The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) define an ambitious action plan for the future we want but say little about implementation. For advanced countries such as Australia, rapid progress towards the SDGs is there for the taking and greater gains will be made by addressing all…

A publication by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) identifies four building blocks for innovative and inclusive national data systems for SDGs. The recommendations respond to main data challenges identified in the…

Immediate measures on agriculture, forestry, wetlands and bioenergy can cut down a third of the emissions to keep temperatures below 1.5°C

In the report “Towards our common digital future”, the WBGU makes it clear that sustainability strategies and concepts need to be fundamentally further developed in the age of digitalization. Only if digital change and the Transformation towards Sustainability are synchronized can we succeed in…

A huge tension exists between recognizing sustainable development (SD) as a meta-discourse and accepting a limitless interpretational width. We analyse the impacts of diversity of worldviews on the interpretation of SD—as a knowledge-based concept—through a critical literature review, resulting in…

Today, many countries are at risk of running out of water, especially in the Arab region – the most water scarce region in the world – with water availability now cited as one of the greatest risks to business continuity and growth. We need a new paradigm to achieve water security - one that depends…

As much as half of the world’s work is unpaid. And most of it is done by women. This imbalance not only robs women of economic opportunities. It is also costly to society in the form of lower productivity and forgone economic growth. It follows that a fairer allocation of unpaid work would not only…

Since 1966, ISRIC - World Soil Information has compiled a large collection of articles, country reports, books and maps with emphasis on the developing countries. The subject emphasis is on soils, but related geographic information on climate, geology, geomorphology, land degradation, land use, and…

UN CC:Lean launches eduCCate Global in collaboration with UK based Harwood Education to take climate change into the classroom. The project has been progressively expanding and attracting the attention of teachers around the world.

The world’s leading climate science organizations have joined forces to produce a landmark new report for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, underlining the glaring – and growing gaps – between agreed targets to tackle global warming and the actual reality. The report, United in Science,…

Achieving human well-being and eradicating poverty for all of the Earth’s people—expected to number eight and a half billion by 2030—is still possible, but only if there is a fundamental—and urgent—change in the relationship between people and nature, and a significant reduction in social and gender…

The International Resource Panel’s GRO report provides a unique framework for focusing both local and global investments in the SDGs on those activities that promote“improved resource productivity and a relative decoupling of well-being [e.g. SDGs 1-7] from resource use”. The “Sustainability…

A Manual for Gender-responsive Land Degradation Neutrality Transformative Projects and Programmes and Land Degradation Neutrality: Interventions to Foster Gender Equality.Women constitute the bulk of people who rely on land in many of the regions most affected by desertification, land degradation…

Healthy land is key to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, from reducing climate change, biodiversity loss and poverty, to increasing equality, decent work and food security for nearly eight billion people. That’s why, with the productivity of a quarter of our land already…

The SPI works to translate current science into policy options that are relevant to the 197 Parties of the Convention resulting from assessment and synthesis of current science. In October 2017, the UNCCD Conference of the Parties (COP) requested that the SPI produce these reports as part of their…

The number of publications on environmental footprint indicators has been growing rapidly, but with limited efforts to integrate different footprints into a coherent framework. Such integration is important for comprehensive understanding of environmental issues, policy formulation and assessment of…

In September 2019, Heads of State and Governments will convene for the first time in person at the United Nations in New York to review progress on their promises made after four years of working on Agenda 2030. While some countries are slowly moving forward with SDG-focused policies, they are not…

More than 1 in 4 deaths of children under 5 years of age are attributable to unhealthy environments. Every year, environmental risks – such as indoor and outdoor air pollution, second-hand smoke, unsafe water, lack of sanitation, and inadequate hygiene – take the lives of 1.7 million children under…

Women and men have unequal opportunities to address land degradation. While adoption of Sustainable Development Goal target 15.3 leads the world to ‘strive towards land degradation neutrality (LDN)’ by 2030, gender concerns are sparsely considered in LDN programming to date.

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) released a brief presenting a practical approach to prioritize action on SDG targets. The approach enables decision-makers to identify how interactions between different SDG targets shapes policy outcomes, and promises to help users generate shared…

Since 2009, UEBT annually measures consumer awareness of biodiversity, and how this affects purchasing decisions. Ten years of research, among 68,000 people from 16 countries, and among hundreds of leading companies, provides valuable insights that may guide companies and governments in their…

Forests are vitally important for sustaining life on Earth, and play a major role in the fight against climate change

For the UN, these “green jobs,” play an important role in realising the vision of the future that practically all countries signed up to when they adopted the landmark Paris Agreement in December 2015, an international commitment to combat climate change, and significantly reduce human activity…

The 2019 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook presents new evidence on changes in job stability, underemployment and the share of well-paid jobs, and discusses the policy implications of these changes with respect to how technology, globalisation, population ageing, and other megatrends are…

Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in September 2015 aim to end hunger and poverty, to protect the Planet, and to ensure peace and prosperity for all. The soil organic carbon (SOC) stock is a major planetary resource supporting many critically important ecosystem services (ESs)…