UN Sustainability Goals — Part II
Our blog series on the UN’s Sustainability Goals continues with a focus on three more goals to be integrated into policy by 2030. Check out the issues and progress of each goal below:
Goal #4: Quality Education
The fourth goal on the list is to ensure access to inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all students. This is especially significant as the COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out nearly 20 years of progress made in education. Now, 101 million or 9% of children in grades 1-8 across the globe had reading levels that fell below minimum proficiency. Additionally, the UN predicts that slow progress in school completion is likely to become worse. Basic school infrastructure to build back better schools is lacking in many countries. Of these, only 56% have drinking water, 33% electricity, 40% have handwashing facilities.
During the follow-up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, the newly formed Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) was developed as a strategic partnership between several sponsor UN groups (UNESCO, UN-DESA, UNEP, Global Compact, and UNU) with the goal to galvanize commitments from higher education institutions. They focus on teaching and encouraging research on sustainable development, greening campuses and supporting local sustainability efforts. Membership now includes almost 300 universities worldwide, and HESI accounts for more than one-third of the voluntary commitments established at the Rio Conference. This now provides a unique framework between policymaking and academia for higher education institutions.
Goal #5: Gender Equality
The Gender Equality initiative focuses on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Women’s participation in strategic decision-making is essential for COVID-19 response and recovery. However, gender parity remains a far way off. Currently, women represent 25.6% in national parliaments, 36.3% in local government and 28.2% in managerial positions across the globe. Also, violence against women is unnecessarily common, persisting at high levels and has intensified by the pandemic. 1 in 3 women (736 million) are subjected to physical and/or sexual violence have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their life, at least since the age of 15. Another disturbing statistic shows that up to 10 million girls will be at risk of child marriage. This is in addition to the 100 million who were projected to become child brides before the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic also added pressure to unpaid domestic and care work and pushed women out of the labor force. Women undertake about 2.5 times as many hours on domestic and caregiving work as men.
Data from January 2021 shows that 135 countries and territories indicated that the global average of women in houses of parliaments now sits at 25.6%. This continues a slow upward trend that now requires 40 years for gender parity to be achieved across the globe, though that timeframe can be longer for some individual countries. The number of women in local deliberative bodies was 36.3%. In the 23 countries where there are 40% or more women in the lower or single parliamentary houses, the use of gender quotas has occurred in most of them. Recent data on 2020 focused on 36 countries and territories where national legal frameworks were in place to guarantee women’s equal rights to land ownership. The data indicate that substantial improvement has been achieved in establishing equal inheritance rights (69%) and spousal consent requirements for land transactions (61%). However, progress is slow in land registration, customary law, and women’s representation in land governance. More women need access to education, career opportunities, technology and online financial banking solutions if we’re to sustain progress in gender equality.
Goal #6: Clean Water & Sanitation
The next goal centers on ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. Today, billions of people still lack access to clean and safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, including in the United States. Data shows that in 2020, 26% of the global population lacked access to safely managed drinking water. 3.6 billion people, or 46% of the global population, lacked access to safely managed sanitation, 29% lack basic hygiene. Additionally, 2.3 billion people live in water-stressed countries. Between 1970 and 2015, natural wetlands shrunk by 35%. This is 3x the rate of forest loss across the globe. Currently, 129 countries are not prepared to have sustainably managed water resources by 2030. The current rate of progress needs to be doubled to reach this goal.
In December 2020, the resolution on the “United Nations Conference on the Midterm Comprehensive Review of the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Decade for Action, entitled “Water for Sustainable Development, 2018–2028”, was the first UN Conference on water since 1977. Clean water and sustainable practices are also at the center of milestone agreements, like the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Accord.
Ensuring access and sustainability of water and sanitation for everyone has been an important topic for a while. The priority is now turning the new vision of water-related SDGs for the 2030 Agenda into a reality.