One of the main outcomes of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, was the agreement by Member States to launch a process to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), accompanied by a guiding outcome document, “The Future We Want,” which set the frame for the Post-2015 Development Agenda. As with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), poverty is at the heart of the post-2015 agenda—but the SDGs aim to go further: calling for eradication, rather than just halving, extreme poverty; placing a much stronger emphasis on equity within and among nations; and putting a strong emphasis on ecosystem and natural resources management as a core element of sustainable development.
