Mission
Our goal is to implement the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The localization of the Sustainable Development Goals framework throughout California and beyond.
GOALS for Orange County
Begin implementing this program as a primary focus of the UNA-OC Chapter.
Create a framework for an Orange County program, and gain the participation of key partners to collaborate, develop and implement.
Set up an Advisory Board with influencers from each sector to help build, guide, and promote the program throughout OC and beyond
Build early momentum with successful pilot programs (including United Way’s FACE2024!!!)
Ideally, this program would be adopted by UNA-USA and rolled out through all chapters via Partnerships & Collaboration.
Benefits to the Orange County community
Provides a unifying framework for all agencies from various segments to work collaboratively towards common goals
Provides an element of measurement and accountability for all involved, especially elected officials
Provides important information about the actual status of each primary local need (metrics/indicators)
Helps define ‘success’, and ensures actual progress is being made on all initiatives
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all". The SDGs were set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UN-GA) and are intended to help transform the world by 2030. They are included in an UN-GA Resolution called the 2030 Agenda or what is colloquially known as Agenda 2030, which has provided a model for a sustainable world, in which all people can lead productive lives, living peacefully and on a healthy planet. The SDGs were developed in the Post-2015 Development Agenda as the future global development framework to succeed the Millennium Development Goals which ended in 2015.
The purpose was to create a set of global goals, related to the environmental, political, and economic challenges that we face as humanity. The SDGs are a commitment that seeks to address the most urgent problems of the world and they are all interrelated. They are a universal call to action to respond sustainably against the threat of climate change, to have a positive impact on the way we manage our fragile natural resources, promote peace and inclusive societies, reduce inequalities, and contribute to the prosperity of economies.
Though the goals are broad and interdependent, in July 2017 the SDGs were made more "actionable" by a UN Resolution adopted by the General Assembly. The resolution identifies specific targets for each goal, along with indicators that are being used to measure progress toward each target. The year by which the target is meant to be achieved is usually between 2020 and 2030. For some of the targets, no end date is given.
To facilitate monitoring, a variety of tools exist to track and visualize progress towards the goals. All intention is to make data more available and easily understood. For example, the online publication SDG Tracker, launched in June 2018, presents available data across all indicators. The SDGs pay attention to multiple cross-cutting issues, like gender equity, education, and culture cut across all of the SDGs. There were serious impacts and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on all 17 SDGs in the year 2020.
The success of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development hinges on effective collaboration between all relevant actors. Knowledge, resources, skills, and partnerships will need to be mobilized on an unprecedented scale to implement all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This has led to the development by the UN of a groundbreaking new program called “Project Local2030”, or “Localizing the SDGs”. The website www.Local2030.org is a network and platform that supports the on-the-ground delivery of the SDGs, with a focus on that furthest behind. It is a convergence point between local and regional governments and their associations, national governments, businesses, community-based organizations and other local actors, and the United Nations system. Local2030 supports local leaders in collaboratively incubating and sharing solutions, unlocking bottlenecks, and implementing strategies that advance the SDGs at the local level.
Via this online platform, Project Local2030 partners are sharing tools, experiences, new solutions, and guides to support SDG localization. A core feature is a toolbox, which contains a range of concrete, practical and adaptable mechanisms and instruments that support the development, implementation, monitoring, and review of locally-appropriate SDG actions. With the aim of providing a one-stop-shop on SDG localization resources and tools for stakeholders, this platform combines prior work by Localizing the SDGs and Local2030. In the coming months, “Local2030: Localizing the SDGs” will progressively roll out new tools and resources to complement the existing work reflected on this website.
In essence, the best way to achieve these goals, then, is by implementing programs of active community engagement, one community at a time, which involves a true collaboration of the primary sectors within each community: academic, business, public and nonprofit. Leaders from each sector will join together to:
Identify the top issues and challenges facing each regional area or community in Southern California
Identify metrics and data-driven evaluation methods to help prioritize the importance of each issue, which would include measures such as the level of effort required, amount of resources, time, degree of policy change, and the likelihood of impactfulness.
Invite a set of recommended solutions for these issues from each of the participating sectors, and rate those with a similar set of evaluation measures to determine the ability to implement and the likelihood of impactfulness.
Create an online dashboard that will display each program and initiative, the current situation as it exists, the targets and timeframes for achieving results (annual and longer-term), and the status of progress being made.
If you would like to sign up for one or more teams in Project Local 2030, please fill out the brief form here and let us know what your interests are. We will then get back to you with the next steps and how to become engaged on a team!