How SDG 15 Links With Other SDGs
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UNCCD Library
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news article
Sustainable Development means precisely the interconnection of economic, social, and environmental objectives. Therefore, it is important to try to achieve all of the Sustainable Development Goals because they are interconnected, as well as because it would be difficult to choose the importance of one over another. Professor Sachs discusses the interaction of each SDG with SDG 15.
ABOUT: The SDG Academy is the flagship education platform of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative for the United Nations. Free, open educational resources from the world’s leading experts on sustainable development. The SDG Academy creates and curates free massive open online courses and educational materials on sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals. Lectures are also available in the SDG Academy Library, a searchable catalog of educational videos.
I’m lucky and honored to serve as special advisor to the U.N. Secretary General on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The original list when the governments began to negotiate the SDGs numbered around 300 proposed goals. So they were able to get them down. But the reason that the number remains so large is that sustainable development means precisely the interconnection of economic, social and environmental objectives.
To cover that breadth of social need, the economic side, the social inclusion side, the environmental sustainability side, is a significant number of objectives. There are two problems to consider. One is that they’re all important. We can’t fight poverty and hope to win unless we’re also fighting climate change, because if climate change devastates the world not only will the poor pay, but we will all pay massively.
So it would be pretty tough to choose between SDG 1 on ending poverty and SDG 13 on making the world safe from human induced climate change. There’s a second aspect as well to this importance of these goals and that is their interconnectedness. In general, most of the goals can be achieved only when others are also achieved. And achieving any individual goal tends to help the achievement of the other goals.
SDG 1 can help to promote SDG 15 for example, fighting poverty can make households less dependent on unsustainable collection of fuel wood from the forest, for example, by giving other options for modern energy services.At the same time, SDG 15, the success in conserving biodiversity can absolutely help to achieve SDG 1, the end of poverty by making farming more productive. When the farms are more biodiverse, they’re more resilient and they’re productive. And so the causation runs from SDG 1 to SDG 15 and from SDG 15 to SDG 1.
If we’re considering biodiversity that’s so central to our wellbeing that we could draw that two-way causation with each of the other Sustainable Development Goals and indeed analysts have done so.These linkages cut across almost every binary combination of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
SDG 2 is about fighting hunger. Fighting hunger depends on agricultural productivity and, a more biodiverse environment, agro-ecological practices that grow food but maintain biodiversity are thereby a key part of achieving SDG 2 on food security.
SDG 3 on health is really a link in which more biodiverse environments tend to be protective against invasion of particular pathogens and particular pests that can disrupt not only crops but directly human health. And measures to conserve biodiversity, to keep pollution low, to fight farm pests through integrated pest management of natural approaches rather than pesticide approaches can also protect human health.What about gender equality?
SDG 5 as another example. Gender equality is tremendously promoted by the simple fact that women are the farmers, the smallholder farmers of the staple crops in so much of the world. By protecting biodiversity and thereby sustaining agricultural productivity, we’re also empowering women who depend on the productivity of their crops. Biodiversity conservation, for example, keeping wetlands intact and keeping mangrove forests intact also play a huge role in the availability and the replenishment of fresh water resources, because natural ecosystems act like filters to clean the water supply, to protect it of diseases that could afflict animals or human health.
Biodiversity, if properly managed can allow for some sustainable use of bioenergy, meaning energy received from crops, biogas, for example, often from the plant refuse from crop production is a way to have energy services not from fossil fuels that on net are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but from net zero emission sources of energy. Of course, if too much bioenergy is used that itself can be a threat to biodiversity because the incentive to grow more biofuel crops sometimes has led to deforestation or displacement of food crops.
What about what biodiversity can mean for SDG 8, decent jobs and decent livelihoods? One direct link is highly productive agriculture. But another link is ecotourism, or tourism in general. Biodiverse environments with intact and protected ecosystems are of course lures for tourists. Those tourist arrivals need to be managed in a sustainable way but they become a method of livelihoods. Regions where the community was up to a point destroying the biodiversity for instance through poaching of endangered species and then came to understand that if they turned from poachers to wardens and protected the biodiversity the economic gains would be even greater by attracting ecotourists.
What about SDG 9 on infrastructure? What does that have to do with biodiversity? By maintaining mangrove forests on the coast of a country, or the wetlands near the coastline, these kinds of ecozones often act as protection against coastal storms and coastal flooding. And when the mangrove forests are cleared, they make these low-lying areas near the coast highly vulnerable to flooding and to big losses when storms come from the ocean. And so conservation and intact biosystems, ecozones can play a very big role in protecting the infrastructure, the road networks, the power lines, the physical infrastructure of otherwise threatened regions.
