According to a team of scientists from Singapore, Canada and Australia, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), designed to better the lives of people and the planet, are failing to protect biodiversity. This oversight, warn the researchers, could mean that the 17 SDGs as currently applied may do more harm to the environment than good.
In a new paper published in the journal Nature, researchers warn that the globally agreed SDGs, which outline 17 targets to achieve by 2030, are an inadequate framework for protecting biodiversity, could be unknowingly promoting practices that would do little to stop the ecological crisis our planet is facing. Instead, it may serve as a “smokescreen for further environmental destruction throughout the decade”.
The research team includes scientists from the National University of Singapore, University of Northern British Columbia in Canada and the University of Queensland and University of Melbourne in Australia.
In their study, the scientists compared SDG indicators to a range of external measures and found that while most countries were showing progress on environmental SDGs, it had little correlation with the conservation of biodiversity and “instead better represents socioeconomic development”. Read more…
