Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder, Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
Sustainable development goals (SDG) is the latest fashion of resilent economic growth and poverty rediction.. It replaced millennium development goals(MDG). Such replacement does not mean that MDG has lost its direction having failed to reach the set target.’ It is not enough simply to extend MDGs, as some are suggesting, because humans are transforming the planet in ways that could undermine development gains’ Since 2000, MDGs planners have been stressing reducing hard core poverty in developing and poor countries. By now a new approach has come to the fore. . This is a new important addendum . At times it is a new approach -a new geological methodology like the Anthropogenic with lofty ideas and noble brand of techniques. “But pursuing a post-2015 agenda focused only on poverty alleviation could undermine the agenda’s purpose. Growing evidence and real-world changes convincingly show that humanity is driving global environmental change and has pushed us into Anthropocene.’ ‘The United Nations Rio+20 summit in Brazil in 2012 committed governments to create a set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) that would be integrated into the follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after their 2015 deadline. Discussions on how to formulate these continue this week at UN headquarters in New York.’ It has been focused that Earth’s life-support system and poverty reduction must be the two main objectives of SDGs..” As mounting research shows, the stable functioning of Earth systems – including the atmosphere, oceans, forests, waterways, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles – is a prerequisite for a thriving global society. With the human population set to rise to 9 billion by 2050, definitions of sustainable development must be revised to include the security of people and the planet.Defining a unified set of SDGs is challenging, especially when there can be conflict between individual goals, such as energy provision and climate-change prevention. But we show here that it is possible. By combining the MDGs with global environmental targets drawn from science and from existing international agreements, we propose six SDGs with provisional targets for 2030
Eight MDG goals range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education – have been a milestone in global and national development efforts. The framework has helped to galvanize development efforts and guide global and national development priorities. While three of the eight goals have been achieved prior to the final deadline of 2015 progress has been uneven within and across countries. Thus further efforts and a strong global partnership for development are needed to accelerate progress and reach the goals by 2015. Poverty in Bangladesh is primarily a ‘rural phenomenon’ with “53 percent of its rural population classified as poor, comprising about 85 percent of the country’s poor. Achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty to 26.5 percent by 2015 will require a growth rate of at least 4.0 percent in agriculture and 7.0 percent in the non-farm sector
17 October is marked out as a day for observing eradication of poverty. It reminds us of the urgency to rid the poor below overt line to of the onslaught of pauperization. The theme of 2014is: Leave no one behind, think, decide and act together aganst extreme poverty. The 2014 theme recognizes and underscores the demanding challenge of identifying and securing the participation of those experiencing extreme poverty and social exclusion in the “Post-2015 Development Agenda” that will replace the Millennium Development Goals. The official commemoration on 17 October at UN Headquarters will be an occasion to recognize people living in poverty as critical partners for fighting the development challenges we face.
Now global policy communities think in terms of SDGS as contemporary context demands new approach like Anthropogenic. “Further human pressure risks causing widespread, abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to basic Earth-system processes. Water shortages, extreme weather, deteriorating conditions for food production, ecosystem loss, ocean acidification and sea-level rise are real dangers that could threaten development and trigger humanitarian crises across the globe. Growing affluence and the right to development among the world’s poor demand that people of all nations make the transition to sustainable lifestyles.By coordinating actions internationally, SDGs can address these risks. The MDGs have shown that a goal-setting approach raises both public and policy support and channels funds effectively towards urgent global problems2. However, the political reluctance to go beyond merely extending the MDGs is a concern.The targets for the SDGs must be measurable, based on the latest research and should apply to developed and developing countries. First, however, we need to reframe the UN paradigm of three pillars of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental – and instead view it as a nested concept. The global economy services society, which lies within Earth’s life-support system. The definition of sustainable development, as laid out in the 1987 report from the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), should therefore be redefined to “development that meets the needs of the present while safeguarding Earth’s life-support system, on which the welfare of current and future generations depends”.
We define sustainable development in terms of sustaining livelihoods, reducing poverty, protecting and regenerating environment, intergenerational justice in resource use, conservation of bio-diversity, expansion of green and bio-technologies, institutional viability, resound economic growth, social and political stability. Developing capacities for good governance underpins all participatory elements in sustainable development process. SDG is influenced by the cultural, socio-economic and political characteristics of the community organization. Such characteristics vary at various cultural sets and sub-sets. It to be the function of the society facing environmental crisis. . Here the individuals as policy consumers are both individually and collectively aware about their own problems and predicaments and about human rights and public affairs. SDG by implications involves all promotional activities and services tilting policy intervention to the favour of Sustainable community. Organizationally linked both horizontally and vertically participatory institutions are effective tools for communications, networking and planning and directing all promotional and extension functions at the micro level for sustainable development
(Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder, Pro-VC, BUP and Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Retired Professor, Chittagong University)
