With the start of the new year, the UN on Friday ushered in the ambitious 2030 Sustainable Development Goals that aim to end poverty, hunger and assure gender equality while building a life of dignity for all over the next 15 years.
The 15-year cycle of the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) came to an end with 2015 paving the way for the SDGs, an even more ambitious set of goals to banish a host of social ills by 2030.
“The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are our shared vision of humanity and a social contract between the world’s leaders and the people,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had said of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted unanimously by 193 Heads of State and other top leaders at a summit here in September. “They are a to-do list for people and planet, and a blueprint for success,” he had said of the 17 goals and 169 targets to wipe out poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change over the next 15 years.
The official ushering in of the new 15-year cycle takes place over a 24-hour period, coming into effect in each region of the planet at the stroke of midnight Thursday.
India is seen as critical for the success of the SDGs, given that improving the lives of 1.4 billion Indians would make a major dent in the goal of improving the lives of all humanity. Even before the SDGs came into effect, India told the UN that it is already implementing the new goals in the form of several initiatives launched by the Indian government.
“We believe that the SDGs are in themselves a strong endorsement of the developmental vision articulated by the Indian government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” India had said on the adoption of the outcome document of the Agenda 2030 at the final session of intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda in August.
“In fact, most if not all the initiatives launched by Prime Minister Modi can be related to one or more of the SDGs. In this sense, the SDGs are already being implemented in India,” it said.