What about SDG 15 and SDG 10 on inequality? That one’s easy. Who gets damaged by the loss of biodiversity? The poorest people, who are almost always the most vulnerable to the environmental shocks that hit in damaged ecosystems. And so you get a widening of inequality. You can get impoverishment. You can get farmers that lose their livelihoods. What about biodiversity in cities? Does that play a role? I have the joy to be near the remarkable Central Park, right in the middle of Manhattan. Manhattan, one of the most densely settled and built environments in the world. And not only does the park give a habitat for species, which we get to see and the wonderful diversity of birds around Manhattan for example, but it also helps to cool the heat island which is typical of large urban area like New York City and one can reduce the temperatures quite significantly as a result of maintaining the biodiversity in an urban center.
The call for green areas within cities is a call for quality of life, places to walk, places to enjoy, but also places to directly protect the biodiversity and also to fight against the warming and the heat island effect. One can go through each of the SDGs on the recycling of wastes, on fighting climate change, on preserving the marine environment, by preserving and properly managing the terrestrial ecosystems, for example, making sure that farming itself doesn’t become a massive source of nitrogen and phosphorous flux that then leads to eutrophication, hypoxia and dead zones in the nearby coastal marine environments.
All of it is to say that preserving biodiversity is itself a major input to achieving all the rest of the Sustainable Development Goals.
And let me end with SDG 16—peaceful and inclusive societies. We know it now more and more that when environments are degraded, when crop failures become the norm, when land is lost to misuse and soils are destroyed and carried by the winds and farm families are impoverished and need to move, when the soil no longer holds the water and the water tables no longer recharge, all of this becomes a kind of tinder for social conflict. Whether it’s the conflict within the impoverished communities struggling to stay alive or whether it’s the conflict when people are forced into mass migration and populations confront each other, often violently, because of the dislocations that come from environmental shocks. So biodiversity conservation protects species, protects livelihoods, makes it possible to achieve other objectives of sustainable development. But perhaps most important of all, helps to keep peace. Peace is vital as a center of our wellbeing and it’s vital because without peace, we surely cannot achieve any of the other Sustainable Development Goals.
ABOUT: The SDG Academy is the flagship education platform of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative for the United Nations. Free, open educational resources from the world’s leading experts on sustainable development. The SDG Academy creates and curates free massive open online courses and educational materials on sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals. Lectures are also available in the SDG Academy Library, a searchable catalog of educational videos.
I’m lucky and honored to serve as special advisor to the U.N. Secretary General on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The original list when the governments began to negotiate the SDGs numbered around 300 proposed goals. So they were able to get them down. But the reason that the number remains so large is that sustainable development means precisely the interconnection of economic, social and environmental objectives.
To cover that breadth of social need, the economic side, the social inclusion side, the environmental sustainability side, is a significant number of objectives. There are two problems to consider. One is that they’re all important. We can’t fight poverty and hope to win unless we’re also fighting climate change, because if climate change devastates the world not only will the poor pay, but we will all pay massively.
So it would be pretty tough to choose between SDG 1 on ending poverty and SDG 13 on making the world safe from human induced climate change. There’s a second aspect as well to this importance of these goals and that is their interconnectedness. In general, most of the goals can be achieved only when others are also achieved. And achieving any individual goal tends to help the achievement of the other goals.
SDG 1 can help to promote SDG 15 for example, fighting poverty can make households less dependent on unsustainable collection of fuel wood from the forest, for example, by giving other options for modern energy services.At the same time, SDG 15, the success in conserving biodiversity can absolutely help to achieve SDG 1, the end of poverty by making farming more productive. When the farms are more biodiverse, they’re more resilient and they’re productive. And so the causation runs from SDG 1 to SDG 15 and from SDG 15 to SDG 1.
If we’re considering biodiversity that’s so central to our wellbeing that we could draw that two-way causation with each of the other Sustainable Development Goals and indeed analysts have done so.These linkages cut across almost every binary combination of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
SDG 2 is about fighting hunger. Fighting hunger depends on agricultural productivity and, a more biodiverse environment, agro-ecological practices that grow food but maintain biodiversity are thereby a key part of achieving SDG 2 on food security.
