Paper Example on Sustainable and Millennium Development Goals

Agreed on 25th Sep 2015, sustainable development goals (SDGs) comprise of 17 working blueprints for nations to undertake in order to make the world a better place to live in. The period for attaining these goals is 15 years and, therefore, it is expected that by 2030 every nation shall have realized them. The goals seek to end poverty, ensure prosperity for all peoples of the world, protect the planet, and guarantee equality and justice for all human beings (United Nations, 2015).

Efforts to attain sustainable goals mean that businesses are more likely to operate in environments that have reduced corruption incidents, poor governance, and also those that do not protect the environment. Such operating environments can offer opportunities for businesses to design sustainable solutions to the needs of various societies around the world. To this end, innovation would occupy a critical role as businesses to come up with goods and services in order to align their activities to intentions of sustainable development goals. The effort toward these goals, however, may be an easy task for developing nations.

Developing nations grapple with problems of widespread corruption, extreme poverty, poor governance structures, and political instability on a daily basis. For instance, problems of corruption and poor bad governance have resulted in wastage of resources that are meant to alleviate poverty and promote economic prosperity (Gupta & Vegelin, 2016; United Nations). In some countries (including developed nations), there is a lack of the trade-off between economic goals and social goals. As such, handling environmental problems has become a challenge as countries tend to favor economic goals over social inclusion and environmental protection (Gupta & Vegelin, 2016).

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at reducing wealth gap among the rich as a way of compensating the poor through provision of basic human needs such quality education, health care, and housing. Other goals included reduction of extreme poverty and hunger, fighting HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases, reduction of maternal deaths alongside enhancing gender equality, among other goals(Gupta & Vegelin, 2016; United Nations).Specific targets were set to offer all stakeholders the guidelines on what they need to have achieved by 2015. This is a contrast with SDGs which seek to eradicate poverty and hunger, reduce preventable deaths to zero, among other zero-target goals. In other words, MDGs aimed to reduce to problems a certain level whereas SDGs seek end chronic problems of the world by 2030.

Another important feature in MDGs and SDGs is that MDGs focused on the poor especially those that are found in developing nations. MDGs were pegged on rich donors aiding poor recipients (Gupta & Vegelin, 2016). However, implementation of these goals has revealed that inequalities exist even in developed nations hence the need to address them (The Hunger Project, 2014). This explains the reasons why SDGs seek to tackle social exclusion and problems related to marginalization that is common in our capitalist societies, both rich and poor.

SDGs have recognized the need for addressing ecological health as a means of tackling hunger, poverty and health care. Although these goals have been set for a 15-year term like MDGs, they recognize the effect of climate change on the provision of quality health care, and poverty and hunger reduction (Gupta & Vegelin, 2016; The Hunger Project).As such, SDGs seek to address the primary causes of problems thereby stressing on sustainability.

References

Gupta, J., & Vegelin, C. (2016). Sustainable development goals and inclusive development. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 16(3), 433-448. doi:10.1007/s10784-016-9323-z

The Hunger Project. (2014). MDGs to SDGs: Top 10 Differences | Global Advocacy: Gender-Focused Community-led Development for All. Retrieved from https://advocacy.thp.org/2014/08/08/mdgs-to-sdgs/

The United Nations. (2015). Sustainable development goals. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/