Watch the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7gZHzNQXBA

Read the following articles and answer these questions:

1) Regarding SDGs, do you think the goals are achievable? If yes, explain. If no, explain.

2) Choose which goals are urgent. Rank accordingly.

Article 1 

From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) mark a historic and effective method of global mobilisation to achieve a set of important social priorities worldwide. They express widespread public concern about poverty, hunger, disease, unmet schooling, gender inequality, and environmental degradation. By packaging these priorities into an easily understandable set of eight goals, and by establishing measurable and time bound objectives, the MDGs help to promote global awareness, political accountability, improved metrics, social feedback, and public pressures. As described by Bill Gates, the MDGs have become a type of global report card for the fight against poverty for the 15 years from 2000 to 2015. As with most report cards, they generate incentives to improve performance, even if not quite enough incentives for both rich and poor countries to produce a global class of straight-A students. Developing countries have made substantial progress towards achievement of the MDGs, although the progress is highly variable across goals, countries, and regions. Mainly because of startling economic growth in China, developing countries as a whole have cut the poverty rate by half between 1990 and 2010. Some countries will achieve all or most of the MDGs, whereas others will achieve very few. By 2015, most countries will have made meaningful progress towards most of the goals. Moreover, for more than a decade, the MDGs have remained a focus of global policy debates and national policy planning. They have become incorporated into the work of non-governmental organisations and civil society more generally, and are taught to students at all levels of education. The probable shortfall in achievement of the MDGs is indeed serious, regrettable, and deeply painful for people with low income. The shortfall represents a set of operational failures that implicate many stakeholders, in both poor and rich countries. Promises of official development assistance by rich countries, for example, have not been kept. Nonetheless, there is widespread feeling among policy makers and civil society that progress against poverty, hunger, and disease is notable; that the MDGs have played an important part in securing that progress; and that globally agreed goals to fight poverty should continue beyond 2015. In a world already undergoing dangerous climate change and other serious environmental ills, there is also widespread understanding that worldwide environmental objectives need a higher profile alongside the poverty-reduction objectives. For these reasons, the world's governments seem poised to adopt a new round of global goals to follow the 15 year MDG period. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's high-level global sustainability panel, appointed in the lead-up to the Rio+20 summit in June, 2012, has issued a report recommending that the world adopt a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This spring, Secretary-General Ban indicated that after the Rio+20 summit he plans to appoint a high-level panel to consider the details of post-2015 goals, with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as co-chairs. One scenario is that the Rio+20 summit will endorse the idea of the SDGs, and world leaders will adopt them at a special session of the UN General Assembly to review the MDGs in September, 2013. The SDGs are an important idea, and could help finally to move the world to a sustainable trajectory. The detailed content of the SDGs, if indeed they do emerge in upcoming diplomatic processes, is very much up for discussion and debate. Their content, I believe, should focus on two considerations: global priorities that need active worldwide public participation, political focus, and quantitative measurement; and lessons from the MDGs, especially the reasons for their successes, and corrections of some of their most important shortcomings. I have served Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon as Special Advisor on the MDGs, and look forward to contributing to the SDGs as well. The following suggestions, which I make solely in my personal capacity, include priorities for the SDGs and the best ways to build on the MDG successes and lessons. Why SDGs? The idea of the SDGs has quickly gained ground because of the growing urgency of sustainable development for the entire world. Although specifi c defi nitions vary, sustain able development embraces the so-called triple bottom line approach to human wellbeing. Almost all the world's societies acknowledge that they aim for a com bination of economic development, environmental sustain ability, and social inclusion, but the specifi c objectives diff er globally, between and within societies. Certainly, as yet, no consensus regarding the tradeoff s and synergies across the economic, environmental, and social objectives has been agreed. Still, a shared focus on economic, environmental, and social goals is a hallmark of sustainable development and represents a broad consensus on which the world can build. The urgency of the triple bottom line arises from a new realisation brought to global awareness by earth science and the yearly changes around us. The world has entered a new era, indeed a new geological epoch, in which human activity has come to play a central and threatening part in fundamental earth dynamics. Global economic growth per person, now led by the emerging economies, and a stillburgeoning population that reached 7 billion last year (and that is expected to reach 8 billion by 2024) are combining to put unprecedented stress on the earth's ecosystems. Following the lead of Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, one of the discoverers of the chemistry behind stratospheric ozone depletion, scientists have quickly adopted the new term Anthropocene to denote the human-driven age of the planet. A closely related notion is termed planetary boundariesthe idea that human activity is pushing crucial global ecosystem functions past a dangerous threshold, beyond which the earth might well encounter abrupt, highly non-linear, and potentially devastating outcomes for human wellbeing and life generally. The present era is distinguished by the fact that these pressures are both global and local, and that they impinge simultaneously on several diff erent crucial earth systems, including the carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles. Humanity faces not only one but many overlapping crises of environmental sustainability, including: climate change as the result of human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases; massive environmental pollution (eg, the poisoning of estuaries and other ecosystems as a result of heavy runoff of nitrogen-based and phosphorus-based fertilisers); the acidifi cation of the oceans, caused mainly by the increased concen tration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is the most important human-produced greenhouse gas; the massive loss of biodiversity caused by unsustainable demands on forests (eg, logging for timber or wood fuel; fi gure 1) and the continuing conversion of forests and remaining wilderness into farms and pastures; and the depletion of key fossil resources, including energy (oil, gas, coal) and groundwater. In view of these dire and unprecedented challenges, the need for urgent, high-profi le, and change-producing global goals should be obvious. The public is beginning to sense that the increasing frequency of extreme climate events is indicative of an underlying dangerous trend of long-term change. The detailed reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have enabled the world community to keep abreast of the latest scientific findings of anthropogenic interference in the climate system. Moreover, the growing burdens of high and volatile food prices are confronting billions of people daily. Beyond the environmental threats, humanity faces other serious threats that are part of the sustainable development agenda. The human population continues to grow rapidly, by around 75-80 million people per year, and is on a trajectory to reach 9 billion by the middle of the 21st century, and even 10 billion by the end of the century. Even the medium forecast of the UN Population Division (which foresees a world population of 101 billion in 2100) could well turn out to be low, since it is predicated on a rather steep decline in fertility rates in low-income countries. These demographic trends have to be taken seriously, and households in high-fertility settings should be empowered to adopt rapid and voluntary reductions of fertility to benefit themselves, their children, and the local and global economy and environment. The combination of a rising world population and rapidly rising incomes per person in large emerging economies such as China and India suggests that the demand for food grains and feed grains will continue to increase, amplified by rising meat consumption in the emerging economies, against a backdrop of around 1 billion people who are already chronically hungry, mainly in Africa and south Asia. In the past two decades, many of the key yield-raising technologies of the green revolution have run their course; increases in productivity of food and feed grains have slowed worldwide. A substantial share of US maize production has been diverted into biofuel. Increased grain production is increasingly difficult, and threatens continued destruction of natural habitats, climate change, water stress, increased fertiliser pollution, decrease in biodiversity, and more. Social outcomes could be deeply destabilising, because sharp increases in food prices threaten to push hundreds of millions of people into chronic hunger. Another set of challenges surrounds social inclusion or, put more simply, fairnessin the world's economies. As the world has been stumbling through the intense period of globalisation since 1980, together with the advent of the digital age, inequalities in income have generally soared. Gaps in earnings between workers with higher education and those without have widened sharply. The wages of highly educated and well trained workers have grown substantially, whereas earnings of lower skilled workers with fewer years of education have tended to decrease. The fragility of gainful employment for large parts of the world's labour force, in both rich and poor countries, has contributed to increased public unrest (figure 2) and even the toppling of governments in the past few turbulent years, with more unrest expected. Of course, the increased inequality caused by differences in educational attainment adds to longstanding inequalities in other dimensions. The goal of gender equality between men and women and boys and girls (MDG 3) has not yet been met worldwide, even though some progress has been made on girls' school enrolment and women's participation in politics and business. Minority groups (ethnic, religious, racial) continue to endure hardships in all countries. Longstanding discrimination against indigenous populations is stark and in many places intensifying as a scramble for jobs, water, and arable land increases. Youth also fi nd themselves aggrieved. They have arrived on the planet at a time of remarkable technological advancement, notably in digital, material, and health technologies, but seemingly also at a time when technological advance is threatening the access of many people to good jobs rather than enhancing it. The triple bottom line plus good governance The MDGs were targets mainly for poor countries, to which rich countries were to add their solidarity and assistance through fi nances and technology. The SDGs will, necessarily, have a diff erent feel about them. Sustainable development is eluding the entire planet. The SDGs should therefore pose goals and challenges for all countriesnot what the rich should do for the poor, but what all countries together should do for the global wellbeing of this generation and those to come. Middleincome emerging economies, such as Brazil, China, India, and others, will be crucial leaders of the SDGs, and will have their own internal challenges of balancing growth and environmental sustainability; vulnerabilities to adverse trends such as climate change; and rising geopolitical roles, regionally and globally. I would propose organisation of the SDGs into the three broad categories of economic development, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion, with the proviso that success in any of these three categories (or subcategories within them) will almost surely depend on success of all three. The SDGs might have three bottom lines, but achievement of any of them is likely to need concerted global eff orts to achieve all of them. Moreover, the three bottom lines will depend on a fourth condition: good governance at all levels, local, national, regional, and global. The economic dimension should build on the MDGs, which have helped to advance the world's agenda in the fi ght against poverty, hunger, and disease. Between 2015 and 2030, the world should aim not merely to achieve the MDGs where they have not been met, but to carry on with the task initiated at the very start of the UN itself (and represented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights): to secure the basic material needsand human rightsof everybody on the planet. To declare that by 2030, all extreme deprivationhunger, extreme income poverty, and avoidable disease and deathscan be eliminated is both realistic and profound. All individuals should be able to access safe water (fi gure 3) and sanitation, electricity, connection to information and communication technology (fi gure 4), and primary health care, and be protected from natural hazards. Many places will remain poor, but no place should be destitute, unable to meet these basic needs. A key challenge is to adopt a meaningful standard of basic needs worldwide. I would propose the following goal. SDG 1: by 2030, if not earlier, all the world's people will have access to safe and sustainable water and sanitation, adequate nutrition, primary health services, and basic infrastructure, including electricity, roads, and connectivity to the global information network. This target might seem optimistic, but it is well within reach. Technological advances and economic growth are making it possible. One of the notable facts about poverty nowadays is that well over half of the 1 billion people with a low income are living in middle-income countries, which means that they are living in societies with the fi nancial and technological means to address their remaining poverty (as Brazil and China have eff ectively and notably done in recent years). Although hundreds of millions of impoverished people still live in the least developed countries, they are a dwindling proportion of the world's poorest people, such that small fi nancial and technological transfers from high-income and middleincome countries can alleviate their plight. The second pillar is environmental sustainability, usefully conceptualised by the global planetary boundaries. SDG 2: from 2015 to 2030, all nations will adopt economic strategies that increasingly build on sustainable bestpractice technologies, appropriate market incentives, and individual responsibility. The world will move together towards low-carbon energy systems, sustainable food systems, sustainable urban areas (including resilience in