debt sustainability.
• Investing in the least advanced countries should be promoted by adopting and implementing sustainable investment promotion regimes.

Technology

• Develop regional and international cooperation and access to science, technology, and innovation, as well as knowledge sharing, which includes better coordination among existing mechanisms, particularly at the United Nations level, and a global technology facilitation system.
• As far as possible, develop, transfer, disseminate, and diffuse environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable, including concessional or preferential terms, as mutually agreed upon.
• Enhance the use of enabling technologies, mainly information and communication technologies, in the least developed countries by 2017 and fully operationalise the technology bank and the science, technology and innovation capacity-building mechanism for these countries.

Capacity building

• Support North-South, South-South, and triangular cooperation to support national plans to achieve all sustainable development goals in developing countries.

Trade

Systemic issues

Policy and institutional coherence

• Coordination and coherence of policies are vital to enhancing global macroeconomic stability.
• Achieve sustainable development through enhanced policy coherence.
• Eliminate poverty and implement sustainable development policies; each country should respect its policy space and leadership.

Multi-stakeholder partnerships

• Assist all countries in achieving sustainable development goals, including developing countries, by strengthening the global partnership for sustainable development and multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilise and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources.
• Developing partnerships between the public, private, and civil society, leveraging their experience and resource allocation strategies.

Data, monitoring and accountability

• The development of capacity-building support to developing countries should be enhanced to increase the availability of disaggregated data by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, immigration status, disability, geographical location, and other factors relevant to national contexts.
• Toward 2030, support statistical capacity-building in developing countries by building on existing initiatives for measuring sustainable development.

How Can Woodyfuel Help with these Sustainability Goals?

We have already spoken about two of the sustainable development goals in previous blogs, specifically sustainable cities and communities, as well as clean and affordable energy. But there are still parts of other goals that we believe our business could help with!

The clean water and sanitation goal includes water-related ecosystems, including those situated in forests. These must be protected, and we want to help the biodiversity of forest-dwelling creatures and their habitats; this is why our sustainable biomass practices are in keeping with the suggestions of this particular goal.

For the life on land SDG goal, a big part of ensuring this goal is met includes managing forests to avoid losing biodiversity in these areas. We must significantly increase reforestation and afforestation by implementing sustainable management from all sources. This is why Woodyfuel utilises timber waste residues that will always exist to create wood pellets and chips. There are many ways to help in the SDGs and do our part to rescue our planet. Contact us if you are interested in working together or have any questions about our sustainable methods.