New York, 10 July – Failure to redouble global efforts
to achieve the
Sustainable Development Goals – the promise of a
better world for all – may fuel greater political
instability, upend economies and lead to irreversible damage
to the natural environment, according to The
Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023: Special
Edition.
The promise of the
SDGs
World leaders made a historic promise to
secure the rights and well-being of everyone on a healthy,
thriving planet when they agreed to the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs
in 2015. However, the combined impacts of the climate
crisis, the war in Ukraine, a gloomy global economic outlook
and lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed
systemic weaknesses and significantly hampered progress
towards the Goals.
With only seven years remaining
for implementation of the Goals, the stakes are huge. Using
the latest available data and estimates, the report presents
a sobering picture of the SDGs as the
High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (10 to
19 July), where countries will
showcase concrete actions they are taking to achieve the
SDGs, kicks off today. The Forum, comes ahead of the
SDG Summit (18 to 19 September) a defining
moment for world leaders to urgently reverse course and
turbo-charge the SDGs.
The SDGs are in
peril
Of the approximately 140 targets that can
be evaluated, half of them show moderate or severe
deviations from the desired trajectory. Furthermore, more
than 30 per cent of these targets have experienced no
progress or, even worse, regression below the 2015
baseline.
According to the report, the impacts from
the COVID-19 pandemic stalled three decades of steady
progress in reducing extreme poverty, with the number of
people living in extreme poverty increasing for the first
time in a generation.
If present trends persist, by 2030,
a staggering 575 million people will remain trapped in
extreme poverty and an estimated 84 million children and
young people will still be out of school. Based on data
collected in 2022 in 119 countries, 56 per cent of the
countries lacked laws that prohibit direct and indirect
discrimination against women. Global temperature rise has
already hit 1.1 °C above pre-industrial levels and is
likely to reach or surpass the critical 1.5 °C tipping
point by 2035.
The report also warns that while lack of
progress is universal, it is the world’s poorest and most
vulnerable who are experiencing the worst effects of these
unprecedented global challenges.
Potential for
breakthrough
But progress in some areas since
2015 illustrates the potential for further advances. The
share of global population with access to electricity has
increased from 87 per cent in 2015 to 91 per cent in 2021,
with close to 800 million additional people being
connected.
The report also illustrates that by 2021, 133
countries had already met the SDG target on under-5
mortality, and an additional 13 are expected to do so by
2030. Despite the global manufacturing growth slowdown,
medium-high- and high-technology industries demonstrated
robust growth rates. Developing countries installed a
record-breaking 268 watts per capita of renewable
energy-generating capacity in 2021. Additionally, the number
of people using the Internet has grown by 65 per cent since
2015, reaching 5.3 billion people of the world’s population
in 2022.
These important development gains demonstrate
that a breakthrough to a better future for all is possible
through the combination of collective action and strong
political will, and the effective use of available
technologies, resources, and knowledge. This advance can
lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, improve gender
equality and put the world on a low-emissions pathway by
2030. Strengthening data ecosystems will also be key to
understanding where the world stands and what needs to be
done to achieve the SDGs.
Additional key facts and
figures:
- Given historical trends, only one-third
of countries will have halved their national poverty rates
by 2030 from 2015. - Nearly 1 in 3 (2.3 billion
people) were moderately or severely food insecure in
2021. - Between 2015 and 2022, rising access to safely
managed drinking water, safely managed sanitation, and basic
hygiene resulted in an additional 687 million, 911 million,
and 637 million people gaining access to these essential
services, respectively. - Effective HIV treatment has
significantly reduced global AIDS-related deaths by 52 per
cent since 2010, and at least one neglected tropical disease
has been eliminated in 47 countries. - As of 2020,
nearly 1.1 billion people lived in slums or slum-like
conditions in urban areas. - The number of countries
with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies
has doubled since 2015, indicating increased awareness and
preparedness for managing and reducing the impact of
disasters.
For more information, please visit:
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/
Hashtag:
#SDGreport #SDGs
#GlobalGoals
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