the face of growing hazards), and stabilisation of the world's population through the voluntary fertility choices of families supported by health services and education. Countries will adopt a pace of change during these 15 years, individually and with global cooperation, that will enable humanity to avoid the most dangerous planetary thresholds. The world community will help low-income countries to bear the additional costs that they might entail in adoption of sustainable systems for energy, agriculture, and other sectors. I have put the emphasis on the main drivers of humaninduced global environmental change: energy use, food production, urbanisation with its attendant pollution and potential hazards, and population increase. Food production, for example, is a major driver not only of greenhouse gas emissions, but also of the loss of biodiversity and increasing stress on fresh water supplies. If humanity can address these drivers of change in a respectful, civilised, balanced, and evidence-based manner, through appropriate economic institu tions, these challenges will be large but achievable. If these issues continue to be ignored, they will eventually become calamitous. In my view, none of the environmental dangers constitutes a fundamental obstacle to close the technology and income gaps between highincome and low-income countries. In other words, with improved technologies and behavioural choices, both development and nature can coexist. SDG 2, as stated above, begs many questions, especially as to who will help low-income countries to accomplish what the highincome countries have not yet even accepted. The third broad SDG is social inclusion, the commitment to future economic and technological progress under conditions of fairness and equitable access to public services, and with the government counter acting social discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnic origin, religion, and race. SDG 3: every country will promote the wellbeing and capabilities of all their citizens, enabling all citizens to reach their potential, irrespective of class, gender, ethnic origin, religion, or race. Every country will monitor the wellbeing of its citizenry with improved measurements and reporting of life satisfaction. Special attention will be given to early childhood, youth, and elderly people, addressing the vulnerabilities and needs of each age cohort. A particular focus should be on early childhood development (ages 0-6 years), the period of crucial brain development, formation of cognitive skills, and vital health outcomes, all of which have important lifetime implications. Special care should also be taken for children (aged 6-14 years) and youth (aged 15-24 years), especially girls, to ensure that all young people can complete secondary education and make an eff ective transition from school to skills to the labour market. In a world where 12% of the population, and 22% of that of more developed regions, will be older than 65 years by 2030, new targeted programmes and social protections will be needed for elderly people in many countries. Traditional measures of economic performance namely, gross domestic product and household income capture only a small part of what determines human wellbeing. Human happiness, life satisfaction, and the freedom from suff ering depend on many things in addition to meeting of material needs, including social trust, honest government, empowerment in the workplace, mental health services, and a high level of civic participation. Many countries are adopting new metrics to measure these determinants of wellbeing and to measure their ultimate bottom line: life satisfaction of the population. Bhutan has inspired the world with its measure of gross national happiness. During the 15 years of the SDGs, all governments should agree to introduce new multidimensional measures of citizen wellbeing and the distribution of wellbeing in the population. Governance for sustainable development A fourth basic determinant of the world's ability to achieve SDGs 1-3 will be the quality of governance at all levels, from local to global, and in the private sector as well as government. At every level, government and offi cial agencies should be responsive to the citizenry. Com panies need to recognise and act on their responsibility to a wide range of stakeholders. Together, the world's governments should cooperate to fi nance and provide essential public goods and protect the interests of future generations from the short-sighted despoliation caused by the present generation. I would therefore suggest the following SDG. SDG 4: governments at all levels will cooperate to promote sustainable development worldwide. This target includes a commitment to the rule of law, human rights, transparency, participation, inclusion, and sound economic institutions that support the private, public, and civil-society sectors in a productive and balanced manner. Power is held in trust to the people, not as a privilege of the state. Governments represent not only today's generation, but also those to come. They will introduce political institutions to ensure that the rights of future generations are respected. Societies will promote the notion of subsidiarityie, that governance should be as close to the people as functionally possible, giving individuals and families maximum freedom of action. Governments will share information, exchange ideas, encourage meetings and brainstorming, and work in good faith across cultures. They will also shape a new sustainable and decent approach towards human migration, recognising the growing economic and environmental pressures on people to leave their homelands, and protecting the rights of migrants to resettle their families and meet their basic needs. Sustainability requires the leadership and responsibility of the private sector alongside the public sector and civil society. The private sector is the main productive sector of the world economy, and the holder of much of the advanced technologies and management systems that will be crucial for success of the SDGs. Private-sector companies should support the SDGs in practical and measurable ways, in their policies, production processes, and engagement with stakeholders. They should refrain from lobbying and political activities that might endanger the SDGs. Offi cial development assistance will have a continuing role for low-income countries during 2015-30, but the role of aid will decline as today's low-income countries reach middle-income status as the result of economic growth. Private philanthropy and volun teering will be encouraged. All but the poorest countries will share in the fi nancing of global public goods, in relation to their respective economic capacities and according to the principle of common but diff erentiated responsibilities. Offi cial fi nancing for the public goods of sustainable development will be based on secure, predictable, and agreed formulas to end the non-fulfi lment of fi nancial pledges. Governments will join together to implement international strategies and institutions to ensure the eff ective and rapid diff usion of technologies that support sustainable development. Some lessons learned from the MDGs The SDGs can benefit from both the successes and the shortfalls of the MDGs. The successes are notable. Unlike many UN goals, the MDGs are still very much with us almost 12 years after their adoption. This commitment is rare. I believe that three strengths of the MDGs can explain the longevity of public support and awareness. First, the MDGs were reasonably easy to stateeight simple goals that fitted well on one poster! These eight goals were what stuck in the public's mind, not the 18 targets and 48 indicators. Simplicity has worked effectively in this case from the point of view of public awareness, mobilisation, advocacy, and