SDG 2030

Eradicating poverty means expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Poverty entails more than the lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other essential services, social discrimination and exclusion, and the lack of participation in decision-making. Various social groups bear a disproportionate burden of poverty. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Based on GDP per capita in 2019 these are the poorest countries in the world: DRC, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan, Yemen, Haiti, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Bangladesh, CDI, Kenya, Nicaragua, India, Nigeria, Ghana, Vietnam, Laos, Honduras, Egypt, Ukrain, Angola, Philippines, Moldova, Tunisia, Morocco, Bolivia, Venezuela, Indonesia, El Salvador, SriLanka, Algeria, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Guatemala, Belize, Iraq, Jamaica, Albania, Iran, Paraguay, Bosnia, South Africa, Belarus, Ecuador, Macedonia, Colombia, Turkmenistan, Peru, Thailand, Serbia, Turkey, Dominican Republic, Botswana, Montenegro, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Bulgaria, China, Mexico, Russia, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Romania, Lebanon, Croatia, Poland, Panama, Chile, Hungary, Uruguay, Oman, Trinidad, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Portugal, CzechRepublic, Taiwan, Bahrain, Slovenia, Kuwait, Cyprus, Kuwait, Cyprus, Brunei, Malta, Korea, Spain, PuertoRico, Italy, UAE, NewZealand, Japan, Israel, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, Finland, Austria, Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Singapore, Denmark, Qatar, USA, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Norway and Luxembourg. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What will you do to eradicate poverty? Where does your country rank? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Video Editor: Joseph Sauchelli

Whoever you are, wherever you live, you have the right to make these choices without fear, violence or discrimination. Yet all over the world, people are bullied, discriminated against and arrested, simply for making choices about their bodies and their lives. A woman is refused contraception because she doesn’t have her husband’s permission. A teenager is denied a life-saving termination because abortion is illegal in her country. A man is harassed by police because he’s gay. My Body My Rights is Amnesty’s global campaign to stop the control and criminalization of sexuality and reproduction. Join the cause in the Here )https://www.amnesty.org/en/get-involved/my-body-my-rights/ )

This week we focus on SDG 2 ( END HUNGER). Every morsel of food from every plate, bowl and cooking pot around the world takes a small bite from Earth’s resources. The human diet places a strain on the environment, water resources, biodiversity and just about every other measure of planetary health. With so much at stake, researchers have turned their attention to a pressing question: what sort of diet can the planet realistically support? The answer requires insights from fields such as nutrition, agriculture and climate research. “We need to produce food groups that are good for health in ways that are restorative to the planet, rather than extractive,” says Corinna Hawkes, director of the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London. The particular foods on the plate will vary from one place to another, she says, but those meals need to add up to something more sustainable than society’s current fare. “When you look carefully at the big systems that regulate the stability of our planet, food is a dominant player in essentially all of them,” says Johan Rockström, an environmental scientist at Stockholm University. In 2019, Rockström, Hawkes and other members of an international group of scientists proposed the EAT-Lancet diet1, a global meal plan that could, in theory, feed 2050’s estimated population of 10 billion people (see ‘Planetary-health diet’). That plan called for drastic cuts in meat consumption and a much higher intake of fruits and vegetables. But it proved controversial with meat-industry proponents and economists, and the quest for a planetary diet continues. When researchers and policymakers convene at the United Nations Food Systems Summit in late 2021, a healthy-planet diet will be near the top of the agenda. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03443-6

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being at all ages is essential to sustainable development. Currently, the world is facing a global health crisis unlike any other — COVID-19 is spreading human suffering, destabilizing the global economy and upending the lives of billions of people around the globe. Before the pandemic, major progress was made in improving the health of millions of people. Significant strides were made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers associated with child and maternal mortality. But more efforts are needed to fully eradicate a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues. By focusing on providing more efficient funding of health systems, improved sanitation and hygiene, and increased access to physicians, significant progress can be made in helping to save the lives of millions. Health emergencies such as COVID-19 pose a global risk and have shown the critical need for preparedness. The United Nations Development Programme highlighted huge disparities in countries’ abilities to cope with and recover from the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic provides a watershed moment for health emergency preparedness and for investment in critical 21st century public services.