Why You Should Pick Just One UN Global Goal
TL;DR If you are a person, and there is even one human, animal, plant or pretty rock on this Earth that you care about (including yourself), then you should take a look at the U.N. compiled 17 Global Goals and pick just one as a focus, framework, or simple fact to incorporate into your life and your mission.
I’d like to start off by saying this is my first ever original, opinion piece that I’ve published on the internet, and of all the things I considered writing about, I did not expect it to be this. I did not expect to see the see the U.N’s first few innocuous postings about “making a difference” on my various feeds a few weeks ago. I did not expect the small trickle of articles, postings and tags to become a deluge. I did not expect Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s face to keep reappearing on my screen every time I opened up my browser like malware from the early 2000s.
Seriously. He was on my Twitter feed. He was on my LinkedIn page. He was on Medium watch list. Even Facebook had somehow been pierced; in between vine compilations and everyone’s new baby photos, I saw UNICEF earnestly telling me to just take a look. It was enough that I cast off the eternal shroud of jaded disillusionment that most millennials wear like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. I clicked. I gave in. I took the bait. There are some words one can only see so many times before curiosity gets the better of even the most resolutely uninspired.
“Look at what we’re up to. Look at what we’re trying to accomplish. Look at how much we’ve already established.
Look at what you could do.”
If I didn’t know better, I would say the UN is seemingly trying to remind everyone on Earth that they are in fact, Everyone On Earth. The UN Global Goals are 17 distinct but intrinsically connected milestones that the UN has decided will happen by the year 2030. They are all relevant, actual problems touching every country and continent on this Earth and they have all been ruthlessly analyzed, discussed and dissected into actionable bits that can be assigned a grade of Done or Not Done. They have gathered advocates and celebrities and scientists and advocate-scientist-celebrities and they’re not being quiet about it at all. The United Nations is yelling in our faces that these problems are real and you can’t wish them away and pretend they don’t exist, and if you do manage to do that then your children won’t be ale to. We have literally gone past the point where any amount of obliviousness, politics, greed or false shame can make it okay.
Wait though? Isn’t this the UN that we’re talking about? As a person who spent most of his life on a small-island developing nation, and a former history major, to say that I’m pretty much neutral to the United Nations and some of their current and former policies is a bit like judging New York City by the average income of its residents. That is to say, there’s a lot of little goods sprinkled all over but several massive errors so colossal and all-encompassing that they skew the data completely. The UN is not everyone’s favourite cup of tea. They’re not even everyone’s acceptable brand of diet soda. Luckily, they don’t have to be.
The truth is, the UN, and consequently, my opinions and the opinions of everyone else on them, have nothing to do with these goals.
Nothing at all. In fact, the best part of these goals are that you could strip out all the politics you need to; they still make absolutely perfect sense. All of them. The 17 tasks were designed to make sense to any rational-minded human adult. Who the hell thinks eliminating poverty is a bad idea? Capitalists may argue that wealth inequality is a necessity and economists will point out that financial incentives are untenable and dictators will point out that, “You’re not seriously telling me what to do right?” but none of these groups, if given the actual option of choosing any one of these goals without negative repercussion would go, “I don’t like the sound of it. Clean water? I don’t think people are into that.” The goals aren’t what the UN needs, or the US needs, or Africa needs; if human life on Earth has any hope of going past ‘hairless-ape-warmonger’ phase, we have to do these things.
To all the pessimists out there saying that these are all an impossible dream, I can only suggest taking out all your smartphones made of silicon and magic and take a brief skim through the google search results for ‘human achievements in the last 50 years.’ Compared to the disease-ridden, savage terror that were the early days of mankind, the year 2015 with its civil unrest and mass refugee evacuations and Donald Trump is still a shining utopia in comparison. Naysayers have existed ever since the first caveman brought back fire and one tribesman said, “You really think that’ll help? Watch, it’s just a trick to get us all more tender for the jaguars to eat. We’ve always been cold and miserable, and we’ll always Be cold and miserable.” It’s alright though. Eventually the disbelievers will come sit by the fire sheepishly, and we’ll all remind them that it’s okay; the future is for everybody.
We are not perfect. We likely never will be, but we have become better than we were, while still being fundamentally ourselves. Still human. Still broken. Still trying.
Today I’m choosing to try in a tangible way. I support all the goals but I’m picking number 11 — Sustainable Cities and Communities — as my own personal mission, because number 11 is the one I can do. I’m finishing up a degree in Environmental Engineering, and starting a lifetime in energy distribution and efficiency, resiliency, and urban planning, because I’ve seen the impact that small improvements in energy and infrastructure can make to a community.
So read the goals. I’m fairly certain that everyone who has the ability to read this article is already doing something that follows the spirit of the goals, whether it affects your community, your workplace, your family, or just you.
Zero Hunger.
Gender Equality.
No poverty.
These are goals for the human race, to race for as fast as humanly possible. If one of us wins we all win. If all of us try we can’t lose.
Photo credits to Rakesh JV and posted in Flickr’s Creative Commons Repository
