Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcasts.

In this podcast, we'll get to the core of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals,

what they aim to achieve and the leadership role played by the EU in implementing them.

Want to know more? Stay with us.

Sustainable Development Goals, or SD SDGs as they're commonly known.

There's 17 of them, but what are they about?

They're basically an urgent call for action by all countries developed and developing

to navigate humanity towards greater well-being and to forge a new relationship between sustainability and development.

These 17 goals and the broader 2030 agenda for sustainable development, of which they form the core,

were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals and the

2012 Rio Plus 20 summit. Let's listen to the words of the then Secretary General of the

UN, Ban Ki-moon, when the agenda was adopted.

The agenda you are adopting today advances the goals of the Charter.

It embodies the aspirations of people everywhere for lives of peace, security and dignity on a healthy planet.

These targets, which are to be attained by 2030, were the result of a decade-long debate and effort involving NGOs,

private sector entities, local authorities and many other stakeholders in global and national consultations

to come up with a real blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.

The premises were crystal clear from the beginning.

We are destroying our planet.

And there's no planet B.

We are all on the same boat.

So we all need to act together, and we must adopt a comprehensive approach.

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