Mid-term Status on SDG 6 Indicators: 6.3.2, 6.5.1, & 6.6.1 (2024)

United Nations 2 years ago

Water is vital to human and planetary health and the internationally agreed goals that back it, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the Sendai Framework and the Paris Agreement. Yet the triple planetary crisis – the crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss and pollution and waste – is affecting the availability, distribution, quality and quantity of water. Despite water being essential for human health, food security, energy supplies, sustaining cities, and ecosystems and on the front lines of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, SDG 6 is alarmingly off-track. For most of the SDG 6 Indicators, the current rate of progress is not fast enough to close the gap before 2030. In some cases, progress is even relapsing. The new mid-term status reports for SDG 6 indicators: 6.3.2, 6.5.1, and 6.6.1 found that if the priorities under SDG 6 are to be achieved by 2030, action on these indicators needs to be accelerated four times faster. These priorities can be ensured if adequate investments are made towards institutions, infrastructure, information, and innovation, where concerted action and institutional coherence is required, and new ideas, tools, and solutions are developed that draw from existing knowledge and indigenous practices. Working with partners within the framework of the UN-Water led Integrated Monitoring Initiative for SDG 6, UNEP officially launched reports, in August 2021, on the three SDG 6 indicators for which it is custodian. These indicator reports are: SDG 6.3.2 – Progress on Ambient Water Quality with a special focus on Health SDG 6.5.1 – Progress on the Implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management with special focus on Climate Change SDG 6.6.1 – Progress on Water-related Ecosystems with a special focus on Biodiversity A key underlying message from these reports is that existing efforts to protect and restore water-related ecosystems must be urgently scaled up and accelerated. Progress Reports can also be found on UN-Water's SDG 6 Progress Reports page
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layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 7 hours ago



The sustainable construction agenda is shifting from headline innovation to measurable delivery across buildings, infrastructure and finance. The World Green Building Council’s Advancing Net Zero work, set against IRENA’s warning that electrification and renewables remain too slow, reinforces the need for net zero carbon buildings backed by cleaner grids, heat electrification and stable policy.

Certification alone will not deliver net zero whole life carbon. The sector needs whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment and life cycle thinking in construction to guide sustainable building design, low carbon design and credible decarbonising the built environment.

The UK debate over the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is therefore material to environmental sustainability in construction. Any reduction in support for heat pumps would slow one of the clearest routes to cutting operational emissions in existing homes. Energy-efficient buildings require long-term policy certainty, robust life cycle cost analysis and practical sustainable building practices, not fragmented incentives. Green construction must be judged by building lifecycle performance, carbon footprint reduction and the carbon footprint of construction, including embodied carbon, embodied carbon in materials and the specification of low embodied carbon materials.

Climate adaptation is now becoming core construction policy. A £1.6m programme to install flood-resilience measures in 100 East Midlands homes after Storms Babet and Henk shows resilience retrofit moving into mainstream housing delivery. The River Trent restoration analysis, indicating £10bn in economic gains and more than £7 of benefit for every £1 invested, strengthens the case for green infrastructure, sustainable urban development and nature-based investment as serious economic strategy.

Future growth in construction will need to align with circular economy principles, circular economy in construction, resource efficiency in construction and circular construction strategies. Low carbon construction materials, renewable building materials, green building materials, green building products and environmental product declarations (EPDs) will become central to sustainable material specification and eco-design for buildings. New building demand that ignores flood risk, heat demand, end-of-life reuse in construction and the wider environmental impact of construction risks creating stranded assets. Sustainable architecture, eco-friendly construction and low-impact construction are entering a stricter phase, where BREEAM, BREEAM v7 and whole life carbon performance will matter as much as planning consent, capital cost and short-term market recovery.

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