SDG 3 on health is really a link in which more biodiverse environments tend to be protective against invasion of particular pathogens and particular pests that can disrupt not only crops but directly human health. And measures to conserve biodiversity, to keep pollution low, to fight farm pests through integrated pest management of natural approaches rather than pesticide approaches can also protect human health.What about gender equality?
SDG 5 as another example. Gender equality is tremendously promoted by the simple fact that women are the farmers, the smallholder farmers of the staple crops in so much of the world. By protecting biodiversity and thereby sustaining agricultural productivity, we’re also empowering women who depend on the productivity of their crops. Biodiversity conservation, for example, keeping wetlands intact and keeping mangrove forests intact also play a huge role in the availability and the replenishment of fresh water resources, because natural ecosystems act like filters to clean the water supply, to protect it of diseases that could afflict animals or human health.
Biodiversity, if properly managed can allow for some sustainable use of bioenergy, meaning energy received from crops, biogas, for example, often from the plant refuse from crop production is a way to have energy services not from fossil fuels that on net are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but from net zero emission sources of energy. Of course, if too much bioenergy is used that itself can be a threat to biodiversity because the incentive to grow more biofuel crops sometimes has led to deforestation or displacement of food crops.
What about what biodiversity can mean for SDG 8, decent jobs and decent livelihoods? One direct link is highly productive agriculture. But another link is ecotourism, or tourism in general. Biodiverse environments with intact and protected ecosystems are of course lures for tourists. Those tourist arrivals need to be managed in a sustainable way but they become a method of livelihoods. Regions where the community was up to a point destroying the biodiversity for instance through poaching of endangered species and then came to understand that if they turned from poachers to wardens and protected the biodiversity the economic gains would be even greater by attracting ecotourists.
What about SDG 9 on infrastructure? What does that have to do with biodiversity? By maintaining mangrove forests on the coast of a country, or the wetlands near the coastline, these kinds of ecozones often act as protection against coastal storms and coastal flooding. And when the mangrove forests are cleared, they make these low-lying areas near the coast highly vulnerable to flooding and to big losses when storms come from the ocean. And so conservation and intact biosystems, ecozones can play a very big role in protecting the infrastructure, the road networks, the power lines, the physical infrastructure of otherwise threatened regions.
What about SDG 15 and SDG 10 on inequality? That one’s easy. Who gets damaged by the loss of biodiversity? The poorest people, who are almost always the most vulnerable to the environmental shocks that hit in damaged ecosystems. And so you get a widening of inequality. You can get impoverishment. You can get farmers that lose their livelihoods. What about biodiversity in cities? Does that play a role? I have the joy to be near the remarkable Central Park, right in the middle of Manhattan. Manhattan, one of the most densely settled and built environments in the world. And not only does the park give a habitat for species, which we get to see and the wonderful diversity of birds around Manhattan for example, but it also helps to cool the heat island which is typical of large urban area like New York City and one can reduce the temperatures quite significantly as a result of maintaining the biodiversity in an urban center.
The call for green areas within cities is a call for quality of life, places to walk, places to enjoy, but also places to directly protect the biodiversity and also to fight against the warming and the heat island effect. One can go through each of the SDGs on the recycling of wastes, on fighting climate change, on preserving the marine environment, by preserving and properly managing the terrestrial ecosystems, for example, making sure that farming itself doesn’t become a massive source of nitrogen and phosphorous flux that then leads to eutrophication, hypoxia and dead zones in the nearby coastal marine environments.
All of it is to say that preserving biodiversity is itself a major input to achieving all the rest of the Sustainable Development Goals.
And let me end with SDG 16—peaceful and inclusive societies. We know it now more and more that when environments are degraded, when crop failures become the norm, when land is lost to misuse and soils are destroyed and carried by the winds and farm families are impoverished and need to move, when the soil no longer holds the water and the water tables no longer recharge, all of this becomes a kind of tinder for social conflict. Whether it’s the conflict within the impoverished communities struggling to stay alive or whether it’s the conflict when people are forced into mass migration and populations confront each other, often violently, because of the dislocations that come from environmental shocks. So biodiversity conservation protects species, protects livelihoods, makes it possible to achieve other objectives of sustainable development. But perhaps most important of all, helps to keep peace. Peace is vital as a center of our wellbeing and it’s vital because without peace, we surely cannot achieve any of the other Sustainable Development Goals.
Keywords
SDGs targets
SDG 15
nexus approach
education
knowledge exchange