continuity. Second, the MDGs were not a legally binding set of commitments, but rather a set of moral and practical commitments. Little time was lost negotiating the exact words of the MDGs. Legally binding commitments are almost universally regarded as the gold standard of international diplomacy, but the number of years that are often invested in reaching legally binding treaties on sustainable development are unlikely to counterbalance the heavy transaction costs and delays. Even when legally binding agreements are reached (as in the case of the Kyoto Protocol), they are often ignored in practice because of the absence of eff ective enforcement mechanisms. Third, the MDGs could be pursued through practical and specifi c measures adopted by governments, business, and civil societies worldwide. I do not want to overstate the casemany of the MDGs will not be met in many countriesyet much progress has been achieved, and the practical nature of the MDGs has played a powerful part in that success. As Special Advisor for the MDGs, I have always emphasised very specifi c and actionable measures as the keys to success. The UN Millennium Project, which I was honoured to lead, subtitled its report A practical plan to achieve the MDGs. 1 The studies in that project described many practical technologiesfrom antimalaria bednets to high-yield seedsthat taken together could provide the basis for achievement of the MDGs. The MDGs have also had their share of weaknesses, and these should be recognised to improve the performance of the SDGs that will follow. I will mention four domains in which the SDGs should improve upon the organisation of the MDG eff ort. First, the 15-year MDG period had no intermediate milestones. The 15 years of the SDGs should include intermediate objectives and milestones with clear dates. 15 years is a good stretch for serious policy making, but intermediate stages along the way would ensure closer feedback between policies and outcomes. Second, the lifeblood of the MDGs and the SDGs should be data that are accurate, timely, and available to managers, policy makers, and the public. One of the biggest drawbacks of the MDGs is that the data are often years out of date. Accurate published information from the past 12 months is still not available for most low-income countries. This timelag was inevitable when data were obtained by hand in household surveys, but in the age of the mobile phone, wireless broadband, and remote sensing, data collection should be vastly quicker. Governments should consciously invest in a real-time reporting system for the SDGs to produce reliable data with no more than a yearly, if not quarterly, timelag. This investment would vastly strengthen programmes in several ways: advocacy, feedback, and real-time management. Third, the private sector should be crucially engaged from the very start. Neither the MDGs nor the SDGs will be achieved without the leadership of private companies, large and small. Multinational companies bring unique strengths: a worldwide reach, cutting-edge technologies, and massive capacity to reach large-scale solutions, which are all essential to success. Yes, many large companies are also lobbyists for policies antagonistic to sustainable development, so engagement with business has to be done cautiously, but it should also be active, forward-looking, and intensive. Fourth, and fi nally, the success of the SDGs will need societies worldwide to invest adequately in their success. Sustainable development is the only viable path for humanity, but it will not be achieved unless a small part of consumption spending is turned into investments for long-term survival. The investments for sustainable development (eg, transition to low-carbon energy systems) will not be heavy, certainly not compared with the massive costs if no investment is made. I have previously estimated that meeting the major goals of poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and primary health for all would need perhaps 2-3% of global income.2 That small amount, if properly invested, would be transformative. The MDGs relied on voluntary fi nancing mechanisms, notably the foreign aid outlays voted by each parliament. Experience has shown that free riding on fi nancial assistance is the norm, not the exception. Only a handful of countries have abided by their promises to give 07% of their gross domestic product as offi cial development assistance. Even specifi c, timebound pledges (such as the pledge at the G8 Gleneagles summit in 2005 to double offi cial development assistance to Africa) were not met. The SDGs should be more focused and realistic with regard to fi nancing than were the MDGs. Rather than relying on so-called aid voluntarism, in which countries announce their individual aid promises (and then fail to honour them in most cases), countries should agree to transparent and specifi c standards of fi nancing, such as quotas and assessments (eg, International Monetary Fund quotas and UN dues) related to national incomes, and levies on national greenhouse gas emissions (eg, a few dollars per ton of carbon dioxide emitted per year). The sums are small, manageable, and essential for success. Technology, the private sector, and critical pathways to sustainable development When it comes to elimination of extreme poverty, the main strategy is to expand the reach of crucial technologies (including medicines, diagnostics, electrifi cation, high-yield seeds, and internet) from high-income and middle-income economies to low-income economies. Meeting the SDGs will be diff erent. The world will need new technologies and new ways to organise human activity to combine improving living standards and ecological imperatives. Technological and social change will be paramount, in both rich and poor countries alike. For this reason, the SDGs need the identifi cation of new critical pathways to sustainability. Moving to a low-carbon energy system, for example, will need an intricate global interplay of research and development, public investments in infrastructure (such as high-voltage direct current transmission grids for long-distance power transmission), private investments in renewable power generation, and new strategies for regulation and urban design. The task is phenomenally complex. Market-based strategies (such as carbon taxation) can help to simplify the policy challenge by steering private decisions in the right direction, but politics, planning, and complex decision making by many stakeholders will be unavoidable. The SDGs will therefore need the unprecedented mobilisation of global knowledge operating across many sectors and regions. Governments, international institutions, private business, academia, and civil society will need to work together to identify the critical pathways to success, in ways that combine technical expertise and democratic representation. Global problem-solving networks for sustainable develop ment in energy, food, urbanisation, climate resilience, and other sectors will therefore become crucial new institutions in the years ahead. New social media and information technology have given the world an unprecedented opportunity for inclusive, global-scale problem solving around the main sustainable development challenges. Scientists, technologists, civil society activists and others are increasingly turning to online networks for collaboration, crowdsourcing, group problem solving, and open-source solutions such as for software and applications. The pathways to sustainable development will not be identifi ed through a top-down approach, but through a highly energised era of networked problem solving that engages the world's universities, businesses, nongovernmental organisations, governments, and especially young people, who should become the experts and leaders of a new and profoundly challenging era.

Article 2 

Sustainable development goals for people and planet Planetary stability must be integrated with United Nations targets to fight poverty and secure human well-being, argue David Griggs and colleagues.

The United Nations Rio+20 summit in Brazil in 2012 committed governments to create set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) that would be integrated into the follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after their 2015 deadline. Discussions on how to formulate these continue this week at UN headquarters in New York. We argue that the protection of Earth's life-support system and poverty reduction must be the twin priorities for SDGs. It is not enough simply to extend MDGs, as some are suggesting, because humans are transforming the planet in ways that could undermine development gains. As mounting research shows, the stable functioning of Earth systems including the atmosphere, oceans, forests, waterways, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles is a prerequisite for a thriving global society. With the human population set to rise to 9billion by 2050, definitions of sustainable development must be revised to include the security of people and the planet. Defining a unified set of SDGs is challenging, especially when there can be conflict between individual goals, such as energy provision and climate-change prevention. But we show here that it is possible. ENTER THE ANTHROPOCENE Since 2000, the MDGs have focused on reducing extreme poverty in developing countries. But pursuing a post-2015 agenda focused only on poverty alleviation could undermine the agenda's purpose. Growing evidence and real-world changes convincingly show that humanity is driving global environmental change and has pushed us into a new geological epoch the Anthropocene1 . Further human pressure risks causing widespread, abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to basic Earth-system processes. Water shortages, extreme weather, deteriorating conditions for food production, ecosystem loss, ocean acidification and sea-level rise are real dangers that could threaten development and trigger humanitarian crises across the globe. Growing affluence and the right to development among the world's poor demand thatpeople of all nations make the transition to sustainable lifestyles. By coordinating actions internationally, SDGs can address these risks. The MDGs have shown that a goal-setting approach raises both public and policy support and channels funds effectively towards urgent global problems2 . However, the political reluctance to go beyond merely extending the MDGs is a concern. The targets for the SDGs must be measurable, based on the latest research and should apply to developed and developing countries. First, however, we need to reframe the UN paradigm of three pillars of sustainable development economic, social and environmental and instead view it as a nested concept. The global economy services society, which lies within Earth's life-support system. The definition of sustainable development, as laid out in the 1987 report from the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), should therefore be redefined to "development that meets the needs of the present while safeguarding Earth's life-support system, on which the welfareof current and future generations depends". To set appropriate goals and targets, environmental conditions have to be identified that enable prosperous human development and set tolerable ranges for the biosphere to remain in that state. The extraordinarily stable Holocene epoch that allowed our ancestors to develop agriculture and modern societies during the past 10,000 years provides a scientific reference point. Indeed, these are the only conditions we know that can support modern life. Building on decades of research, a 2009 analysis defined planetary boundaries which would be unsafe to transgress for nine Earth-system processes3 : climate change; rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine); interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global freshwater use; change in land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading. Adapting this planetary boundaries work, and using recent credible scientific studies and existing international processes such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change we extracted a list of sustainability 'must-haves' for human prosperity (see 'A unified framework'). We combined these with the MDG targets, updated and extended for 2030, to produce six SDGs: thriving lives and livelihoods, sustainable food security, sustainable water security, universal clean energy, healthy and productive ecosystems, and governance for sustainable societies (see 'Some provisional targets for 2030'). The driving principles remain: reducing poverty and hunger, improving health and well-being and creating sustainable production and consumption patterns. A goal of improving lives and livelihoods, for example, would promote sustainable access to food, water and energy while protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services. None of this is possible without changes to the economic playing field4 . National policies should, like carbon pricing, place a value on natural capital and a cost on unsustainable actions. International governance of the global commons should be strengthened, for example through binding agreements on climate change, by halting the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services and by addressing other sustainability concerns. The SDG framework manages trade-offs and maximizes synergies between targets, and can be implemented from international to city scales. It integrates social, economic and environmental dimensions and provides guidance for humanity to prosper in the long term. A small number of goals is essential for focus; others could be added but should build on the core six. There are many gaps and uncertainties in our knowledge of global environmental risks and how to enable societies to become resource-efficient, sustainable and wealthy. Research initiatives such as Future Earth, a ten-year programme coordinated by the International Council for Science5 , are needed to refine targets and provide sustainable solutions for human well-being. But the first step is for policy-makers to embrace a unified environmental and social framework for the SDGs, so that today's advances in development are not lost as our planet ceases to function for the benefit of a global population.

article 3 

Reinvigorating the sustainable development research agenda: the role of the sustainable development goals (SDG)

ABSTRACT The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) contain a set of 17 measures to foster sustainable development across many areas. It offers a good opportunity to reinvigorate sustainable development research for two main reasons. First, it comprises many areas of SD research, which have become mainstream thanks to the UN SDGs. Second, the fact that the UN and its member countries have committed to attaining SDGs by 2030 has added a sense of urgency to the need to perform quality research on SD on the one hand, and reiterates the need to use the results of this research on the other. Even though the basic concept of sustainability goes back many centuries, it has only recently appeared on the international political agenda. This is partly due to an awakening of the fact that the human ecological pressure on the planet is still much larger than what nature can renew or compensate for. Based on this state of affairs, this paper presents an outline of the process leading to the agreement on the UN SDGs, and looks at some of the ecological aspects as a result of continued pressure of human activities on natural resources. Furthermore, a set of research needs is proposed - also based holistically on updated research trends - discussing the degree of urgency of some measures and explaining why the UN SDGs need to be accorded greater priority in international sustainable development research efforts.

