Sustainable Development Goals have achieved successes, but still have a lot of work to do
Screenshot from this afternoon. Caribbean nations' political leadership sharing early warnings best practice. "Early Warnings for All" is a startling recognition of the reality that the most vulnerable populations are often the least aware of the next crisis coming at them.
Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, have been part of the UN's mission for quite a while. This year, the UN has published success stories, and is sharing some climate early warning systems for disaster preparation for flooding and other climate-related disasters.
We published a link to the Success Stories in an earlier blog, and have some interesting comments coming in from readers. Here are some of their observations.
Lorraine, who read the whole thing cover to cover, made several cogent observations but her most pithy was this: "An innovative idea that had measurable results was to provide food to children in Brazilian schools. The document has a statement 'School feeding is now recognized as a human right rather than simply an element of social welfare.' It would be ideal to see this implemented more broadly."
Jacques LaBasoge, writing in from France, commented that "Merck wants to be applauded for $50 million of "impact investing," which probably represents the sofa change for this American pharma.
But what exactly does it mean by investing? Usually an investment has payback. This isn't discussed."
This afternoon, disaster prevention is being shared, with early warning systems and disaster preparation stories. They're interesting and useful to understand how UN-funded digital and educational funds are being spent, what the effects are, and how the world is working on a human and granular level.
Chad, the gigantic, landlocked country in the middle of the Sahara, is an example. Every state in this country had disastrous flooding in the last 2 years, according to Elizabeth who presented Chad's work in creating a government wide system of early warnings by using cell phone technology to update people on the weather. In a place that does not have a weather app, let alone a national weather service, and has multiple languages, ethnic identities and territoriality, this has given people at least some chance of avoiding losses.
If you tuned in hoping for a grand sense of things happening, you would have to placate and quiet your thirst for "hero" stories. Instead, you may get a better sense of many small moves that are turning the SDG wheel slowly forward by just opening up to them and listening carefully.
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