What Agenda 2030 Really Means...
The UN has launched Agenda 2030 that consists of 17 goals for global sustainable development. Large-scale and global change will be a complex process.
Will these goals create the sustainable future that so many people are waiting for, or will additional measures be needed to achieve the desired result?
To find out more about Agenda 2030, watch the following video, or, if you prefer, you can read the transcript further below.
What Agenda 2030 Really Means - Video Reanscript
In this video I'll discuss what Agenda 2030 really means.
The United Nations have developed Agenda 2030 for sustainable development, and it has been adopted by member states.
It includes 17 different goals, with 169 subgoals and these goals cover a wide range of areas from:
Number one: no poverty via
Number seven: affordable and clean energy
Number twelve: responsible consumption and production to
Number seventeen: partnerships for the goals.
The agenda is very ambitious, but it creates the illusion that all goals can be achieved within the next few years and that they all can be pursued in parallel on the large scale.
To achieve any of the goals very large investments and activities on a large scale will be needed. This means that only a few of the goals can be pursued on the large scale at any point in time.
For example, changing transport systems to electromobility, which is part of goal number seven: affordable and clean energy, is only one of many activities to achieve this goal.
And to run all 280 million cars in the EU and the UK on electricity more than 700 terawatt hours of power will be needed every year, which is 25% of Europe's power generation. It is equal to the production of 65 nuclear reactors or 200,000 wind turbines.
Each nuclear reactor would cost 6 to $9 billion to build.
Wind power is less expensive, but there is also a need for storage with wind power, which does not exist at present.
There will also be a need for very large investments in the reinforcement of power grids and the expansion of charging infrastructure and the training of professionals and workers for the different roles and the projects that need to be run.
Another example is the development of systems for local food production and distribution, which is part of goal twelve: responsible consumption and production. To make this change possible, new producers of food and competitive distribution systems will have to be developed as well.
This is because present food systems are entirely focused on the large scale production and distribution of food for national, European or global markets. Even if many agree that we need to develop local food systems, a lot of obstacles must be overcome.
The biggest obstacle is probably the efficiency of the large scale systems of the present, which make it very difficult for small producers to compete.
Another hindrance is the cost involved for supermarkets to stock and sell local products from many producers.
These examples illustrate the very large investments that will be needed in each area and the largest systemic challenges that need to be overcome in order to change to take place on a large scale.
It is easy to decide to ban the sales of new fossil fuel cars or to change the economy to circular economy.
But driving these changes forward on a large scale will require a very large amount of resources and very large commitment from governments and companies and society at large.
I have worked with the development of principles for the large scale change to sustainability for 18 years, and I'm sharing my knowledge now on YouTube.
So make sure to comment, and subscribe to my mailing list.