The coronavirus pandemic of 2019 and 2020 and the civil rights crisis of 2020, led by the Black Lives Matter movement, have highlighted some of the major limitations of our society today.

While our economy is growing at an increasingly rapid pace, many areas of development remain under-considered. A** global vision **of the interconnection between the different facets of development would help to achieve a sustainable improvement in living conditions.

“[Sustainable Development is:] Development that meets the needs of the present while safeguarding Earth’s life-support system, on which the welfare of current and future generations depends.” [1]

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals

The SDGs cover seventeen interconnected goals that define global quantifiable objectives across the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of development. [1] They aim to be a universal set of indicators and a reference framework to be leveraged by the global community to motivate policies and implementation by 2030.

They were set by the United Nations in 2015 as a follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals, which provided a framework for a global partnership to reduce extreme poverty.

This new framework supports a long term transition towards more sustainable development. It fosters accountability while also promoting global collaboration. It is a** tool to guide decision making** but not in and of itself a prescriptive and actionable guide. As a result, member states and institutions are free to pursue policies and programs according to their own context, resources, and available scientific evidence.

The 17 Global Goals fixed by the United Nation [2], using the 17 SDG icons image [7]

Interconnections and accountability

The global goals highlight how the 17 goals are interconnected. The increase in poverty is likely to lead to a decrease in hygiene and an increase in health challenges. Meanwhile, with poverty, access to education is harder and violence may emerge more easily. Similarly, Climate Change endangers wildlife (on land and below water) and will increase the already existing inequalities between people. This explains why Griggs D, Staord-Smith M, Ganey O, et al. [1] suggested that special emphasis should be placed on earth life support systems and poverty reduction.

“For the economy itself will die if the ecosystems collapse” Leonardo Di Caprio, UN Messenger of Peace

Sustainability areas can be considered as a large organism whose parts are interconnected. The economy exists within society, which in turn exists within the global ecosystem of the Planet Earth. This framework highlights that the economy cannot exist without society, which cannot function without the environment that surrounds it.

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