The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) set up by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at the beginning of the 21st century have met with varying degrees of success.

Part of the problem has been the impact of natural disasters and climate change, especially for the MDG with which Climate Connections is most involved, no 7 'Ensure Environmental Sustainability'.

Achieving progress with MDG no 7 has been seriously hindered by such phenomena as landslides (pictured), earthquakes, droughts and floods, which  emphasises the pressing need for sustainability.

 What are the four targets of the Environmental MDG?

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources
• Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
• Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
• Achieve, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

Progress so far?

Although deforestation appears to be slowing down, the world still urgently needs to take decisive action to contain and adapt to climate change and practise only sustainable development.

Having missed the 2010 target to slow the decline in biodiversity, the number of species facing extinction is growing. Habitats for threatened species on land and water need to be protected against over-exploitation through strict regulation.

The world is expected to meet the drinking water target by 2015  though safe water supply remains a challenge in many areas. With half the population in majority-world regions lacking basic sanitation, the 2015 target may well be out of reach.

Considerable improvements to the lives of millions of slum dwellers have been made but keeping pace with swelling numbers of those living in urban poverty (often because of natural disasters, climate migration and conflict) is problematic.

What is holding us back from achieving the targets?

One main factor in holding back environmental sustainability has been the very high incidence of natural disasters, often triggered by climate change. So disaster risk reduction is considered crucial to achieving the targets.

At the UNDP Consultative Meeting for West African Parliamentarians in 2010, five priorities were identified for disaster reduction, namely: using disaster risk reduction and climate change as adaptation arguments for better climate management; increasing rural drought resilience; establishing good practices in disaster risk reduction for urban slum-dwellers; enshrining disaster risk reduction into urban development; and retrofitting water and sewage infrastructure to be more resistant to earthquakes, landslides and floods. 

Read more details on the outcome of this meeting here .

How can you help?

Although the MDG's are massive targets for global leaders to addess, there are plenty of small steps we can all make in our daily lives to make a small difference. See our tips for sustainable living .

The 8 Millennium Development Goals