By Philip Vaughter, UNU-IAS, ESD

This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, 25-27 September 2015 in New York City.

By Christopher Doll, UNU-IAS

This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, 25-27 September 2015 in New York City.

Goal #11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

The Secretariat of the 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (10YFP) is pleased to inform you that the Third Call for Proposals of the 10YFP Trust Fund has been launched.

Please find below the link to the final approved version of the UNEP discussion paper, that was released on Monday at the start of IN 3 of the post-2015 development agenda discussions in New York. The purpose of the paper is summarized on the back cover, as below, and the document also contains an executive summary. 

As part of the efforts to improve science-policy interface in the intergovernmental processes on sustainable development at the United Nations, the Global Sustainable Development Report had posted an open call to the scientific community around the world, inviting scientists to submit briefs, highlighting specific issues, findings, or researches with a bearing on sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environment – or their inter-linkages. Briefs were submitted by end of January 2015 in any official UN language.

The SDGs offer a "major improvement" over their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, this report by the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) finds that of the 169 targets beneath the 17 draft goals, just 29% are well defined and based on the latest scientific evidence, while 54% need more work and 17% are weak or non-essential.