The UK government has announced that it will support an initiative to build Sustainable Development Goals to focus international attention on the need to sustainably manage the world’s natural resources. It plans to launch the formal process for the new goals at the Rio+20 summit in June 2012 and hopes that they will replace the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.

UK Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman is quoted as saying: “Producing more food sustainably, dealing with environmental degradation, providing access to clean energy and poverty eradication are all part of the same picture. We need green growth to deal with them.”
“I welcome the proposal to use Rio+20 as a launch pad to develop new Sustainable Development Goals which will help to provide incentives for greater global cooperation to address these challenges.”

No response yet on whether or how the Government of Canada intends to participate in this initiative. GallonDaily expects that a new round of global Sustainable Development goals is likely to have a greater impact on international business, particularly companies involved in renewable and non-renewable resources, than the existing Millennium Development Goals.

The press release announcing this initiative is at http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2011/11/21/sustainable-development-goals/