Industrialisation and the Sustainable Development Goals

In one line

Seventeen Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, not binding on anybody, and yet used by Indian courts because Vellore held that sustainable development is part of customary international law.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Sustainable Development Goals are the seventeen goals with a hundred and sixty-nine targets adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 25 September 2015 in the resolution TRANSFORMING OUR WORLD: THE 2030 AGENDA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, to be achieved by 2030. They succeeded the eight Millennium Development Goals of 2000. The concept behind them comes from the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development of 1987, the BRUNDTLAND REPORT, which defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present WITHOUT COMPROMISING THE ABILITY OF FUTURE GENERATIONS to meet their own needs. In Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India the Supreme Court held that sustainable development is a balancing concept between ecology and development, that it has been accepted as part of CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW, and that its two essential features, the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle, are part of the law of the land.

Where the idea came from

Stockholm, 1972. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, whose Declaration is the origin of the modern international environmental framework and which the preambles to the Indian Air Act 1981 and the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 recite.

The Brundtland Report, 1987. OUR COMMON FUTURE, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, which supplied the definition: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The definition contains two ideas, NEEDS, particularly the essential needs of the world's poor, and LIMITATIONS imposed by technology and social organisation on the environment's ability to meet them.

Rio, 1992. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which produced the Rio Declaration with its twenty-seven principles, Agenda 21, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration is the precautionary approach and principle 16 is the polluter pays.

The Millennium Development Goals, 2000. Eight goals to 2015, on poverty, primary education, gender equality, child mortality, maternal health, disease, environmental sustainability and a global partnership.

And 2015. The 2030 Agenda, adopted on 25 September 2015, with SEVENTEEN Goals and a hundred and sixty-nine targets, addressed to ALL countries and not only to developing ones, which is the principal difference from the Millennium Goals.

The seventeen Goals

1 to 6, the basic needs. No poverty; zero hunger; good health and well-being; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation.