Development and environmental goals
Quantitative long-term goals can help to formulate a long-term vision. The sustainable development goals analysed in this study were derived from existing international agreements, related to the principles of the Rio declaration, in particular Principle 5 (eradicate poverty) and Principle 6 (conserve the Earth’s ecosystem).
The selection of goals is mostly based on existing aspirations formulated in international agreements on environmental and development topics. In some cases, these are directly formulated as quantified goals. In other cases, only more qualitative formulations are available. In those cases, we used quantitative interpretations of these goals. Clearly, in interpreting some of the existing agreements in terms of the targets used for our analysis, some normative choices had to be made.
Goals for food, land and biodiversity loss:
- Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger; halve this again by 2030, and fully eradicate hunger by 2050
- Halve the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2020, and maintain biodiversity at the 2020/2030 level by 2050 (depending on region)
Goals for energy, air pollution and climate:
- Achieve universal access to electricity and modern cooking fuels by 2030
- Avoid temperature increases above 2 °C, and keep atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations below 450 ppm CO2 equivalent
- Keep annual PM2.5 concentrations below 35 µg/m3 by 2030
