ESA and the Sustainable Development Goals

Background

In 2000, 189 countries of the world came together to face the future. But this future was not very bright. Famine, drought, wars, plagues and poverty were hitting the Earth and its people hard. And these problems of the world were not just in some faraway countries but they plagued our own cities and villages. Still, it did not have to be this way. There is enough food to feed the world, there are medicines for most diseases, most natural disasters can be predicted to avoid high death tolls,...

So a plan was created, called the Millenium Development Goals, to try and achieve a better world by 2015. The progress over those 15 years has been tremendous, the amount of people suffering from extreme hunger or poverty has been cut in half, far more children are attending school than before and far fewer children are dying.

This year, in 2015, the countries have come together again to build on the many successes of the past 15 years, and go further. Their new set of goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aims to end poverty and hunger by 2030. With the SDGs the connection between people and planet has been recognised and the result is 17 goals for land, oceans, waterways, climate, health, etc. For a full list of the Sustainable Development Goals please visit the UN site.

ESA's role

The table below represents some of ESA's programmes specifically related to the 2015 SDGs. For more information you can click on a programme in the table or use the links on the top right hand side of this page.