Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the global blueprint for a just and sustainable future. The United Nations coordinated the inputs of 193 countries, including the United States, and thousands of civil society organizations to arrive at a set of seventeen goals and 169 targets to be achieved in all countries by 2030. The SDGs offer a way to understand and address critical barriers to well-being, economic growth and prosperity, and environmental sustainability in the United States and to put American challenges and opportunities within a global context. The United States played a leading role in negotiating these goals; as a result, they reflect American values and priorities.

The spirit behind the global goals is not just to meet the goals as measured by global or national averages, but rather to spur meaningful action in states and cities, counties and communities. The true aim is meeting the goals everywhere and for everyone, not just in aggregate at the national level. Doing so in the US requires adapting the global goals in terms of relevant geographic units of analysis (states, metro areas, or counties), population groups (major racial and ethnic groups, women and men, foreign- and US-born residents), and indicators.

This Global Goals Dashboard was created by picking from among the goals and targets those that are most meaningful in the US context and selecting reliable, robust, and readily available indicators for them. We prioritized indicators that were available by county and for the major US racial and ethnic groups, as meeting the goals everywhere and for everyone demands particular attention to tracking the progress of historically disadvantaged groups and regions.