Page 12 - SDG Report

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TRANSITIONING BETWEEN THE MDGs AND SDGs
MDGs SDGs
The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 marked an effective method of mobilising global partners to agree on as well as achieve a set of key social priorities worldwide. These priority areas related largely to gender inequality, poverty, declining health, education, hunger, and environmental degradation. These priorities were then packaged into a set of eight goals, with associated measurable objectives within a 15-year timeframe. The MDGs assisted in the promotion of global awareness of sustainable development principles, political accountability, improved metrics, and community feedback.
From 2000 – 2015 the MDGs have remained a focus of global policy debates and national policy planning. Whilst some countries achieved most of the MDGs there were others that only managed to achieve a few. However, by 2015 most of the countries had begun making meaningful progress towards addressing the goals. Civil society further entrenched the MDGs by incorporating the goals and associated targets in their work and assumed responsibility for the delivery on the outcomes. Policymakers and civil society accept that progress against poverty, hunger, and declining health has been notable; furthermore, that the MDGs have played an important role in ensuring that progress; and that internationally accepted poverty-fighting goals should continue beyond 2015. In a world already beset by significant climate change and other environmental challenges, there was consensus that global environmental objectives would need a higher profile alongside that of the poverty-reduction goals.
In the run-up to the Rio+20 summit in June 2012, the UN high- level global sustainability panel released a report proposing that the world adopt a set of Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs). The endorsement of the move away from the MDGs to the SDGs, was seen to be significant as it would assist to move the world to a more sustainable development trajectory. The SDGs is an effort to revolutionize how we envision development and to build a paradigm that is more fit-for-purpose for addressing the overwhelming challenges we face as a global society that is rapidly approaching the capacity of earth systems to support life while also experiencing increasing inequality at all levels. Many see the SDGs as a natural and possibly inevitable evolution of the Millennium Development. Another barrier that the SDG process had to overcome was the long-standing division between the environmental and development communities. The MDGs became the cornerstone of the development community, with the bulk of bilateral and multilateral assistance projects organized around them. When the SDGs first emerged on the horizon, the development community – including governments from all over the world as well as a slew of organisations focusing on MDG implementation – flatly opposed the concept. These divisions spilled over into the talks, where there were often vehement disagreements among delegations.
10 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS GOOD PRACTICE