All publications and documents

The Sustainable Development Report 2019 presents the SDG Index and Dashboards for all UN member states and frames the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in terms of six broad transformations. It was prepared by teams of independent experts at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Bertelsmann Stiftung. The interactive 2019 SDG Dashboards…

Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality: The world faces many great and terrifying problems at the same time. It is these large problems that our work at Our World in Data focuses on. The world has the resources to do much better. And thanks to the work of thousands of…

Coinciding with World Soil Day 2019, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Ningxia Forestry Grassland Administration, China, launched the International Knowledge Management Center on Combating Desertification. The Knowledge Management Center is part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the UNCCD and China aimed at implementing the Ordos Declaration,…

Clothing production has roughly doubled since 2000. While people bought 60% more garments in 2014 than in 2000, they only kept the clothes for half as long. In Europe, fashion companies went from an average offering of two collections per year in 2000 to five in 2011. Some brands offer even more. Zara puts out 24 collections per year, while H&M offers between 12 and 16. A lot of this…

It takes around 7,500 litres of water to make a single pair of jeans, equivalent to the amount of water the average person drinks over a period of seven years. That’s just one of the many startling facts to emerge from recent environmental research, which show that the cost of staying fashionable is a lot more than just the price tag. When we think of industries that are having a…

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC highlights the urgency and scale of action required to keep the planet safe. On the brink of dangerous climate change, immediate action is required for the fashion sector too, to be aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and move towards net-zero emissions by 2050. UN…