Global Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked objectives designed to serve as a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future".United Nations (2017) Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 6 July 2017, Work of the Statistical Commission pertaining to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
A/RES/71/313
) The goals are: No poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, Reduced Inequality, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, Life Below Water, Life On Land, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, Partnerships for the Goals. The SDGs emphasize the interconnected environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development by putting sustainability at their center.

The SDGs were formulated in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) as part of the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which sought to create a future global development framework to succeed the Millennium Development Goals, which ended that year. They were formally articulated and adopted in a UNGA Resolution called the 2030 Agenda, known colloquially as Agenda 2030. On 6 July 2017, the SDGs were made more "actionable" by a UNGA resolution that identifies specific targets for each goal and provides indicators to measure progress.United Nations (2017) Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 6 July 2017, Work of the Statistical Commission pertaining to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
A/RES/71/313
) Most targets are to be achieved by 2030, although some have no end date.

There are cross-cutting issues and synergies between the different goals; for example, for SDG 13 on climate action, the IPCC sees robust synergies with SDGs 3 (health), 7 (clean energy), 11 (cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production) and 14 (oceans). Conversely, critics and observers have also identified trade-offs between the goals,such as between ending hunger and promoting environmental sustainability. Other concerns include there being too many goals (resulting in compounding trade-offs), weak emphasis on environmental sustainability, and difficulties with tracking qualitative indicators.

The SDGs are monitored by the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, an annual forum under the auspices of the United Nations Economic and Social Council. However, it has so far failed to act as an orchestrator to promote system-wide coherence due to a lack of political leadership owing to divergent national interests. To facilitate monitoring of progress on SDG implementation, the online "SDG Tracker" was launched in June 2018 to present all available data across all indicators. The COVID-19 pandemic had serious negative impacts on all 17 SDGs in 2020;United Nations Economic and Social Council (2020
Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals Report of the Secretary-General
, High-level political forum on sustainable development, convened under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council (E/2020/57), 28 April 2020 a scientific assessment released in 2022 determined that the world is not on track to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and concluded the SDGs have so far had only limited political effects in global, national and local governance.

Adoption by the UN General Assembly

On 25 September 2015, the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda titled "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development". This agenda has 92 paragraphs. Paragraph 59 outlines the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the associated 169 targets and 232 indicators.

The SDGs were an outcome from a UN conference that was not criticized by any major non-governmental organization (NGO). Instead, the SDGs received broad support from many NGOs.

Content

Structure of goals, targets and indicators

The lists of targets and indicators for each of the 17 SDGs was published in a UN resolution in July 2017. Each goal typically has 812 targets, and each target has between one and four indicators used to measure progress toward reaching the targets. The targets are either "outcome" targets (circumstances to be attained) or "means of implementation" targets. The latter targets were introduced late in the process of negotiating the SDGs to address the concern of some Member States about how the SDGs were to be achieved. Goal 17 is wholly about how the SDGs will be achieved.

The numbering system of targets is as follows: "Outcome targets" use numbers, whereas "means of implementation targets" use lower case letters. For example, SDG 6 has a total of 8 targets. The first six are outcome targets and are labeled Targets 6.1 to 6.6. The final two targets are "means of implementation targets" and are labeled as Targets 6.a and 6.b.

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) website provides a current official indicator list which includes all updates until the 51st session Statistical Commission in March 2020.

The indicators were classified into three tiers based on their level of methodological development and the availability of data at the global level. Tier 1 and Tier 2 are indicators that are conceptually clear, have an internationally established methodology, and data are regularly produced by at least some countries. Tier 3 indicators had no internationally established methodology or standards. The global indicator framework was adjusted so that Tier 3 indicators were either abandoned, replaced or refined. As of 17 July 2020, there were 231 unique indicators.

Reviews of indicators

The indicator framework was comprehensively reviewed at the 51st session of the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2020. It will be reviewed again in 2025. At the 51st session of the Statistical Commission (held in New York City from 3–6 March 2020) a total of 36 changes to the global indicator framework were proposed for the Commission's consideration. Some indicators were replaced, revised or deleted. Between 15 October 2018 and 17 April 2020, other changes were made to the indicators. Yet their measurement continues to be fraught with difficulties.

Listing of 17 goals with their targets and indicators

Many goals build on existing agreements and are integral parts of other political processes, such as international agreements on biodiversity, climate, oceans or standards and programs set by the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization and so forth.

