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SDGs for All

SDGs for All is a joint media project of the global news organization International Press Syndicate (INPS) and the lay Buddhist network Soka Gakkai International (SGI). It aims to promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a comprehensive, far-reaching and people-centred set of universal and transformative goals and targets. It offers in-depth news and analyses of local, national, regional and global action for people, planet and prosperity. This project website is also a reference point for discussions, decisions and substantive actions related to 17 goals and 169 targets to move the world onto a sustainable and resilient path.

Photo: UN Climate Talks in Bonn from April 30-May 10. Credit: UNFCCC

By Jaya Ramachandran

BONN (IDN) – Since the climate negotiations in Bonn failed to pave the way for a successful United Nations climate summit COP24 in Poland in December, an extra round is being convened from September 3-8 in Bangkok.

Commenting the negotiations in Bonn, concluded on May 10, the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group Chair Gebru Jember Endalew expressed concern at "the lack of urgency" to move the negotiations forward, despite the fact that "it is time to look at the bigger picture, see the severe impacts that climate change is having across the world, and rise to the challenge."

Goal 13+14+15

Photo: Overgrazing by livestock can lead to land degradation. Credit: The United States Department of Agriculture.

By Jutta Wolf

BERLIN | BONN (IDN) – Land degradation has reached staggering proportions. If the current pace continues unabated, a gargantuan amount of $43,000,000,000,000 ($43 trillion) will be lost to the world economy by the year 2050, warns the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

But the anticipated colossal loss can be avoided by spending $4.6 trillion on addressing a combination of human-induced processes adversely affecting the biophysical environment and huge stretches of fertile lands.

Goal 13+14+15

Photo credit: Energy 4 Impact

By Joshua Masinde

NAIROBI (IDN) – Productive use of energy holds the key to livelihood transformation in Africa’s rural areas. Small industries could improve their production processes and efficiency if they had better access to electricity and technologies.

Without electricity, rural micro-enterprises make do with labour intensive and time-consuming manual tools, and often pass up many opportunities for value addition or product diversification.

Satisfying the need for power of commercial enterprises presents an opportunity for private sector players such as JUMEME, a Tanzanian company that develops solar-powered mini-grids to connect businesses and households in remote areas. (P04)  JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | SWAHILI

Goal 7

Photo (left to right): UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa; Anirban Ghosh, Chief Sustainability Officer of the Mahindra Group; and Nick Nuttall, Global Climate Action Summit Communications Director. Credit: UNFCCC

By Jaya Ramachandran

BONN (IDN) – Over 700 leading businesses around the world, together representing 2.62 gigatons of emissions equivalent to the total annual emissions of India, have made strategic climate commitments through the 'We Mean Business' coalition’s Take Action campaign.

Organizers of the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) to be held in San Francisco from September 12-14, 2018 have provided new evidence of how cities, states, regions, businesses and investors are taking climate ambition to the next level. In doing so, they are helping to build momentum for a successful outcome for the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland (COP24) from December 3-14.

Goal 13+14+15

Image: Creative Commons, Unsplash, Anders Wideskott

By Robert Johnson

LONDON (IDN) – An estimated $21 to $32 trillion of private financial wealth is located, untaxed or lightly taxed, in secrecy jurisdictions around the world as the Financial Secrecy Index names tax havens, which play a key role in facilitating the illicit flow of money across borders.

From the Lava Jato scandal to the Panama and Paradise Papers, time and again attention has been drawn to the pernicious role of offshore territories. In fact, if counted together, the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories and Crown dependencies would top the Financial Secrecy Index, given the staggering scale of their undisclosed financial activities.

Goal 16

Photo: Seventeen-year-old Mathias Bragi Ölvisson lives in the agricultural village of Fludir, South Iceland, where his family have a large farm. He has known about the SDGs since these were agreed in 2015. Credit: Elin Hannibalsdottir.

