17 Goals That Will Shape The UN's Response To Global Poverty, World Hunger —Megan Ranney, Mashable

Image: UNDP Afghanistan

If you had the power to change the world for good, where would you start? Protecting the environment? Providing education for girls in developing countries? Working to eradicate disease?

The UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals are designed to guide the policies that will change the world for the better, framing global agendas and guiding political action for the next 15 years.

These Sustainable Development Goals are larger and more ambitious than the UN's previous Millennium Development Goals, designed not only to tackle global poverty and world hunger, but to address long-term issues like climate change and sustainable infrastructure.

Mashable report continues:

To develop these goals, the UN worked with representatives from 70 nations to host global consultations, conduct door-to-door surveys and launch an online survey asking people what they thought should be included.

This led to the following goals, which will be finalized by world leaders this September at a special UN summit in New York:

• Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
• Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
• Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
• Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
• Goal 5 : Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
• Goal 6 : Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
• Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
• Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
• Goal 9 : Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
• Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries.
• Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
• Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
• Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
• Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
• Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
• Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
• Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

The sixth annual Social Good Summit, which will take place from Sept. 27 to 28 in New York, will address the issues raised by these Sustainable Development Goals by bringing together world leaders, grassroots activists and global citizens to discuss digital solutions to some of the greatest challenges of our time.

Originally appeared in Mashable