Goal 1: No poverty

SDG 1 is to: "End poverty in all its forms everywhere". Achieving SDG 1 would end extreme poverty globally by 2030. A study published in September 2020 found that poverty increased by 7 per cent in just a few months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even though it had been steadily decreasing for the last 20 years.BMGF (2020
Covid-19 A Global Perspective - 2020 Goalkeepers Report
, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, USA

Goal 2: Zero hunger (No hunger)

SDG 2 is to: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture". Globally, 1 in 9 people are undernourished, the vast majority of whom live in developing countries. Under nutrition causes wasting or severe wasting of 52 million children worldwide. It contributes to nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five – 3.1 million children per year.

Goal 3: Good health and well-being

SDG 3 is to: "Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages". Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common causes of child and maternal mortality. Between 2000 and 2016, the worldwide under-five mortality rate decreased by 47 percent (from 78 deaths per 1,000 live births to 41 deaths per 1,000 live births). Still, the number of children dying under age five is very high: 5.6 million in 2016.

A 2018 study in the journal ''Nature'' found that while "nearly all African countries demonstrated improvements for children under 5 years old for stunting, wasting, and underweight... much, if not all of the continent will fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target—to end malnutrition by 2030".

Goal 4: Quality education

SDG 4 is to: "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all". Major progress has been made in access to education, specifically at the primary school level, for both boys and girls. The number of out-of-school children has almost halved from 112 million in 1997 to 60 million in 2014. In terms of the progress made, global participation in tertiary education reached 224 million in 2018, equivalent to a gross enrollment ratio of 38%.

Goal 5: Gender equality

SDG 5 is to: "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls". In 2020, representation by women in single or lower houses of national parliament reached 25 per cent, up slightly from 22 per cent in 2015. Women now have better access to decision-making positions at the local level, holding 36 per cent of elected seats in local deliberative bodies, based on data from 133 countries and areas. Whilst female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is becoming less common, at least 200 million girls and women have been subjected to this harmful practice.

Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation

SDG 6 is to: "Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all". The eight targets are measured by 11 indicators. The Joint Monitoring Programme ( JMP) of World Health Organisation WHO And United Nations International Children's Emergency fund UNICEF reported in 2017 that 4.5 billion people currently do not have safely managed sanitation.WHO and UNICEF (2017
Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: 2017 Update and SDG Baselines
. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 2017 Also in 2017, only 71 per cent of the global population used safely managed drinking water, and 2.2 billion persons were still without safely managed drinking water. With regards to water stress: "In 2017, Central and Southern Asia and Northern Africa registered very high water stress – defined as the ratio of fresh water withdrawn to total renewable freshwater resources – of more than 70 per cent". Official development assistance (ODA) disbursements to the water sector increased to $9 billion in 2018. Evidence shows that both supply- and demand-side interventions financed by aid can contribute to promoting access to water, but consistent long-term investments are needed.

Goal 7: Affordable and clean energy

SDG 7 is to: "Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all". Progress in expanding access to electricity has been made in several countries, notably India, Bangladesh, and Kenya.IEA, IRENA, UNSD, WB, WHO (2019)
Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report 2019
, Washington DC (o
Tracking SDG 7 website
) The global population without access to electricity decreased to about 840 million in 2017 from 1.2 billion in 2010 ( sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the largest access deficit). Renewable energy accounted for 17.5% of global total energy consumption in 2016. Of the three end uses of renewables

Goal 8: Decent work and economic growth

SDG 8 is to: "Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all". Over the past five years, economic growth in least developed countries has been increasing at an average rate of 4.3 per cent. In 2018, the global growth rate of real Lists of countries by GDP per capita">GDP per capita was 2 per cent. In addition, the rate for least developed countries was 4.5 per cent in 2018 and 4.8 per cent in 2019, less than the 7 per cent growth rate targeted in SDG 8. In 2019, 22 per cent of the world's young people were not in employment, education or training, a figure that has hardly changed since 2005. Addressing youth employment means finding solutions with and for young people who are seeking a decent and productive job. Such solutions should address both supply, i.e. education, skills development and training, and demand. In 2018, the number of women engaged in the labor force was put at 48 per cent while that of men was 75 per cent.

Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 9 is to: "Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation". In 2019, 14% of the world's workers were employed in manufacturing activities. This percentage has not changed much since 2000. The share of manufacturing employment was the largest in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (18 percent) and the smallest in sub-Saharan Africa (6 percent). The intensity of global carbon dioxide emissions has declined by nearly one quarter since 2000, showing a general decoupling of carbon dioxide emissions from GDP growth. As at 2020, nearly the entire world population lives in an area covered by a mobile network. Millions of people are still unable to access the internet due to cost, coverage, and other reasons. It is estimated that just 53% of the world's population are currently internet users.

Goal 10: Reduced inequality

SDG 10 is to: "Reduce income inequality within and among countries". In 73 countries during the period 2012–2017, the bottom 40 per cent of the population saw its incomes grow. Still, in all countries with data, the bottom 40 per cent of the population received less than 25 per cent of the overall income or consumption. Women are more likely to be victims of discrimination than men. Among those with disabilities, 3 in 10 personally experienced discrimination, with higher levels still among women with disabilities. The main grounds of discrimination mentioned by these women was not the disability itself, but religion, ethnicity and sex, pointing to the urgent need for measures to tackle multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.United Nations (2020
Sustainable development goals report
, New York In 2019, 54 per cent of countries have a comprehensive set of policy measures to facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people.

Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities

SDG 11 is to: "Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable". The number of slum dwellers reached more than 1 billion in 2018, or 24 per cent of the urban population. The number of people living in urban slums is highest in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia. In 2019, only half of the world's urban population had convenient access to public transport, defined as living within 500 metres' walking distance from a low-capacity transport system (such as a bus stop) and within 1 km of a high-capacity transport system (such as a railway). In the period 1990–2015, most urban areas recorded a general increase in the extent of built-up area per person.

Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production

SDG 12 is to: "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns". By 2019, 79 countries and the European Union have reported on at least one national policy instrument to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns. This was done to work towards the implementation of the "10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns". Global fossil fuel subsidies in 2018 were $400 billion. This was double the estimated subsidies for renewables and is detrimental to the task of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions.

To ensure that plastic products are more sustainable, thus reducing plastic waste, changes such as decreasing usage and increasing the circularity of the plastic economy are expected to be required. An increase in domestic recycling and a reduced reliance on the global plastic waste trade are other actions that might help meet the goal.

Goal 13: Climate action

SDG 13 is to: "Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts by regulating emissions and promoting developments in renewable energy". Accelerating climate actions and progress towards a just transition is essential to reducing climate risks and addressing sustainable development priorities, including water, food and human security (robust evidence, high agreement). Accelerating action in the context of sustainable development involves not only expediting the pace of change (speed) but also addressing the underlying drivers of vulnerability and high emissions (quality and depth of change) and enabling diverse communities, sectors, stakeholders, regions and cultures (scale and breadth of change) to participate in just, equitable and inclusive processes that improve the health and well-being of people and the planet.

Goal 14: Life below water

SDG 14 is to: "Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development". The current efforts to protect oceans, marine environments and small-scale fishers are not meeting the need to protect the resources. One of the key drivers of global overfishing is illegal fishing. It threatens marine ecosystems, puts food security and regional stability at risk, and is linked to major human rights violations and even organized crime. Increased ocean temperatures and oxygen loss act concurrently with ocean acidification and constitute the "deadly trio" of climate change pressures on the marine environment.

One indicator (14.1.1b) under Goal 14 specifically relates to reducing impacts from marine plastic pollution.

Goal 15: Life on land

SDG 15 is to: "Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss". The proportion of forest area fell, from 31.9 per cent of total land area in 2000 to 31.2 per cent in 2020, representing a net loss of nearly 100 million ha of the world's forests. This was due to decreasing forest area decreased in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South-Eastern Asia, driven by deforestation for agriculture. Desertification affects as much as one-sixth of the world's population, 70% of all drylands, and one-quarter of the total land area of the world. It also leads to spreading poverty and the degradation of billion hectares of cropland. A report in 2020 stated that globally, the species extinction risk has worsened by about 10 per cent over the past three decades.

Goal 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions

SDG 16 is to: "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels". With more than a quarter of children under 5 unregistered worldwide as of 2015, about 1 in 5 countries will need to accelerate progress to achieve universal birth registration by 2030. Data from 38 countries over the past decade suggest that high-income countries have the lowest prevalence of bribery (an average of 3.7 per cent), while lower-income countries have high levels of bribery when accessing public services (22.3 per cent).

Goal 17: Partnership for the goals

SDG 17 is to: "Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development". This goal has 19 outcome targets and 24 indicators. Increasing international cooperation is seen as vital to achieving each of the 16 previous goals. Goal 17 is included to assure that countries and organizations cooperate instead of compete. Developing multi-stakeholder partnerships to share knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial support is seen as critical to overall success of the SDGs. The goal encompasses improving north–south and South-South cooperation, and public-private partnerships which involve civil societies are specifically mentioned.

With US$5 trillion to $7 trillion in annual investment required to achieve the SDGs, total official development assistance reached US$147.2 billion in 2017. This, although steady, is below the set target. In 2016, six countries met the international target to keep official development assistance at or above 0.7 percent of gross national income. Humanitarian crises brought on by conflict or natural disasters have continued to demand more financial resources and aid. Even so, many countries also require official development assistance to encourage growth and trade.

Cross-cutting issues and synergies

To achieve sustainable development, three aspects or dimensions need to come together: The economic, socio-political, and environmental dimensions are all critically important and interdependent. Progress will require multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research across all three sectors. This proves difficult when major governments fail to support it. Sustainable development can enhance sectoral integration and social inclusion (robust evidence, high agreement). Inclusion merits attention because equity within and across countries is critical to transitions that are not simply rapid but also sustainable and just. Resource shortages, social divisions, inequitable distributions of wealth, poor infrastructure and limited access to advanced technologies can constrain the options and capacities for developing countries to achieve sustainable and just transitions (medium evidence, high agreement) .

According to the UN, the target is to reach the community farthest behind. Commitments should be transformed into effective actions requiring a correct perception of target populations. Data or information must address all vulnerable groups such as children, elderly folks, persons with disabilities, refugees, indigenous peoples, migrants, and internally-displaced persons.

Cross cutting issues include for example gender equality, education, culture and health. These are just some examples of various interlinkages inherent in the SDGs.

Gender equality

The widespread consensus is that progress on all of the SDGs will be stalled if women's empowerment and gender equality are not prioritized, and treated holistically. The SDGs look to policy makers as well as private sector executives and board members to work toward gender equality. Statements from diverse sources, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), UN Women and the World Pensions Forum, have noted that investments in women and girls have positive impacts on economies. National and global development investments in women and girls often exceed their initial scope.

Gender equality is mainstreamed throughout the SDG framework by ensuring that as much sex-disaggregated data as possible are collected.UNESCO (2019
Culture , 2030 Indicators
, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, France, , CC-BY-ND 3.0 IGO

Education

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is explicitly recognized in the SDGs as part of Target 4.7 of the SDG on education. UNESCO promotes the Global Citizenship Education (GCED) as a complementary approach. At the same time, it is important to emphasize ESD's importance for all the other 16 SDGs. With its overall aim to develop cross-cutting sustainability competencies in learners, ESD is an essential contribution to all efforts to achieve the SDGs. This would enable individuals to contribute to sustainable development by promoting societal, economic and political change as well as by transforming their own behavior.

Culture

Culture is explicitly referenced in SDG 11 Target 4 ("Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage"). However, culture is seen as a cross-cutting theme because it impacts several SDGs. For example, culture plays a role in SDGs related to:

* environment and resilience (Targets 11.4 Cultural & natural heritage, 11.7 Inclusive public spaces, 12.b Sustainable tourism management, 16.4 Recovery of stolen assets),
* prosperity and livelihoods (Targets 8.3 Jobs, entrepreneurship & innovation; 8.9 Policies for sustainable tourism),
* knowledge and skills,
* inclusion and participation (Targets 11.7 Inclusive public spaces, 16.7 Participatory decision-making).

Health

SDGs 1 to 6 directly address health disparities, primarily in developing countries. These six goals address key issues in Global Public Health, Poverty, Hunger and Food security, Health, Education, Gender equality and women's empowerment, and water and sanitation. Public health officials can use these goals to set their own agenda and plan for smaller scale initiatives for their organizations. These goals are designed to lessen the burden of disease and inequality faced by developing countries and lead to a healthier future.

