UN Sustainable Development Goals

The fifth UN SDG is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. This goal is imperative in the progress toward many of the other SDGs and lays the foundation for a healthy, sustainable, and thriving society. We recently talked to Rebecca Geiger, assistant director of the Penn State Gender Equity Center, to better understand this topic and how we all might be able to play a part in achieving this goal.

The fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Some of the targets focus on providing equitable, effective, and affordable education for all children, youth, and adults, achieving higher levels of literacy and numeracy, building and upgrading safe and inclusive facilities, and increasing supply of quality teachers and teacher training.

Looking at the third UN Sustainable Development Goal — Good Health and Well-Being — it is clear that health is a major contributor to building prosperous societies and creating a better world. After all, healthy communities are closely connected to ending poverty and hunger, contributing to economic growth, providing quality education, and achieving other global priorities.

One of the biggest questions facing our world today is “how can people still be hungry when there is so much food available?” The short answer: poverty and lack of resources. Though there is enough food in the world to feed everyone in it, many individuals cannot afford food for their family.

How is poverty connected to sustainability? How does one affect the other? Why is it important and relative to all, not just those experiencing poverty? The issue is a multifaceted relationship that requires us to look at the structural economic, environmental, and social causes and impact of each.