The origin and progress of the Sustainable Development Goals

The SDGs constitute a transformation of the systems governing societies to ensure universal human rights. They address several vital global issues and attempt to integrate social and economic development with environmental sustainability (Biermann et al., 2017). The power of the SDGs as a development agenda is more than the sum of measurable goals, targets and indicators. The SDGs are both a normative orientation and a guide for action for identifying and pursuing sustainable development priorities and creating coherence between policies and sectors in all contexts - local, regional, national, transnational and global. This suggests that governments ought to consider the SDGs as an inter-related development agenda. This chapter provides an overview of the SDGs and their origin. It summarises the 17 SDGs, highlights their interdependence, and provides an overview of the implementation process and a snapshot of the progress made by 2022.