Question

Development Goals & Environmental Health

In your opinion, what are the top three Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) to be addressed in the next 15 years?

• Explain your rationale for your selections.

Answer 1

Sustainable development practices strive to decrease environmental impacts and should, in theory, limit unfavorable environmental fitness penalties compared to standard development. Yet these efforts may want to also result in unintended harm and impaired economic improvement if the new "Green Economy" is now not carefully assessed for damaging environmental and occupational fitness impacts. The environmental fitness neighborhood has an necessary function to play in underscoring these relationships as worldwide leaders acquire to craft sustainable development policies.

The environmental fitness neighborhood can make three key contributions to achieving sustainable development objectives:
1) helping efforts to limit modifiable environmental exposures that continue to perpetuate poverty in low- and middle-income international locations.
2) characterizing the environmental affects of present industries, technologies, and land-use patterns that are detrimental to human health.
3) foreseeing achievable unintended fitness consequences of "green" technologies, industries, and occupations that will evolve out of efforts to promote sustainability.

1) Zero Hunger

After many years of consistent decline, the number of people who go through from starvation – as measured through the incidence of undernourishment – began to slowly enlarge once more in 2015. Current estimates exhibit that nearly 690 million people are hungry, or 8.9 percent of the world population – up by using 10 million human beings in one 12 months and with the aid of nearly 60 million in five years.

The world is now not on tune to reap Zero Hunger by 2030. If recent traits continue, the number of people affected by way of hunger would surpass 840 million by way of 2030.

According to the World Food Programme, 135 million suffer from acute hunger largely due to man-made conflicts, local weather trade and economic downturns. The COVID-19 pandemic should now double that number, inserting an extra one hundred thirty million humans at danger of struggling acute starvation via the give up of 2020.

With greater than a quarter of a billion human beings probably at the brink of starvation, swift motion needs to be taken to grant meals and humanitarian comfort to the most at-risk regions.

At the identical time, a profound change of the international meals and agriculture gadget is wanted if we are to nourish the extra than 690 million humans who are hungry nowadays – and the additional 2 billion people the world will have by 2050. Increasing agricultural productiveness and sustainable food manufacturing are integral to assist alleviate the perils of hunger.

2) Ensure wholesome lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being at all a long time is vital to sustainable development. Currently, the world is dealing with a global fitness crisis unlike any different — COVID-19 is spreading human suffering, destabilizing the global financial system and upending the lives of billions of humans round the globe.

Before the pandemic, major development was made in improving the health of millions of people. Significant strides had been made in increasing life expectancy and decreasing some of the frequent killers associated with toddler and maternal mortality. But extra efforts are wished to entirely eradicate a large range of illnesses and address many exclusive persistent and rising health issues. By focusing on presenting greater efficient funding of health systems, expanded sanitation and hygiene, and expanded access to physicians, giant progress can be made in assisting to store the lives of millions.

Health emergencies such as COVID-19 pose a world chance and have shown the vital want for preparedness. The United Nations Development Programme highlighted big disparities in countries’ skills to cope with and get better from the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic provides a watershed moment for health emergency preparedness and for investment in quintessential 21st century public services.

3) Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources

The ocean drives global structures that make the Earth habitable for humankind. Our rainwater, consuming water, weather, climate, coastlines, lots of our food, and even the oxygen in the air we breathe, are all sooner or later provided and regulated via the sea.

Careful administration of this essential worldwide resource is a key attribute of a sustainable future. However, at the current time, there is a non-stop deterioration of coastal waters owing to pollution, and ocean acidification is having an adversarial impact on the functioning of ecosystems and biodiversity. This is additionally negatively impacting small scale fisheries.

Saving our ocean ought to proceed to be a priority. Marine biodiversity is essential to the fitness of humans and our planet. Marine protected areas desire to be successfully managed and well-resourced and rules desire to be put in region to restriction overfishing, marine air pollution and ocean acidification.

4) Ensure get admission to to water and sanitation for all (this one is extra one but important)

While great growth has been made in increasing get right of entry to to clean drinking water and sanitation, billions of people—mostly in rural areas—still lack these fundamental services. Worldwide, one in three people do now not have get right of entry to to secure consuming water, two out of five people do now not have a primary hand-washing facility with soap and water, and extra than 673 million humans nevertheless exercise open defecation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has established the critical significance of sanitation, hygiene and enough access to clean water for stopping and containing diseases. Hand hygiene saves lives. According to the World Health Organization, handwashing is one of the most superb actions you can take to minimize the spread of pathogens and forestall infections, which includes the COVID-19 virus. Yet billions of people still lack protected water sanitation, and funding is inadequate.