UN Sustainable Development Goals: Update for 2025
Following the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). Chuck Francis notes in this article the progress towards these goals over the past decade and implications for the future under the current administration. Read them carefully and see if you agree with Chuck’s final comment, “We can do better.”
Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, (SDGs) were adopted at the UN Summit in New York, September 2015, quickly followed by the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in December. The new U.S. president followed a campaign promise to withdraw from these accords, citing ‘undue burdens and unnecessary impacts’ on the U.S. economy. This short-term thinking in his ‘America First’ [sic. U.S. First] policy represents a huge setback to our national commitments to help stabilize global climate, and impacts future generations.
Coupled with a reduction in USAID programs by firing most employees and closing ongoing projects globally, this decision cancels eorts by the U.S. to maintain leadership in mitigation of human-caused climate change. Strengthening the beliefs of ‘climate deniers’ in our country and elsewhere, such policy changes will set back progress on improving climate and restoring wildlife habitat after decades of improvement. In embarking on this strategy we can anticipate negative impacts on biodiversity and homes for many wildlife species, increased numbers of climate refugees, and eventually our own survival.
We need to revisit the SDGs, evaluate progress, and anticipate outcomes from now until 2030. These goals are inter-related, and cumulative eects of current decisions will soon become irreversible. Our global society will pay a huge price for the goals of this administration to cut public services to reward private investors and reduce their taxes.
What are the ambitious SDG goals, and what has happened in the decade since they were accepted by over 150 countries?
SDG1: End poverty in all forms; Global progress slowed with the COVID pandemic, and now returned to pre-COVID levels; less than 30% of countries will reduce poverty by 2030.
SDG2: End hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition; Sustainable agriculture, better storage, equity in food distribution, and focus on food crops will help; income gaps persist.
SDG3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being; child and maternal deaths declined, access to needed drugs has gender disparities, large national differences in health persist.
SDG4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education; two-thirds of children on track, socio-economic disparities persist, many teachers lack adequate training.
SDG5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women; parity in employment is lagging, female genital mutilation still prevalent, legal protection of female land ownership lacking.
SDG6: Ensure availability/ sustainable water management and sanitation; all targets are on track, yet 2.2 billion people lack potable water, 3.5 billion lack adequate sanitation.
SDG7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable energy; global energy access at 91%, and 74% used clean fuel for cooking, yet many rural areas lack access.
SDG8: Promote sustainable economic growth and decent work for all; productivity slowed during COVID, rebounded, then declined again especially for younger people.
SDG9: Build inclusive infrastructure, inclusivity, foster innovation; manufacturing has stagnated, due to geopolitical instability, inflation, energy costs, and economic slowdown.
SDG 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries; gap in income growth between poorest and richest has widened, 2023 had record number of refugees and migrant deaths.
SDG11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, sustainable; cities have rising slum populations, lack of public transport, threats to infrastructure and disruption of services.
SDG12: Ensure sustainable production and consumption; unsustainable consumption and production patterns worldwide, plus climate change, nature loss, and pollution are rising.
SDG13: Take urgent action to combat climate change; lack of action, climate ’deniers’, and slow action on renewable energy complicate progress.
SDG14: Conserve/sustain oceans, seas and marine resources; declining fish stocks, marine pollution, ocean acidification, habitat destruction all threaten marine ecosystems.
SDG15: Protect & restore terrestrial ecosystems, manage forests, reverse land loss; world’s forests declining, farmland expanding, biodiversity loss continuing.
SDG16: Promote peaceful, inclusive societies and provide justice for all; steep rise in conflict-related deaths, 108 million people displaced in decade before 2022.
SDG17: Strengthen implementation of Global Sustainable Development Partnerships; closing of USAID projects will increase people fleeing from persecution, conflict, violence.
Current political decisions will further isolate the U.S. from global climate and ecosystem preservation decisions, alienate former allies, and reduce confidence in our capacity to provide leadership in critical global environmental initiatives. This is detrimental to the cause of peace, fair global trade, and preserving the environment. We can do better.
Reference:
Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, UN, 2024: https://sdgs.un.org/goals#history
Babbling Brook, May 2025 issue of Wachiska Audubon Newsletter
BB Update on UN Sustainable Development Goals June 2025; by Chuck Francis
How Budget Cuts to NOAA Impact Agriculture, National Security
While some see recent budget cuts to NOAA as ‘removing governmental waste’, we Nebraskans know how wild Nebraska weather can be, and even getting more so with our changing climate. So, yes, accurate weather forecasting and data that NOAA provides IS important to our day-to-day lives. But not only that, the work of NOAA is also critical to our longer-run global future. Should we be challenging these cuts and calling our elected officials about them? Read Chuck Francis’s piece and decide.
Many cuts to the federal budget will have immediate and obvious effects across the country and around the globe. We take for granted a number of sources of weather data that impact our daily lives, and we only appreciate them when they are gone. These data help us predict tornadoes and provide warnings to seek shelter. They also help farmers to anticipate rainfall events and influence decisions on when to plant crops. Aircraft pilots use these data to avoid dangerous winds and storm centers. Such information is crucial to our personal safety, as well as essential to food production.
Budget cuts are reflected in continued deterioration and lack of maintenance of vital monitoring capabilities for rainfall, temperature extremes, thunderstorms and fog, and wind speeds that affect success of aerial application of pesticides on crops, as well as safety of commercial pilots and the traveling public. Reductions in the current number of capable and well-trained personnel mean decisions that depend on accurate and timely collection, interpretation, and application of current and predicted weather data are put at risk. Our current human activities in many ways depend heavily on accurate and available data at all hours of day and night.
Other segments of society that depend on timely weather data include transportation, especially long-haul truckers, and the traveling public. Those in the forest service who fight to control wild fires depend on accurate wind and predicted rainfall data. They put their lives on the line to protect forests and the public, and their safety depend on current weather predictions. In so many ways, these functions of NOAA and the rest of society are highly dependent on weather data. These are immediate and short-term needs that will be interrupted by current budget cuts.
More important to our long-term planning and decision making are the climate predictions and models that guide our decisions on construction, on installation of new wind energy facilities to reduce fossil fuel burning and release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) that have even greater eƯects on our accelerating warming.
These budget cuts to NOAA and other climate-related agencies represent an existential threat to our species and many others on the planet. It is exceedingly short-term thinking to ignore global warming in order to continue polluting the atmosphere and shore up profits in the fossil fuel industry. In spite of current policy, most scientists agree that global climate change is real, and that human activities including the burning of fossil fuels are a major factor pushing this situation. Science provides the data to support this indisputable conclusion about current climate changes and their implications. We need to develop the consensus and political will to make rapid changes in our attitudes toward fossil fuels and how they are used. If we ignore the facts, they will make the situation worse until we reverse the current trends. We should be smart enough to ignore the short-term economic gains from maintaining the status quo, and work toward a sustainable future.
Reference:
Inside Climate News, 3 May 2025: read details at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03052025/noaa-cuts-could-impact-weather-apps-agriculture-national-security
Babbling Brook, July 2025 issue of Wachiska Audubon Newsletter
BB Cuts to NOAA Impact Ag & National Security July 2025, by Chuck Francis
