Five Years Since the Acceptance of the Sustainable Development Goals: Progress, but Also Challenges

September 24, 2020. New York. – The media are still struggling to highlight some SDGs at a level that would make the general public aware of and committed to the issues.

Additionally, while leading corporations have increasingly adopted a commitment to the SDGs not all of the top companies are yet on board with working towards the Goals or acknowledging their importance to the corporate world in their annual financial reports.

In the five years since 193 heads of state signed on to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the most progress has been made in terms of recognizing the importance of Climate Action to preserve the planet. But even here, not all stakeholders are publicly addressing their commitments or putting actions to words. Meanwhile, other SDGs that impact the planet’s health – such as Life Under Water – remain almost invisible, highlighting that our oceans are still in critical peril. In the last year, there has been the most acceleration in corporate commitment to the principle of Peace & Justice, which include fighting against corruption, supporting the rule of law, and advocating for human rights.

In 2020 COVID-19 has made it obvious how important progress on SDG3, Good Health, is.

“In the past too little focus has been spent on prevention; we hope this will change. And most importantly, we need to get more transparent and reliable data. Too much reporting did not provide even half of the reality, which led to fear. Too many were frightened to go to hospitals or to see their doctor. It is good to see that solutions can be found coming from different parts of the world based on common sense and nature,” says Roland Schatz, Founder and CEO of UNGSII.

For over 25 years Media Tenor's mission has been to contribute to objective, diverse, and newsworthy media content by bringing together the diverse parties. UNGSII is an international, multi-stakeholder, not-for-profit initiative supporting the UN and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. It aims to provide an evaluation and comparison of companies’ and countries' sustainability performance in a transparent manner through SDG-focused research and data that can  provide guidance and benchmarking to companies and stakeholders. 

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