from millennium development goals to sustainable development goals
internationale ontwikkelingsstudies
bedrijf en consumentenwetenschappen
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Wageningen University (WUR)
Economie en Beleid
Environmental economics and policy
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From Millennium Development Goals to
Sustainable Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) mark a historic and effective method of
global mobilisation to achieve a set of important social priorities worldwide. Developing
countries have made substantial progress towards achievement of the MDGs, although the
progress is highly variable across goals, countries, and regions.
The probable shortfall in achievement of the MDGs is indeed serious, regrettable, and
deeply painful for people with low income. The shortfall represents a set of operational
failures that implicate many stakeholders, in both poor and rich countries. Promises of offi
cial development assistance by rich countries, for example, have not been kept.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an important idea, and could help fi nally to
move the world to a sustainable trajectory
Why SDGs?
The idea of the SDGs has quickly gained ground because of the growing urgency of
sustainable development for the entire world. Although specific definitions vary, sustainable
development embraces the so-called triple bottom line approach to human well being.
Almost all the world’s societies acknowledge that they aim for a combination of economic
development, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion, but the specific objectives
differ globally, between and within societies.
Global economic growth per person, now led by the emerging economies, and a
stillburgeoning population that reached 7 billion last year (and that is expected to reach 8
billion by 2024) are combining to put unprecedented stress on the earth’s ecosystems.
Anthropocene to denote the human-driven age of the planet. A closely related notion is
termed planetary boundaries—the idea that human activity is pushing crucial global
ecosystem functions past a dangerous threshold, beyond which the earth might well
encounter abrupt, highly non-linear, and potentially devastating outcomes for human
wellbeing and life generally.
Humanity faces not only one but many overlapping crises of environmental sustainability,
including:
- climate change as the result of human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases;
- massive environmental pollution;
- the acidification of the oceans, caused mainly by the increased concentration of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is the most important human-produced
greenhouse gas;
- the massive loss of biodiversity caused by unsustainable demands on forests and the
continuing conversion of forests and remaining wilderness into farms and pastures;
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