You and the Global Goals Dominic Billings

We have a vision of what we want the world to resemble as articulated in the Global Goals. The SDGs draw their strength from our imaginations and the prospect of creating the future we want. We actualise this by articulating goals, targets, and indicators. These efforts become gratifying through the link in our imaginations to the existence we intend to forecast. We aim to make the imaginary into reality.
The Global Goals are the moral compass of the entire UN body of 192 member states, representing the totality of the planet’s human population, which reached such an agreement. The best explanation for why all countries agreed on Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement is a profound, universal sense of where we want to go.
You have the tools before you to measure your progress toward the Goals in your own life, all that’s left is your opportunity to act.  With less than eight years remaining to 2030, it’s now time to prioritise our lives to actualise the Goals. Let’s leave something worthwhile for life now in its infancy and for all life yet to come.
The best we can hope for within our conscience is once we reach 2030, whatever the global outcome, we know we can look ourselves in the mirror and admit to ourselves we did our best as one person among 8.5 billion other human souls.

Dashboard map for 2022 SDG Index Goal #17 ratings. Data source: sdgindex.com























Government spending in health & education (% of GDP)This measure looks at the portion of government spending (i.e., your tax dollars) on health and education, measured as a percentage of the whole GDP, aiming by 2030 for 15% of national GDP spent on health and education. Cuba takes the gold, with 23% of GDP spent by the government on health and education. The percentage of global government spending on health and education alone is almost 9.6% as of 2018, with zero growth since 2015.
Education and health are but another measure of poverty outside of income. This is reflected in the Human Development Index (HDI), which is similar to the SDG Index. The HDI creates a composite index of human development, measuring GDP per capita, life expectancy at birth, and years of education.
This indicator is in the hands of the government to act. Your task, as a singular citizen, is to call or write a letter to your government representative, requesting they increase the portion of spending on health and education to 15% by 2030.
Governments have national accounts, like the accounts of a business. They have debts like a business, and collect revenue in the form of tax or duties on imported goods. To manage all these flows of money through their accounts, governments develop fiscal policies guiding how they intend to raise revenues. Fiscal policy guides whether to levy taxes or cut them. On the other hand, the fiscal policy directs how to spend or invest the revenue. Different countries' governments have different fiscal policies regarding how much of their revenue they decide to spend, also differing on what to spend it on.
What a government wants to spend their money on may differ to what they do spend their money on - what they can afford may instead decide this. Many LDC governments, of course, are aware of the priority of poverty alleviation, and the necessary spending required. But if the citizens are too poor to tax, then the government will have little money to spend on what they know is needed to improve the standard of living of their people.
The Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG) comprises 10 categories. Below, I’ve used my home state’s 2021-22 budget, categorised according to this classification for illustrative purposes, with figures in Australian dollars:













































































































Source: https://www.dtf.vic.gov.au/state-budget/2021-22-state-budget

















As we see, the classifications of health and education are the biggest categor

Dashboard map for 2022 SDG Index Goal #16 ratings. Data source: sdgindex.com























Homicides (per 100,000 population)The 2030 aim is for the homicide rate to be below 0.3 per 100,000 population, excluding deaths in the context of armed conflict.
Summary: Don’t commit homicide.
Unsentenced detainees (% of prison population)This measure considers those in the prison population in remand, awaiting trial on criminal charges about whether the legal system will acquit or convict them. Being in remand, from a legal standpoint, is different from imprisonment. Rather than a punishment from a conviction, it instead is a means to ensure the presence of the person charged at their eventual trial.
Yet in some countries, authorities can take liberties with how long they hold a detainee in detention, contrary to Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” Unsentenced detainees include those detained or arrested with little evidence. This can also ignore due process, whereby the state must observe the legal rights of a citizen while charging and prosecuting a citizen. Often this entails the issuing of a warrant by a judge or magistrate, giving officers of the law the authority to carry out orders which otherwise may subvert the rights of the person. To be under arrest, with criminal charges placed by a law enforcement agency of a government, is different from a conviction. An arrest or detention may be necessary by the police upon passing a threshold of evidence for prosecutors to pursue its potential, otherwise the legal system exonerates the accused. Depending upon the context and jurisdiction, indefinite detention is contrary to international law, human rights agreements, and even the laws of war.
The 2030 aim for this indicator is for those unsentenced among a prison population to be 7% or less. If your line of work is part of the prison and judicial system in a country scoring red, you could consider seeking a new occupation, if you believe you're participating in a system perpetuating a contradiction of human rights and international law.
A reason for such a large part of prison populations held in remand could very well be due to backlogs in the courts, in which instance quitting one's job would be counterproductive. Is leaving detainees unsentenced intentional, or is there a genuine bottleneck in the flow of prosecutions due to lack of resources? If you sense the latter is closer to the truth, then you could consider retraining. You might parlay your experience from the prison side of the justice system to the judicial side, allowing prosecutions and sentencing to flow at a greater pace.
Each country scoring red in the 2022 Index is a developing country, where the state may be short of the resources to subsidise job retraining, making these suggestions more challenging. If you believe you’re perpetuating the high rate of detainees unsentenced in your country, I encourage you to excuse yourself from your present field of work.
Summary: For readers in

