Understanding and mapping important aspects of the sustainable development goals: your think tank.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are often called the people’s goals. The SDGs were born at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012 with the objective of producing a set of universal goals that meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our world. The SDGs substitute the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which started a global effort in 2000 to tackle the indignity of poverty. The MDGs established measurable, universally-agreed objectives for tackling extreme poverty and hunger, preventing deadly diseases, and expanding primary education to all children, among other development priorities. For 15 years, the MDGs drove progress in several important areas: reducing income poverty, providing much needed access to water and sanitation, driving down child mortality and drastically improving maternal health. They also kick-started a global movement for free primary education, inspiring countries t...