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 strongest signals for sustainable construction this week centre on capacity, climate resilience and reuse rather than headline-grabbing products. The UK government’s Capacity to Build programme, designed to support councils with housebuilding pipelines and construction skills, reinforces a critical point: net zero carbon buildings and low carbon design depend on local planning capability, procurement expertise and deliverable sites, not targets alone.

Skills are becoming a decisive constraint for environmental sustainability in construction. Great British Energy’s launch in Aberdeen, with funding to help young people and oil-and-gas workers move into renewable sectors, shows that decarbonising the built environment relies on labour mobility as much as innovation. Offshore wind, grid upgrades, heat networks, retrofit and energy-efficient buildings are competing for the same technical workforce, making green construction delivery a capacity challenge.

Climate risk is sharpening the case for sustainable building design. Warnings that a developing El Niño may be among the strongest on record, with the WHO urging immediate action to reduce health impacts, should push designers and clients towards whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment and life cycle thinking in construction. Overheating, flood exposure, ventilation, shading and resilient public realm now sit at the core of building lifecycle performance and life cycle cost.

The Barbican renewal strengthens the argument for refurbishment, circular economy in construction and end-of-life reuse in construction. Adaptive reuse is technically demanding and politically visible, but it is central to cutting embodied carbon and the carbon footprint of construction. New-build schemes will still attract attention, yet the larger sustainability gains will come from circular construction strategies, sustainable material specification, low embodied carbon materials and robust assessment of embodied carbon in materials.

Sustainable construction is moving from showcase projects to institutional delivery. Whole life carbon, net zero whole life carbon, resource efficiency in construction and low carbon construction materials are becoming essential measures of value. The sector’s next test is whether councils, developers and public bodies can turn sustainable building practices into scalable delivery for a hotter, lower-carbon century.

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