Teaching Sustainable Development Goals

Module 5: From MDGs to SDGs

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted in 2000 as a global ambition to reduce extreme poverty by 2015. They were divided into 8 goals, each tackling a key area of development: poverty, education, child mortality, gender equality, maternal health, disease, environmental protection and global partnerships.

Progress was uneven. Millions of people were not reached by the MDGs. For instance, although income poverty was greatly reduced, roughly 1 billion people still live below the poverty line (under $1.25 a day) and many face daily challenges of discrimination and exclusion, denying them access to basic resources, services and opportunity.
One possible reason for the uneven progress is that the level of global awareness for the MDGs remained low with little popular drive to monitor and accelerate progress.

A graphic containing the following words: WHAT WAS ACHIEVED THROUGH THE MDGs As a result of the MDGs progress was made in many of the targeted areas, especially in the following: . Income poverty: the number of people living in extreme poverty declined by more than half, falling from 19 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015. . Primary school enrolment: the number of out-of-school children of primary school age worldwide fell by almost half, from 100 million in 2000 to an estimated 57 million in 2015. . Child mortality: since 1990 the mortality rate of children under-five was cut by more than half. . Access to water: 147 countries managed to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

You or your students may recognise the icons and logo for the MDGs

A graphic containing the following words: 2 D 3 4 ERADICATE EXTREME ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PROMOTE GENDER REDUCE POVERTY AND HUNGER PRIMARY EDUCATION EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN CHILD MORTALITY 5 6 8 COMBAT HIV/AIDS, GLOBAL IMPROVE MATERNAL ENSURE MALARIA AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL PARTNERSHIP FOR HEALTH DISEASES SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT