Connecting Procurement and Sustainability

The Un-Dirty Dozen: Where Social Progress Is Possible

In almost every one of the areas covered by the 2030 global goals (and there are 169 targets and 232 indicators), many, if not most, countries are making dramatic progress. That confirms that we pretty well know what works. We pawed through the preparatory documents to bring you a dozen highlights from the baseline data: 1. The end of poverty is in sight…in east Asia 2. Disasters are a disaster for the poor. Disasters hit far harder in low- and lower-middle-income countries. 3. AIDS transmissions have been cut in half. 4. WASH your hands. Death rates attributed to the lack of WASH service...in sub-Saharan Africa and Central/Southern Asia remain stubbornly high 5. The clean energy transition is about more than climate change. 6. Doh! Women do more unpaid work. Women spend roughly triple the average amount of time on unpaid domestic and care work than men... 7. Economic growth is decoupling from energy and resource consumption. Between 2012 to 2014, 15 of the world’s 20 largest energy-consuming countries reduced the ratio of energy used per unit of GDP 8. Paint a big fat target on the back of those remittance fees. In 2016, international remittances totalled $575 billion. 9. Fisheries and forests on the rebound. Overfishing depletes ecosystems, reduces biodiversity and impairs food security. However, “the trend has slowed and appears to have stabilized from 2008 to 2013,” the UN reports. 10. Reports of human trafficking are going up, but that may be good news. 11. Fertility rates keep falling. Adolescent birth rates among females 15 to 19 years old declined by 21% from 2000 to 2015. 12. Time to scale up sustainable ag. We need to produce more food for more people with less water on less land at lower prices. Sounds like a challenge for tech. Read the source article at ImpactAlpha