1. Introduction Built around the concept of sustainable development, sustainability research, linked to sustainability science, continues to be a field of research that has developed in the last decades and gained importance in international literature and politics (Kates 2011). With the aim of tackling the global challenges of dealing with the complex societal problems at the interaction between nature and society (Schfer et al. 2010), sustainability research involves inter-, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to jointly find solutions and design strategies that can contribute to creating good lives for the community today and in the future, too. Considering the complex problems that sustainability science and sustainability-related research tackle and strive to offer solutions, this type of research has as its main challenge to integrate knowledge and methods from different disciplines, which require a stakeholder-oriented approach and methodological innovation (Schoolman et al. 2011). It is acknowledged that the most urgent problems that sustainability science need to solve should be defined by society, not by scientists; thus, engagement of the stakeholders in such process is a condition for success, but also a major challenge (Jger 2009). In this context, there is clearly a need for new knowledge to find novel ways to secure the future (Mooney et al. 2009) and to better understand coupled human-natural systems; thus, sustainability research should have a transformational and solution-oriented research agenda (Miller et al. 2014). As a matter of global concern, sustainable development needs to be addressed to international and transnational cooperation and research. In this respect, several new global and regional initiatives have emerged over the past years (e.g. Future Earth, Initiative for Science and Technology for Sustainability ISTS, SDG Academy, International Council for Science ICSU, National Research Council - Board on Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development Solutions Network SDS), gathering professionals from different disciplines. Some works have focused on implementing sustainability at the country level (e.g. Sardain et al. 2016).

The new United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) that aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all, require transformative and solution-oriented research to offer the knowledge needed to support transformations towards sustainable development (ICSU 2015). In this respect, Future Earth has been designed as a global research platform, aiming to provide the knowledge needed to support transformation geared towards sustainability and to contribute to achieve goals on global sustainable development. The Future Earth Strategic Research Agenda for the forthcoming years proposes three major research themes - Dynamic Planet, Global Sustainable Development and Transformations towards Sustainability - and proposes a key approach for achieving them, in order to co-design and co-produce solutions-oriented science, knowledge and innovation (Future Earth 2014). Suni et al. (2016) ague that Future Earth has potential to develop long-term relationships between academia and society, bring attention to capacitybuilding needs and break old disciplinary research structures by promoting a new research culture where stakeholders and scientists find each other based on relevant research questions. Due to increasing efforts to achieve evidence-based policymaking, the role of science and research has become crucial for decisions at all political levels. Sustainability is of increasing importance for policies, communities, business and countries around the globe, being an important concept and a cross-cutting issue for many disciplines, namely for the economy (Kordestani et al. 2015), education (Lozano et al. 2011, 2013; Leal Filho et al. 2015) or governance (Husted and Sousa-Filho 2016; Patterson et al. 2016). The UN report on sustainability for all not only reiterates the need to mainstream sustainability across goals in areas such as economic growth, energy production, agriculture and urban environment, but also to enhance scientific research and encourage innovation, particular in developing countries (UN 2015). Europe has made significant progress in mainstreaming sustainable development issues through its strategies and operational programmes, research geared towards sustainable development being recognised as important in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.1 The sustainable development concept has been introduced into scientific fields such as innovation science, economics, environmental science, assessment science, governance and emerging fields like transition science (Hametner et al. 2010). Although sustainability research has made significant progress in many areas and strives to integrate knowledge from the environmental, social and economic sciences, it still needs to make further steps towards interdisciplinarity (Elling and Jelse 2010), as well as addressing the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development in an equitable manner (UNSG SAB 2014). It appears that environmental sciences are significantly less interdisciplinary with respect to knowledge integration across pillars as compared to the economic and social sciences (Schoolman et al. 2011). Also, sustainability research in the developing world lags behind the research performed in developed countries, creating knowledge gaps that require attention (Mukhopadhyay et al. 2014). Progress on policy research has not always translated into substantial concrete actions; the investment in research and development (R&D) has increased only slightly.2 Despite the increasing number of professionals involved in sustainability, there is still a lack of trained specialists in higher education institutions to properly develop this research field. In addition, a further issue is the existence of improper collaboration, networking and coordination among different educational institutions (Jger 2009). In summary, considering the complex development problems the world is currently facing, many studies perceive that it is vital to pursue 'sustainability research'. The latest 'Living Planet Report 2014' shows that mankind's demand on the planet is more than 50% greater than what nature can renew, jeopardising the well-being of humans as well other animals, and it would take 1.5 Earths to produce the resources necessary to support humanity's current Ecological Footprint (WWF 2014). Consequently, the socioecological dimension of the sustainable development research agenda should be a priority, although always seen in a holistic and integrated way. More recently, the document 'The Future We Want' - one of the main outputs from the World Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012 (Leal Filho et al. 2015) - outlines some of the actions needed, whereas the UN Sustainable Development Goals move a step further and outline concrete targets for the next 14 years, in order to make life on Earth more sustainable. This paper aims to outline the process leading to the agreement on the UN SDGs, whose complexity entails action on many dimensions. An understanding of such connections is seen to be crucial, as the SDGs point to the interconnectedness between humanity and nature (Cutter et al. 2015). Following the concept of 'planetary boundaries' (Rockstrm et al. 2009), societies depend on ecosystems for their survival. Within this line of thought, a set of research needs is proposed, discussing the degree of urgency of some measures and explaining why the UN SDGs need to be accorded greater priority in international research about an integrated approach to socioecological systems and sustainability.

2. Methods In a first step, a content analysis (Bryman, 2012) was conducted on the UN SDGs and corresponding targets, in order to analyse the connections between the SDGs and to identify the key areas for the research needed. In a second stage, and based on the first step, an online focus group was set up with eight experts coming from different countries (Europe and South America) and expertise spanning social science to ecology (the authors of this paper), all with in-depth experience in working in and conducting sustainable science research. The aim of the focus group was to reinvigorate the research agenda, highlighting the role of socioecological dimensions connected holistically with the SDG. Proposals of main areas, methods, models or criteria were debated, in order to then triangulate a set of research needs that were consolidated and discussed based upon up-to-date literature.