The links between the various sustainable development goals and public health are numerous and well established:

* Living below the poverty line is attributed to poorer health outcomes and can be even worse for persons living in developing countries where extreme poverty is more common. A child born into poverty is twice as likely to die before the age of five compared to a child from a wealthier family.
* The detrimental effects of hunger and malnutrition that can arise from systemic challenges with food security are enormous. The World Health Organization estimates that 12.9 percent of the population in developing countries is undernourished.
* Health challenges in the developing world are enormous, with "only half of the women in developing nations receiving the recommended amount of healthcare they need.
* Educational equity has yet to be reached in the world. Public health efforts are impeded by this, as a lack of education can lead to poorer health outcomes. This is shown by children of mothers who have no education having a lower survival rate compared to children born to mothers with primary or greater levels of education. Cultural differences in the role of women vary by country, many gender inequalities are found in developing nations. Combating these inequalities has shown to also lead to a better public health outcome.
* In studies done by the World Bank on populations in developing countries, it was found that when women had more control over household resources, the children benefit through better access to food, healthcare, and education.
* Basic sanitation resources and access to clean sources of water are a basic human right. However, 1.8 billion people globally use a source of drinking water that is contaminated by feces, and 2.4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation facilities like toilets or pit latrines. A lack of these resources is what causes approximately 1000 children a day to die from diarrheal diseases that could have been prevented from better water and sanitation infrastructure.

Synergies

Synergies amongst the SDGs are "the good antagonists of trade-offs".With regards to SDG 13 on climate action, the IPCC sees robust synergies particularly for the SDGs 3 (health), 7 (clean energy), 11 (cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production) and 14 (oceans).IPCC, 2018
Global Warming of 1.5°C.An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty
[Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. In Press

To meet SDG 13 and other SDGs, sustained long-term investment in green innovation is required: to Decarbonization, decarbonize the physical capital stock – energy, industry, and transportation infrastructure – and ensure its resilience to a changing future climate; to preserve and enhance natural capital – forests, oceans, and wetlands; and to train people to work in a climate-neutral economy.

Conceptual problem areas

Competing and too many goals

A commentary in ''The Economist'' in 2015 argued that 169 targets for the SDGs is too many, describing them as "sprawling, misconceived" and "a mess" compared to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goals are said to ignore local context. All other 16 goals might be contingent on achieving SDG 1, ending poverty, which should have been at the top of a very short list of goals.

The trade-offs among the 17 SDGs are a difficult barrier to sustainability and might even prevent their realization. For example these are three difficult trade-offs to consider: "How can ending hunger be reconciled with environmental sustainability? (SDG targets 2.3 and 15.2) How can economic growth be reconciled with environmental sustainability? (SDG targets 9.2 and 9.4) How can income inequality be reconciled with economic growth? (SDG targets 10.1 and 8.1)."

Weak on environmental sustainability

Scholars have criticized that the Sustainable Development Goals fail to recognize that planetary, people and prosperity concerns are all part of one earth system, and that the protection of planetary integrity should not be a means to an end, but an end in itself. Text was copied from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
/ref> A principal concern is that the SDGs remain fixated on the idea that economic growth is foundational to achieve all pillars of sustainable development. Doubts about the steering qualities of the SDGs towards environmental protection arise not only from their ability to steer, but also from the fact that they do not seem to prioritize environmental protection in the first place.

There is no overarching environmental or "planetary" goal. Instead, environmental protection is left to a cluster of environment-focused SDGs down the list at Goal 13, 14 and 15. While including these explicit environmental goals might advance environmental protection, some also argue that Goals 13, 14 and 15 could compartmentalize environmental issues (climate, land and oceans). The goals do not pursue planetary integrity as such, but do recognize the importance of protecting environmental aspects such as climate, land and the oceans.

The SDGs may simply maintain the ''status quo'' and fall short of delivering on the ambitious development agenda. The current status quo has been described as "separating human wellbeing and environmental sustainability, failing to change governance and to pay attention to trade-offs, root causes of poverty and environmental degradation, and social justice issues".

Continued global economic growth of 3 percent (Goal 8) may not be reconcilable with ecological sustainability goals, because the required rate of absolute global eco-economic decoupling is far higher than any country has achieved in the past. Anthropologists have suggested that, instead of targeting aggregate GDP growth, the goals could target resource use per capita, with "substantial reductions in high‐income nations."

Environmental constraints and planetary boundaries are underrepresented within the SDGs. For instance, the way the current SDGs are structured leads to a negative correlation between environmental sustainability and SDGs. This means, as the environmental sustainability side of the SDGs is underrepresented, the resource security for all, particularly for lower-income populations, is put at risk. This is not a criticism of the SDGs ''per se'', but a recognition that their environmental conditions are still weak.

