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Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable Development Goals

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.

At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries — developed and developing — in a global partnership.

They recognise that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth — all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

The 17 SDGs are further expanded by 169 Targets, and 232 Indicators, providing a complex, ambitious and holistic global framework for sustainable development.

Many of the SDGs are integrated with issues that cut across multiple aspects of sustainability, such as economic vitality, gender equality, human rights, disability, climate change and disaster risk reduction.

In June 2018 the Australian Government’s Reporting Platform on the SDG Indicators was established at www.sdgdata.gov.au. The platform is designed to provide a single point of access for anyone interested in Australian Government data on the SDG Indicators.

In 2019, all Australian jurisdictions agreed to map their State of the Environment Report indicators to the SDGs Targets, to test the logic of using the SDGs as a framework for comparing variations in State of the Environment reporting across Australia. The SDGs were adopted to broaden the focus of environmental reporting in Australia to address sustainable development, and to help describe the multiple benefits of a healthy environment to our economy and community.

As a pilot project, Queensland has mapped its 153 indicators to 42 of the 169 SDG Targets, and mapped all of its management responses to 14 of the 17 SDGs. These evaluations will be refined over time as the benefits of using the SDGs as a framework for environmental reporting become clearer.