Dashboard map for 2022 SDG Index Goal #15 ratings. Data source: sdgindex.org























Mean area that is protected in terrestrial sites important to biodiversity (%)Biodiversity is the variability of life on Earth. What happens without the richness of biodiversity in the form of healthy populations of myriad species? What other species beside our own could drive a million species to the bleeding precipice of extinction? What in our lives is worthy of this cost? Why are we all complicit in extinction, both of our own kind, and millions of others?
Unless you lived in a Third World country, your lifestyle - innocuous and well-intentioned - has left the planet worse off than when you got here. You partook in agriculture and were a cog and beneficiary in the consumption and production of the global economy. Other lifeforms are in a more precarious state than when you found them.
The Convention on Biological Diversity is the treaty adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit, the same UN conference adopting the UNFCCC. The Convention on Biological Diversity treaty ought to be a central pillar of our societies and governance, yet to most governments, it is a footnote.
The biodiversity Goal's, #14 and 15, get my vote for being among the most under-served of the Goals. We are in deep shit when it comes to biodiversity loss, and the outcome thus far is among the most tragic. It’s sad enough we’re unable to lend a hand to three-quarters of a billion individuals of our own species living on less than $2 a day. It’s quite another matter again to take a broad swath of life with you on the path to extinction. Tragically, there appears to be some sort of an innate mechanism within our species allowing us to ruin our ability to perpetuate.
Some may consider the following sacrilege, but if fate holds humanity to wipe itself out in the coming century or two, I’m uncertain planet Earth will miss us much. “Good riddance,” I would’ve thought would be closer to the sentiment. Such an outcome would see the end of the geological epoch of the Anthropocene, whereby one species i.e., humans, dominated so much, geologists monikered a geological span after us.
I want to ask you to reflect on how you feel about animals and plants, the world around you which fits into the definition of nature. Other species are more vulnerable than us. Even the monarchs of the jungles, savannah, and oceans - lions, tigers, and sharks - are vulnerable to human technologies able to kill from afar. Does the destruction of swaths of the planet - habitats of endangered species - cause heartbreak within you? If the answer is no, why not? A different disconnect altogether is when humanity cuts down an old-growth forest for forestry production. It goes to pulp processing, manufactured into our cereal boxes, or newly built homes. We'll knock the home down in 15 years anyway, as the housing stock changes over to catch up with a more modern style.
I bet each of us seldom thinks about these things. Even if we sometimes do, we can somehow make wild gymnastics of logic to ourselves, identifying as a tree-h