The SDGs have been criticized for their inability to protect biodiversity. They could unintentionally promote environmental destruction in the name of sustainable development.

Scientists have proposed several ways to address the weaknesses regarding environmental sustainability in the SDGs:

* The monitoring of essential variables to better capture the essence of coupled environmental and social systems that underpin sustainable development, helping to guide coordination and systems transformation.
* More attention to the context of the biophysical systems in different places (e.g., coastal river deltas, mountain areas)
* Better understanding of feedbacks across scales in space (e.g., through globalization) and time (e.g., affecting future generations) that could ultimately determine the success or failure of the SDGs.

Ethical orientation

There are concerns about the ethical orientation of the SDGs: their focus seems to remain on "growth and use of resources ... and tdeparts from an individual, not collective, point of view"; and they remain "underpinned by strong (Western) modernist notions of development: sovereignty of humans over their environment (anthropocentricism), individualism, competition, freedom (rights rather than duties), self-interest, belief in the market leading to collective welfare, private property (protected by legal systems), rewards based on merit, materialism, quantification of value, and instrumentalization of labor".

Difficulties with tracking qualitative indicators

Regarding the targets of the SDGs, there is generally weak evidence linking the "means of implementation" to outcomes. The targets about "means of implementation" (those denoted with a letter, for example, Target 6.a) are imperfectly conceptualized and inconsistently formulated, and tracking their largely qualitative indicators will be difficult.

Difficulties in achieving impact

There is a lack of impact of the SDGs so far, especially in the are of protecting planetary integrity. Some design elements might have been flawed from the start, such as the number of goals, the structure of the goal framework (for example, the non-hierarchical structure), the coherence between the goals, the specificity or measurability of the targets, the language used in the text, and their reliance on neoliberal economic development-oriented sustainable development as their core orientation.

Some argue that the SDGs' focus on sustainable economic development is inevitably detrimental to planetary integrity and justice, which require both limits to economic growth and the removal of ‘developmental’ disparities between the rich and the poor.

In 2016, the UN ordered an analysis on the reception of the name "the 17 Sustainable Development Goals" with the communication bureau Trollback. It was found out that the word "sustainable" lead to confusion, it made the whole name confusingly long too, so it was rebranded into the "17 Global Goals".

Monitoring mechanism

UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF)

As part of a larger reform, governments decided to terminate the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and to establish in its place a High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. This new forum was meant to function as a regular meeting place for governments and non-state representatives to assess global progress towards sustainable development. The creation of this overarching institution for sustainability governance was also expected to enhance system-wide coherence in the follow-up and progress reviews under the 2030 Agenda.

The UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) is the annual space for global monitoring of the SDGs, under the auspices of the United Nations economic and Social Council. In July 2020 the meeting took place online for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The theme was "Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development" and a ministerial declaration was adopted.

High-level progress reports for all the SDGs are published in the form of reports by the United Nations Secretary General. The most recent one is from April 2020.

The literature indicates that the High-level Political Forum has failed to act as an orchestrator to promote system-wide coherence. The reasons for this include its broad and unclear mandate combined with a lack of resources and a lack of political leadership owing to divergent national interests. Attempts to strengthen the role of the HLPF and to harmonize the voluntary reporting system have not found consensus among governments. This reporting system remains a soft peer-learning mechanism of governments that might even lead to uncontested endorsements of national performances if civil society organizations are not able to act as watchdogs in policy implementation.

Monitoring tools and websites

The online publication SDG-Tracker was launched in June 2018 and presents data across all available indicators. It relies on the Our World in Data database and is also based at the University of Oxford.Ritchie, Roser, Mispy, Ortiz-Ospina. "Measuring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals."
SDG-Tracker.org
, website'' (2018). The publication has global coverage and tracks whether the world is making progress towards the SDGs. It aims to make the data on the 17 goals available and understandable to a wide audience.

The website "allows people around the world to hold their governments accountable to achieving the agreed goals". The SDG-Tracker highlights that the world is currently (early 2019) very far away from achieving the goals.

The Global "SDG Index and Dashboards Report" is the first publication to track countries' performance on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The annual publication, co-produced by Bertelsmann Stiftung and SDSN, includes a ranking and dashboards that show key challenges for each country in terms of implementing the SDGs. The publication features trend analysis to show how countries performing on key SDG metrics have changed over recent years in addition to an analysis of government efforts to implement the SDGs.

Reporting on progress

Overall status

Overall status reports made the following statements regarding