Currently browsing posts about: Sustainable Development Goals

I’m always interested in the latest updates on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

17 Goals to Transform Our World: The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries – poor, rich and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection.

Thid new progress report is just out: Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G. (2024). Sustainable Development Report 2024: The SDGs and the UN Summit of the Future. Dublin University Press. 500 pages (!).

Its first key finding:

On average, globally, only 16% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030, with the remaining 84% demonstrating limited or a reversal of progress.

• Off track: SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG14 (Life Below Water), SDG15 (Life on Land) and SDG16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions).
• Reversal of progress: obesity rate (under SDG 2), press freedom (under SDG 16), the red list index (under SDG 15), sustainable nitrogen management (under SDG 2), life expectancy at birth (under SDG 3).

Its key finding specifically related to food:

SDG targets related to food and land systems are particularly off-track: Globally, 600 million people will still suffer from hunger by 2030, obesity is increasing globally, and greenhouse gas emissions from Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) represent almost a quarter of annual global GHG emissions.

What needs to be done:

The recommendations:

Significant progress is possible but requires several dramatic changes:

1) avoid overconsumption beyond recommended levels and limit animal-based protein consumption with dietary shifts compatible with cultural preferences;

2) invest to foster productivity, particularly for products and areas with strong demand growth; and

3) implement inclusive, robust, and transparent monitoring systems to halt deforestation.

And how, exactly, are we to do this?  This, the report does not, and cannot, specify.

Report resources

• Website
• Data Visualization

FAO and other UN agencies. released the 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI).

Here’s the video that comes with it: A Tale of Empty Plates.

The report does not mince words:

• This year’s report should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.
• The distance to reach many of the SDG 2 [Sustainable Development Goal #2, Zero Hunger] targets is growing wider each year.
• The intensification of the major drivers behind recent food insecurity and malnutrition trends (i.e. conflict, climate extremes and economic shocks) combined with the high cost of nutritious foods and growing inequalities will continue to challenge food security and nutrition.

As the press release puts it, “The numbers paint a grim picture:”

• As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021 – 46 million people more from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.
• …the proportion of people affected by hunger jumped in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, to 9.8 percent of the world population. This compares with 8 percent in 2019 and 9.3 percent in 2020.
• Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic.
• The gender gap in food insecurity continued to rise in 2021 – 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men.
• Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up 112 million from 2019.
• An estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting….149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets, while 39 million were overweight.

The one bright note:

• Progress is being made on exclusive breastfeeding, with nearly 44 percent of infants under six months of age being exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020. This is still short of the 50 percent target by 2030. Of great concern, two in three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.

But overall

• nearly 670 million people (8 percent of the world population) will still be facing hunger in 2030.
• This is a similar number to 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by the end of this decade was launched under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
• In otherwords, there has been no progress since 2015.

If we want to fix this, we will have to:

• End the pandemic
• End wars
• End climate change
• End income and social inequalities

There’s our agenda.  That’s all.  Get busy.

I’m going to take next week off (unless some crisis occurs).  This will be my last post in 2021.  Stay healthy over the holidays.  See you on January 3 2022.

In the meantime, enjoy this announcement from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization: Rome’s traditional Christmas lighting illuminates SDGs.

The SDGs, of course, are the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which I’ve written about previously.

FAO says:

The official ceremony to inaugurate the 25 meter high fir on Piazza Venezia in Rome’s historic city centre took place today as the Italian capital launched the initiative “Christmas in Rome – Let’s give the gift of a sustainable city”

…Each gift package displays a QR code which, when scanned by visitors with their smartphones provides them with information compiled by FAO experts about concrete actions each of us can take to make our lifestyle more sustainable and start building a better future for the planet, our city and its people.,..Additional content is also accessible to visitors both in Rome and all around the world via a web App and through the FAO website.

How’s that for wishing us all a useful, productive, and optimistic holiday season.  May the new year bring us all peace, prosperity, and healthy and sustainable food systems.

A group of organizations interested in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, has issued a report spotlighting the goals (and see my previous post on this topic)

The report highlights the barriers and suggests what to do about them.  Here are a few examples related to food goals:

• SDG 1—The increasing concentration of wealth and economic power as an obstacle to sustainable development—and what to do about it. 
• SGD 2—Policies that strengthen the nexus between food, health, ecology, livelihoods and identities.
• SDG 12—Curbing consumption of ultra-processed foods and beverages critical to achieving SDG 12
• SDG 14—Sustainable fishery or blue economy?