Dashboard map for 2022 SDG Index Goal #14 ratings. Data source: sdgindex.org























Mean area protected in marine sites important to biodiversity (%)Goals #14 & #15 are the biodiversity goals. We’re amid a crisis of enormous magnitude when it comes to mass species extinction, and we’re in a real pickle with oceans and seas, or pickle juice, to be more apt.
The 2022 SDG Index results for this Goal and first indicator, see many countries scoring red. Protected marine areas are the marine equivalent to national parks. Their existence means we get to preserve habitats of species crucial in Key Biodiversity Areas, which shelter the greatest concentrations of biodiversity. Protected marine areas allow marine life to catch its breath, a chance to regenerate from what humanity has subjected it to, crucial to the future health of life on this planet. I’ll expand more on the importance of protected areas in the following chapter, which mirrors Goal #14 except for terrestrial and freshwater life, rather than marine life. Marine protected areas include saltwater environments, whether in the seas and oceans, or in estuaries where the water is brackish, home to ecosystems of myriad species of plants, animals, and all kinds of organisms.
The title for the largest protected area in the world goes to the Marae Moana in the Cook Islands, at 2 million square km. The World Database on Protected Areas, which collates all the world’s protected areas, counted an approximate 17,781 marine protected areas at the time of writing, equal to 8% of the planet’s marine area.
Humans have a propensity to view nature through the prism of the resources it can offer us. Though since industrialisation, we're yet to account for sustainability, paying far too little attention to conserving nature. Ecosystems can offer us plentiful services, but with this comes the responsibility to act with sustainability and reverence. Extraction of natural resources can be quite ugly, and we ought to give pause to our attitudes of how we treat the environment offering its services.
If we shun such protection, we know the risks: greater ocean acidification due to oceans absorbing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. We know what happens when petrochemicals or petroleum spill or leak into marine environments. Even tourism can degrade environments unless managed.
None of us can declare a legal marine protected area in an area important to biodiversity, thus our sole route is to advocate for protected areas to the government.
Summary: Contact your government representative overseeing marine protected areas in your country or region, requesting the government protect 100% of marine Key Biodiversity Areas.
Ocean Health Index: Clean Waters score (worst 0-100 best)The Clean Waters score is one component of the broader Ocean Health Index, measuring within each country’s maritime jurisdiction the level of contamination from four categories of pollution:
chemicals (oil or toxic spills from maritime vessels; agricultural pesticide/herbicide runoff)
nutrients (agricultural fertilisers)
pathog

Dashboard map for 2022 SDG Index Goal #13 ratings. Data source: sdgindex.org























CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (tCO₂/capita)One of the first things worth noting about SDG #13 is the Goal works in symbiosis with the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement. The UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) is the primary international forum for tackling climate change. The UNFCCC and Paris Agreement are international agreements which your country has signed and ratified. Mentioned in the introductory chapter was the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, where the UNFCCC was adopted. Article 2 of the UNFCCC encompasses the treaty’s goal, which is:
“…stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
So where does the Paris Agreement come into play? The history of the negotiations and their mechanics is demoralising, despite what I imagine to be the best efforts. Each year since 1995 (except for 2020, due to COVID-19) the Conference of the Parties (COP) has met. The COP are all the countries which signed the UNFCCC, which continue negotiations within the framework, to put into action the intention of the treaty.
You may remember having heard about the Kyoto Protocol in the past, which was to guide how the UNFCCC operated, intended to translate it from words on a page to mechanisms for action. The US Senate failed to adopt the Kyoto Protocol at the time of its signing by the Clinton Administration, nor did they reconsider under later Congresses thereafter. This was due to the Senate’s perceived unfairness of the treaty concerning the developing countries. China was the largest of these developing countries, thus free from being subject to the terms of the Protocol, as at the time of negotiation, developed countries were responsible for the most emissions. Thus, in many senses, without the participation of the largest emitter of all time - the US - the Kyoto Protocol was somewhat of a lame duck.
The COP invested much effort in an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol at the summit in Copenhagen in 2009, but alas failed. The COP postponed the task to the 21st Conference of the Parties, meeting in December 2015 in Paris, a couple of months after the unanimous adoption of the SDGs. In Paris, all countries of the world reached an agreement to guide the glide path for the coming decades of decarbonisation. The Paris Agreement’s strength has been its meaningfulness to signal to the globe to decarbonise, with pathways planning toward this goal now in the mainstream. The world will leave behind industries and businesses failing to attend to this reality. Such businesses will strand their assets, and will have to account to irate shareholders why management failed to heed what was evident in the headwinds of a shifting status quo.
Two important numbers quantify Article 2 of the UNFCCC: 2°C and 1.5°C. We measure this temperature rise against the average temperature of Earth before the Industrial Revolution. The UN cons