By Lowana Veal

REYKJAVIK (IDN) – Iceland has decided to spearhead publicity for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by setting up a 12-person council of young people aged between 13 and 18, under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Over 140 young people applied for the 12 places and, according to Nilsina Larsen Einarsdottir, coordinator of the project, “all of them had many brilliant ideas, so the choice was extremely difficult.”

Einarsdottir, who works with UNICEF in Iceland as a specialist in child and youth participation, has teamed up with the PMO for the project.

Another set of young people will be recruited next year for the same purpose. (P03) | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF

Goal 4

Photo: Mining impacts at least two of the 17 Goals: SDG9 (Infrastructure, Innovation, and Industrialization) and SDG8 (Employment and Economic Growth). Credit: Prossy Nandudu | IDN-INPS.

By Prossy Nandudu

KAMPALA (ACP-IDN) – With the African population expected to increase by roughly 50 percent over the next 18 years to over 1.8 billion in 2035, demands for mineral resources will also climb sharply to meet the need for additional housing units, roads, energy and other urban infrastructure using development minerals, averred Dr Patrick Gomes, Secretary General of the African, Caribbean, Pacific (ACP) Group of States.

"In most ACP countries, growth rates are recorded due to the construction, mining and transport sectors. Interventions in this sector may be an effective way to help countries achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030," he told a high-level ministerial meeting of the Group at the ACP Secretariat early this year in Brussels.

Goal 8

Image source: SIPRI

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | STOCKHOLM (IDN) – Countries around the world are increasing their military expenditure. While the 29 NATO members together account for 52 per cent of world spending and the United States continues to have the highest military expenditure among them, China, India and Saudi Arabia are contributing the lion's share of the continuing growth.

Total military expenditure rose to $1739 billion in 2017. Though this whopping amount marked a marginal increase of 1.1. percent on 2016, it comprised 2.2 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) or $230 per person, according to new figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Goal 16

Photo: Panelists in the April 24 event, including Kazakh Vice-Minister Berik Aryn (extreme left), UNAOC High Representative Al-Nasser (centre), and Ambassador Kairat Umarov, the Kazakh Permanent Representative to the UN (third from right at the back). Credit: Kazakh Permanent Mission to the UN Headquarters in New York.

By J Nastranis

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – "The holy scriptures of the Koran, Bible, Torah, the Bhagwad Geeta or the Lotus Sutra" underline "the vital importance to unite the efforts of political and religious leaders for the cause of security and stability across our planet," said Kazakhstan's Vice-Minister for Religious Affairs and Civil Society, Berik Aryn, in a keynote address at an event organized by the Kazakh Permanent Mission to the UN in partnership with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

He was speaking on behalf of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the Chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and Head of the Secretariat of the Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, Kazakhstan’s interfaith initiative launched in 2003.

Goal 10

Image: Map of the Ganges (orange), Brahmaputra (violet), and Meghna (green) drainage basins. Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0

By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE (IDN) – As another scorching summer threatened to grip India and rivers began running dry, a hectic debate ensued about the government's Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) program to solve the country's water problems.

Drawing attention to the water shortage and unequal distribution of water in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a strong champion of the program, recently pointed out that while some rivers are in spate others are running dry. "If there is inter-linking [of rivers], the problem can be solved," he said.

There are stark differences in the per capita availability of water in India's river basins. According to a 2015 National Water Mission report, the average per capita availability of water in 2010 in the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna system was 20,136 cubic meters compared to just 263 cubic meters in the Sabarmati basin. (P02) HINDI | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF

Goal 6

  1. The Menace of Land Degradation Threatens 3.2 Billion People
  2. Africa Sends a Strong Message for Global Climate Negotiations
  3. ACP Facility Helps Fight Energy Hunger in Southern Africa
  4. Africa Grapples With Financing Climate Change Programmes
  5. Wanted Urgent Action on Energy to Achieve Global Goals

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