The Global Goals are not luxurious
No poverty or hunger. Human beings literally not starving to death in certain parts of the world. Clean water. A toilet. These are not lofty or utopian goals. These are things that should already be. And the UN Global Goals are all about giving everybody on Earth equal rights.
“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres said, on releasing the UN report Making Peace With Nature (18 February, 2021) on the three existential threats facing the world today:
- The climate crisis,
- The devastation of wildlife and nature,
- The pollution that causes many millions of early deaths every year.
“The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses, and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,” added Guterres.
The human hierarchy of needs
Mazlow’s pyramid illustrates that we need to have our most basic needs met before we can go on to achieve our full potential. For billions of people, these basic needs are not being met. So this is where we must begin, collectively, to make a difference.
What you can do to help achieve the UN Global Goals
We can achieve all these goals by 2030, if we act fast.
| Goal 1 | End poverty in all its forms everywhere. What you can do: Donate to NGOs that are acting to end poverty, locally and globally. Only support organisations that don’t pay their own management 6-figure salaries. |
| Goal 2 | End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. What you can do: Buy local produce and boycott fruit and vegetables that have been flown in from thousands of miles away. |
| Goal 3 | Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all, at all ages. What you can do: Start by looking after your health and the health of those around you. Quit smoking. Drink less alcohol. |
| Goal 4 | Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. What you can do: Keep learning and don’t send your kids to religious-run schools. |
| Goal 5 | Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. What you can do: Treat everybody equally and don’t stand by when you see women and girls being mistreated. |
| Goal 6 | Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. What you can do: Don’t waste water. Start by switching off the tap when brushing your teeth. Also when brushing your teeth, understand how lucky you are to have clean, running water indoors. |
| Goal 7 | Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. What you can do: Find an NGO that’s setting up sustainable electricity schemes around the world and support their activities. |
| Goal 8 | Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. What you can do: Don’t just stand by while entire industries are shut down by the pandemic. Demand that your government understands that all livelihoods matter. |
| Goal 9 | Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation. What you can do: Don’t accept short-term thinking by your elected officials. Next election, vote for those with a long-term, sustainable vision. |
| Goal 10 | Reduce inequality within and among countries. What you can do: The status quo favours the entitled. Rock the boat. Follow the money. Question everything. |
| Goal 11 | Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. What you can do: Be a good neighbour. |
| Goal 12 | Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. What you can do: Stop buying crap you don’t need! Especially when you’ve been fed the ad on a social network. |
| Goal 13 | Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. What you can do: Join our Hempoffset project! |
| Goal 14 | Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. What you can do: Don’t ever buy or eat farmed salmon. It’s horrible stuff and is not good for you. |
| 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. What you can do: Boycott Brazilian beef and anything made with palm oil. |
| 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. What you can do: Ask yourself if it’s acceptable for a handful of people, some of them clearly idiots/crazy/megalomaniacs, to control enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on Earth many times over. Follow the money. |
| Goal 17 | Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. What you can do: The old models have failed us. Your turn to come up with a new way… |
Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal.
UN secretary-general, António Guterres, 18 February, 2021
Read more
UN Report, Making Peace With Nature: https://www.unep.org/resources/making-peace-nature
UN Global Goals: https://www.globalgoals.org/
UN Sustainable Development Goals: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
Guardian report on what a green pandemic recovery could look like: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/17/what-could-a-good-green-recovery-plan-actually-look-like
Mazlow’s hierarchy on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
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