Goal #7Environmental Sustainability
Introduction
Reducing poverty and achieving sustained development must be done in conjunction with a healthy planet. The Millennium Goals recognize that environmental sustainability is part of global economic and social well-being. Unfortunately exploitation of natural resources such as forests, land, water, and fisheries-often by the powerful few-have caused alarming changes in our natural world in recent decades, often harming the most vulnerable people in the world who depend on natural resources for their livelihood.
The Targets
Goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals sets out by the year 2015 to:
- Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
- Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss.
- Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
- By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
Did You Know?
In our world today around 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation and some 1.2 billion people do not have access to an improved source of water. (Source:Why do the Millennium Development Goals matter? Brochure)
Achieving the Goals
In 2007 Madagascar’s government established 15 new conservation areas covering over 2.65 million acres of wildlife. The new parks will protect several threatened ecosystems including wetlands and rain forests.
Goal News
Over 60 per cent of Africans lack access to a proper toilet, according to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ahead of World Water Day – observed on 22 March – whose 2008 theme is “Sanitation Matters.”
The Day aims to raise awareness to the plight of 2.6 billion people worldwide who live without toilets in their homes and are therefore vulnerable to numerous health risks.
Despite the impressive progress made by Asia-Pacific nations over the past decade in economic growth, 1.5 billion people in the region still live on less than two U.S. dollars a day, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Thursday.
The statement was made as ADB representatives are highlighting the continuing prevalence of poverty in the region during discussions over the replenishment of the Asian Development Fund, an endowment used to provide grants and low-interest loans to some of Asia and the Pacific’s poorest nations.
The goal of the Year is to raise awareness and accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. The International Year of Sanitation was established by the UN General Assembly.
Secretary General’s Message
With climate change threatening agriculture in Asia, 10 nations met in a three-day United Nations-sponsored meeting in Hanoi, Viet Nam, to discuss sustainable farming practices to feed growing populations.
The UN World Meteorological Organization held its Regional Association Asia Working Group on Agricultural Meteorology meeting from 17-19 December, which was attended by representatives from China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Viet Nam.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed the outcome of the landmark United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia, in which 187 countries today agreed to launch a two-year process of formal negotiations on strengthening international efforts to fight, mitigate and adapt to the problem of global warming.
After almost two weeks of marathon discussions, delegates have agreed on both the agenda for the negotiations and a 2009 deadline for completing them so that a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions can enter into effect in 2013.
