One thing that hasn’t altered is the importance of addressing the world’s biggest to-do list: 169 targets, organised under 17 goals, to not only maintain every aspect of life on Earth but to create a much better and healthier place. Not just for some, nor even the many, but for all people. Everyone.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set the same challenges for poor and rich, emerging and developed nations. The SDGs recognise that poverty, hunger, inequality and exclusion, ill health, poor education and environmental degradation are found everywhere, while climate change transcends national borders. Some of these issues will be exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
It isn’t hard to show that the projects our clients and we undertake contribute to individual SDGs, and sometimes to several. But do they achieve all that’s possible? Probably not is the honest answer.
We want to change that.
As a global engineering, health, education and development business, our projects have direct and indirect impacts on SDGs 1-16, while building partnerships, goal 17, is simply the way we operate. By spotting and developing social, environmental and economic opportunities, we believe each project can yield value far beyond its immediate benefits. It means we can confidently say we contribute to all the SDGs.
The project stories featured here – both old and new – offer a glimpse of what is possible.
The SDGs invite us on a journey of discovery, to find and make connections. More important than ever now, and in the future.