The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals: An opportunity for Latin America and the Caribbean

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the 193 Member States of the United Nations at the General Assembly in September 2015, outlines a transformative vision for economic, social and environmental development and will guide the work of the Organization towards this vision for the next 15 years. This new road map presents a historic opportunity for Latin America and the Caribbean, since it addresses some of the region’s most urgent priorities, such as reducing inequality in all its dimensions, promoting inclusive economic growth with decent work for all, creating sustainable cities and addressing climate change. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) associated with the Agenda help the region’s countries to gauge the starting point from which they set out towards this new, collective vision of sustainable development set forth in the 2030 Agenda and to analyse and craft the means of its implementation. The SDGs also represent a planning tool for the countries at the national and local levels. With their long-term approach, they offer support for each country on its path towards sustained, inclusive and environmentally friendly development, through the formulation of public policies and budget, monitoring and evaluation instruments. The 2030 Agenda is a civilizing agenda that places dignity and equality at the centre. At once far-sighted and ambitious, its implementation will require the engagement of all sectors of society and of the State. Accordingly, the representatives of governments, civil society, academic institutions and the private sector are invited to take ownership of this ambitious agenda, to discuss and embrace it as a tool for the creation of inclusive, fair societies that serve the citizens of today as well as future generations.

Functional and discrete digital sustainability within the sustainable development goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present the new global agenda by the United Nations for the next 15 years from 2016 to 2030. In this research paper we examine how digital resources may contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. Based on a broad literature review we argue functional digital sustainability supports the SDGs while discrete digital sustainability is required to create and progress knowledge necessary to advance the SDGs. First we explain the perspectives of functional and discrete sustainability; secondly we map the two perspectives onto the 17 SDGs with examples incorporating both perspectives of digital sustainability. We conclude that digital sustainability should encompass both perspectives in order to exploit the full potential of information systems in regard to sustainability transformations.

Sustainable development goals and Japan -- sustainability overshadows poverty reduction

The Development Cooperation Charter of Japan, which took over the ODA (Official Development Assistance) Charter in February 2015, drives Japan's cooperation towards non-poor countries and non-poverty issues. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) put Japan forward in these directions. As a result, in Japan the focus on global poverty reduction is overshadowed by its national interests and sustainability under the concept of universality, which was a core principle of the SDGs as differentiated from the Millennium Development Goals.

spotlight europe, August 2015: Sustainable Development Goals: Are the rich countries ready?

The Millennium Development Goals have led to tangible progress in many developing countries. Once adopted, the United Nations' new global Sustainable Development Goals will additionally require industrialized countries to implement such standards beginning in 2016. But the world's first comprehensive stocktaking shows that most industrialized nations are a long way from serving as role models for sustainable development.

Islamic Infrastructure Finance and Sustainable Development Goals

This was a very interesting discussion with the pioneers of Islamic finance regarding infrastructure finance and the sustainable development goals.

Generazione automatica di una knowledge base con applicazione ai Sustainable Development Goals

Questa tesi di laurea compie uno studio sull’ utilizzo di tecniche di web crawling, web scraping e Natural Language Processing per costruire automaticamente un dataset di documenti e una knowledge base di coppie verbo-oggetto utilizzabile per la classificazione di testi. Dopo una breve introduzione sulle tecniche utilizzate verrà presentato il metodo di generazione, prima in forma teorica e generalizzabile a qualunque classificazione basata su un insieme di argomenti, e poi in modo specifico attraverso un caso di studio: il software SDG Detector. In particolare quest ultimo riguarda l’applicazione pratica del metodo esposto per costruire una raccolta di informazioni utili alla classificazione di documenti in base alla presenza di uno o più Sustainable Development Goals. La parte relativa alla classificazione è curata dal co-autore di questa applicazione, la presente invece si concentra su un’analisi di correttezza e performance basata sull’espansione del dataset e della derivante base di conoscenza.

The role of transgenic crops for sustainable development

The concept of sustainable development forms the basis for a wide variety of international and national policy making. World population continues to expand at about 80 M people per year, while the demand for natural resources continues to escalate. Important policies, treaties and goals underpin the notion of sustainable development. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate a range of scientific literature pertaining to the use of transgenic crops in meeting sustainable development goals. It is concluded that a considerable body of evidence has accrued since the first commercial growing of transgenic crops, which suggests that they can contribute in all three traditional pillars of sustainability, i.e. economically, environmentally and socially. Management of herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant transgenic crops to minimize the risk of weeds and pests developing resistance is discussed, together with the associated concern about the risk of loss of biodiversity. As the world population continues to rise, the evidence reviewed here suggests it would be unwise to ignore transgenic crops as one of the tools that can help meet aspirations for increasingly sustainable global development.