3. The dimensions of the UN SDGs The 17 goals are intended to provide a framework for policymaking in member states over a period of 15 years. The SDGs were officially adopted at the UN summit in New York in September and become applicable as from January 2016. The deadline for the SDGS is 2030. There are 17 SDGs which can be grouped into six thematic areas: Dignity, People, Planet, Partnership, Justice and Prosperity (Figure 1). What are the connections between ecology and SDGs, and where and how are links made between ecology and society? How are the various (e.g. social, economic, ecological) dimensions covered in UN 2030 Agenda SDGs, and what are the research needs? Looking initially at targets that foster, in particular, the ecological dimension, SDG14 (Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development) and SDG15 (Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss) can be highlighted. They clearly address healthy oceans and sustainable fisheries and conservation and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services. These SDGs are in line with international directives for OSPAR - Marine Policy - Environment - European Commission, FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture, UN-OCEANS, UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, UNDP Water and Ocean governance and the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity, among others. As identified in previous works (e.g. Creighton et al. 2016; Bennett 2017; sterblom et al. 2017), a legal framework is needed in order to progress further in these areas further, combined with the required financial resources in addition to research capacities and science expertise. Food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG2), availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all (SDG6), energy (SDG7), environmentally sound technologies (SDG9), cities (SDG11), sustainable consumption and production (SDG12) and climate change (SDG 13) also explicitly address ecological dimensions geared towards sustainable development. Here, there are several needs for research, ranging sustainable agriculture, water and sanitation, sustainable energy, resilient infrastructure, cleaner technologies/cleaner production to sustainable consumption and production. The academic community, R&D institutions, non-academic (in an inter-sectoral synergy with SMEs) and stakeholders have priority areas to invest (e.g. research on resource efficiency and investing in energy and resource efficiency), conceptualise and structure better governance models for implementation. Climate change is addressed explicitly in SDG13 (Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts) and is transversal to other SDGs (e.g. SDGs 1, 2, 11). Climate change is a global change and also a global priority, and has been recognised as both one of the biggest threats and the biggest opportunities for global health in the twenty-first century (Verner et al. 2016). Here, the research needs are multiple and multidimensional (e.g. climate variability and uncertainties, agriculture in a changing climate, effects of climate change on marine ecosystems, impact of climate change on the coastal zone, vulnerability and adaptation of ecosystems to global climate change and cryosphere climate research, among others). Research is needed in all climate change dimensions (e.g. energy and climate change, cities and climate change, climate change impacts for food security, assessing the resilient provision of ecosystem services by socioecological systems and climate services for sustainable development). Intersectoral, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are crucial in addressing this thematic, and we must be able to collaborate (international collaboration) and use available funding for research, action and implementing solutions (novel innovation leading to effectiveness). In addition to the ones described earlier and from the 17 SDGs list and targets, an exercise was conducted to highlight the socioecological dimension of the SDGs. Excerpts were taken from the targets proving the socioecological dimension (the third column contains excerpts taken from the targets - UN 2016), as depicted in Appendix 1. Some observations can be drawn from Appendix 1 as follows: While nine SDGs focus explicitly on the ecological dimensions, SDGs 1-5 and 11 and their targets (poverty eradication, hunger and sustainable food production, health, education, gender, equality, cities and peace) focus on social objectives, and SDGs 8-9 and their targets (sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, environmentally sound technologies) focus on economics. However, these goals impact the ecological dimensions by preventing environmental degradation, pollution and promoting recovery, as research across various disciplines has shown the relationship between environmental quality and social inequality (Adger 2000; Cushing et al. 2015). It can therefore be said that SDGs make strong connections between ecology and society in practically all goals: equality, justice and peace are the pillars for a harmonious existence of all species on this planet. Wars, injustice and inequality not only violate mankind's and nature's rights, but also have an adverse impact on the ecological dimension as natural resources and land are destroyed. Furthermore, and possibly of greater concern, they destroy the necessary structures needed to tackle a prosperous future with joint forces. The multifaceted problems included in the SDGs and the individual targets necessitate interdisciplinary research and intersectoral collaboration, in order to be achieved.

4. Reinvigorating the sustainable development research agenda Based on a holistic perception, and the SDG's mains areas and links with the ecological dimension and limits of the Earth, a set of research needs was drawn up to reinvigorate the research agenda (see Figure 2), grouped under the six thematic areas of the SDGs. It should be reiterated that the decision by the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2015 to approve and pursue the SDGs is a rather recent development. This state of affairs attests the need for more research into them. At the same time, it reiterates the unique window of opportunity to use this new momentum, in order to intensify a more general debate on sustainable development research around the world. One of the needs is to reinvigorate and develop more research in the field of values, ethics, peace and happiness and its contribution and link with sustainable practices and policies (see Figure 2 - Dignity and People). Ramos (2009) emphasised that sustainable development should be built upon non-traditional aspects of sustainability such as goal and target/limit uncertainties, ethics, cultural dimensions, aesthetics and general non-material values (e.g. solidarity, compassion, mutual help). Recent research also shows that human progress, welfare and well-being are closely related to sustainable development, in particular environmental capital (renewable and non-renewable resources) (Frugoli et al. 2015; Giannetti et al. 2015). The use of biophysical indicators (like Human Wellbeing Index and Ecosystem Wellbeing Index) can more effectively estimate the availability of environmental resources and be used to help societies to live within planetary boundaries in the short and long term (Frugoli et al. 2015). The measurement of natural capital usage and depreciation is a major problem, and biophysical indicators are the only ones that can be associated to a strong sustainability model, and must be included/confronted to any progress evaluation (Giannetti et al. 2015). Values-based achievements can be made tangible, but the link between values, success and more sustainable practices is not clearly shown yet, what should be investigated in the future as defended by Podger et al. (2016). As seen in Figure 2, the commonly held people- planet debate has been widened to encompass a set of key social aspects such as dignity, prosperity and justice. Surrounding these is the issue of partnerships - not in a master-servant format where industrialised nations tell developing countries what to do, but in a true spirit of collaboration. More research on new economic models that can operate within the planetary boundaries is also still needed (see Figure 2 - Prosperity). Indeed, it is already well established that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress is possible without economic growth (Jackson 2009; Schneider et al. 2010). Besides Schumacher's 1973 book 'Small is Beautiful - A Study of Economics as if People mattered' which already predates a unified degrowth movement, there is still a large amount of research needed to put this concept into practice. Sustainable degrowth, meaning monetary growth 'decoupled' from growth, can be seen as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long term (Jackson 2009; Latouche 2009 [2007]; Schneider et al. 2010). The sustainable degrowth transformation should be distinguished from unsustainable degrowth (economic recession) and it is not a goal in itself (Schneider et al. 2010). Whether it should be trying to degrow or to grow more slowly remains a very open question in the field. Nevertheless, within the need of undoubtedly decreasing the economic growth, this new economics model introduces alternatives to individual purchasing actions, where innovation is driven by collective action far beyond the action of price signals. Progress is to be measured by new criteria, such as community building, collective action and construction of new infrastructures of provision, in which well-being is not wholly tied to consumption (Cohen et al. 2010; Ehrenfeld 2010). Degrowth may be simply understood as a process where material and energy consumption are reduced, and where incentives are created to encourage more local production, leading to more frugal lifestyles (Cosme et al. 2017). In addition, better strategies are needed to decrease current economic growth patterns and to reframe the alternative to economic growth, but in a more positive way related with alternatives such as 'good life' or 'stable prosperity' that can be more useful to trigger deliberation about a different future involving people from all walks of life as defended by Drews and Antal (2016). Also, according to those authors, degrowth sounds like going down (hence bad), so negative snap judgements of degrowth can unconsciously lead to unfavourable and subsequent information processing and evaluation, congruent with the initial negative feeling. According to proponents of degrowth, and the need for actions geared towards sustainability, the problematic aspects of the growth economy do not only stem from the adverse impacts on the environment, but also the need to redistribute income and wealth both within and between countries and to promote the transition from a materialistic to a convivial and participatory society (Cosme et al. 2017).Therefore, indepth analysis must consider the full range of ecological and social aspects of well-being and quality of life. For example, ecofeminist economics are perceived as a contribution towards a more comprehensive understanding of the growth economy. They are seen as an encouragement of developing fresh perspectives on alternatives to capitalist growth and integrate ecology and, in a broader sense, the human- nature relationship, as crucial for new approaches (Bauhardt 2014). Another debate and challenge needed is how to put into practice the reduction of economic growth in a developing countries context, like China for example (Xue et al. 2012). Participatory systems' thinking tools have much to offer in envisioning contractional, macro-pathways towards the implementation of post-growth policies, with a systemic identification of risks, uncertainties and leverage points of intervention (Videira et al. 2014). Consequently, new forms of collaboration (see Figure 2 - Partnership) are also a necessary research line for in-depth exploration, in order to achieve the SDGs and reduce the ecological pressure on nature's limits. Sustainability issues should be addressed upon possible synergies within, between and among inter-linked issues and dimensions and not compartimentalisation, thereby reducing or even avoiding conflicts between/among issues, so practical research applied to organisations is still needed on this (see Figure 2 - Planet). Longterm changes towards sustainability should be taken into account, where the time dimension plays a key role in human survival on Planet Earth (Lozano and Huising 2011). The intertwined causalities, e.g. between malnutrition, disease and the current industrial food production system, require a major food system reform (Hawkes and Popkin 2015) and demonstrate the need for systems' approaches supported by interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary sustainability research. Justice and peace are closely interrelated, as stated in SDG 16. Research in this field therefore tackles questions related to inclusive societies and needs to be strengthened by effective governance intervention (see Figure 2 - Justice) (Joshi et al. 2015). Possibly one of the biggest challenges of the current times is to address the refugees' crises from a sustainability perspective (Al-Husban and Adams 2016) with further need to investigate solutions beyond national and international barriers - also taking into account environmental crises and anthropogenic pressures that are exacerbating the scenarios. Focussing on overcoming the reasons to flee (sociopolitical, economical and environmental), research should strengthen human rights and SDGs. El-Zein et al. (Forthcoming) ask for example about citizenship and whether a national state should also assure SDGs to non-citizens, and what if this state is dealing with a war-torn society itself? More research is needed to address such wicked problems. Several scholars also call for an Earth jurisprudence, understanding crimes against nature as 'ecocide' (similar to genocide) and as a crime against peace (Gauger et al. 2013; Higgins et al. 2013). Ensuring justice and dignity to all requires establishing the necessary legal structures that should include nature as a legal person and as a stakeholder. Overall, this research agenda also calls for rethinking methodic research approaches and adapting current models in use. The research itself can go beyond descriptive-analytical and become transformative (Wiek and Lang 2016), when academia as well as governmental, private and non-profit organisations are willing to embrace new frameworks that offer solution-oriented sustainability research, thereby helping to achieve the implementation of the SDGs. 5. Conclusions This paper has attempted to demonstrate SDGs offer a unique opportunity to reinvigorate the international sustainability research agenda. This is greatly needed, since the principles and practices of sustainable development are important not only from a policy perspective, but they are essential to the well-being of communities, cities and region, as well as to business around the globe. Even though research has advanced and more knowledge is available, it has not stopped humanity from exceeding natural resources and limits. This paper aimed to look at the implementation of the SDGs and to delineate a set of research needs, discussing the degree of urgency of some measures and paths to explore and explain why the UN SDGs need to be accorded greater priority in international sustainable development research efforts. In this context, an emphasis to the following essential aspects is needed: - to increase the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary character of sustainability research for being more solution-oriented to society's needs. - to further develop local-level research on sustainabili