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 10 hours ago



- Record UK heat confirmed by the Met Office shifts climate extremes from anomaly to baseline, making overheating, passive cooling and flood resilience core to sustainable building design and sustainable construction. Design teams should target whole life carbon, lifecycle assessment and low carbon design as standard while delivering energy-efficient buildings, eco-design for buildings, net zero carbon buildings and net zero whole life carbon.

- Insurer modelling of roughly $450bn a year in disaster losses tightens scrutiny from underwriters and lenders. Investment cases now depend on credible whole life carbon assessment, life cycle cost, building lifecycle performance and the carbon footprint of construction, linking resilience to decarbonising the built environment and net zero carbon pathways.

- Policy volatility persists: a Prime Ministerial commitment to attend COP31 signals ongoing international engagement as opposition rhetoric against the Climate Change Act and the 2050 net zero target injects policy risk into low carbon building pipelines. Capital will price this into green construction, eco-friendly construction and carbon neutral construction strategies.

- Biodiversity Net Gain is improving planning certainty, strengthening environmental sustainability in construction and green infrastructure delivery. Clients are aligning schemes with breeam and breeam v7, advancing sustainable urban development and sustainable design while clarifying sustainable material specification.

- A landmark South Lanarkshire wind farm decommissioning achieved 99.9% reuse and recycling, proving the circular economy at industrial scale. The precedent accelerates circular economy in construction, circular construction strategies and end-of-life reuse in construction, underpinned by environmental product declarations (epds), embodied carbon in materials data, low embodied carbon materials, renewable building materials, green building materials and green building products.

- Direction of travel is clear: design for heat and water stress, build for disassembly, prioritise resource efficiency in construction and life cycle thinking in construction, verify nature gains and demand transparent reporting on embodied carbon. Planners and financiers are converting “transition plans” into conditions, pushing carbon footprint reduction, low-impact construction, sustainable building practices and sustainable architecture at every project stage while minimising the environmental impact of construction across the building lifecycle.

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