YSW and 17 UN Development Goals – Part ONE

The United Nations Development Goals (UNDG) is a set of 17 goals that all UN member states are expected to meet by the year 2030.

We have adopted the UN Development Goals as our own for Yorkshire Sustainability Week. Here’s how we expect our carbon-neutral week-long series of events addresses each goal.

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere. 

The first goal of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. This means that no one should live in extreme poverty or die from preventable diseases caused by poverty.

People living in poverty often have poor nutrition and health care access, which leads to higher rates of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), malaria and HIV/AIDS; poorer housing conditions; lower educational attainment levels; limited employment opportunities due to lack of education or skills training opportunities; high maternal mortality rates due to lack of access to antenatal care services etc..

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

Food security is about access to food. It’s about ensuring that everyone has enough to eat, and it’s not just a matter of having enough calories. Hunger is not just an issue of quantity but also quality: if your diet lacks certain nutrients or vitamins, you can still be malnourished even if you’re eating enough calories overall.

Sustainable agriculture refers to farming practices that protect the environment while producing enough food for people around the world today without compromising future generations’ ability to produce their own food in turn–it’s a delicate balance between environmental protection and economic growth (and one we’ve been struggling with since long before anyone ever dreamed of sustainable development).

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

Healthcare is essential to a good quality of life. It is important that everyone has access to healthcare, regardless of where they live or what their income level is. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “not just the absence of disease and infirmity but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being.” It includes an individual’s ability to perform daily activities without being limited by pain or disability; having enough energy to get through each day; sleeping well at night; enjoying good food; taking part in family life or community activities without feeling isolated from others because of ill health or disability; having the confidence that comes from feeling well enough physically so that you don’t worry about getting sick again soon after recovering from an illness such as flu or chickenpox

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Education is a human right, and it’s also essential for economic growth. Education can help reduce poverty and inequality by equipping people with skills that make them more employable, allowing them to earn higher wages and improve their quality of life.

Education also promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all and has no age barrier. We want to use YSW as a vehicle to drive change and to do that we must unleash the ability to educate ourselves on the changes and innovation taking place. Furthermore, we need to be inclusive – that’s why we offer pay it forward tickets, for those to attend whom may not be able to afford to otherwise.

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Gender equality is a human right. It’s also a UN development goal, and one that has been adopted by many countries around the world. In fact, all these UN goals are interconnected–when you improve the lives of women and girls, you can help achieve many other things at once:

Goal 1: No poverty
Goal 2: Zero hunger
Goal 3: Good health and well-being for all people

As a female led and majority organisation, at YSW we take this goal super serious. Embrace Equity in Sustainability is a core event taking place on Monday 3 July. Here we will tackle the above and provide a brilliant space for females in sustainability to network, socialise and collaborate to achieve something brilliant.

Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Water is a basic human right, but it’s not something that everyone has access to. In fact, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 748 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water and 2 billion do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

This goal aims at ensuring that everyone has access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation by 2030–and yet there are still millions who don’t have this basic necessity. What can be done? During the second day of our Conference, we will be joined by leading water experts that will address this UN Goal and discuss the innovation occurring across the UK to protect our water.

Goal 7; Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

Energy is an integral part of our lives and the global economy. It’s also a key factor in achieving the UN Development Goals (SDGs). Seven of these goals–including ending poverty, promoting sustainable agriculture and ending hunger–depend on access to affordable energy sources like solar power.

Energy access can be achieved by providing access to mini grids or rooftop solar panels; establishing microgrids that combine wind farms with batteries that store excess power from peak production periods during daylight hours so it can be used at night when demand rises; building larger-scale hydropower dams like those found in Brazil or China; setting up national grids for transporting electricity over long distances so remote areas aren’t cut off from power sources nearby. We will investigate our energy market in detail during Day 2 of our conference and be joined by trailblazers paving the way forward for heating and electricity in the UK.

Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, through enhanced international cooperation, including on trade policy; the facilitation of investment; financial flows; technology transfers; capacity building; product market competition policy that promotes entrepreneurship skills development productivity-enhancing investments regulatory frameworks that support new business models market rules guide corporate behaviour for the benefit of society at large.

Throughout our entire week long festival of events, we will work on this goal. We want everyone to make a pledge during our conference to make change happen.. whether that’s a small change or something revolutionary.

At YSW we want to drive change by adopting the UN Development Goals as our core goals. The goals are ambitious, but they can be achieved if we work together to make them happen.

Find out more about our events here – we hope to see you at YSW!