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Millennium Development Goal
7 – To ensure environmental sustainability
Target – Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
Target – By 2015, reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.
Target – By 2020, achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
Our environment is under threat as never before. Human activities combined with improved technology and transport mean that forests are disappearing, fish and animals are dying out, and pollution is increasing. Uncontrolled use of natural resources affects all of us, although poor people are often less able to protect themselves from it.
There are sometimes hard choices to be made between economic growth and a clean environment – choices we need to confront for the sake of future generations. Newly-developing nations, such as India and China, are major polluters. However, if prosperity comes at the cost of a damaged environment, we are destroying the very source of our wealth. The countries of the world need to tackle this problem together.
The environment of people living in slums also needs to be improved urgently. Currently, one-third of the world’s population lives in urban slums or shanty towns. Many cities in developing countries continue to experience very rapid population growth, yet do not have the resources to plan for it.
A better environment is possible for all of us. To achieve it, we need to hold world leaders to their promises.
Activities for this goal include:
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Philippines case study
Information about a boy who lives near a dump and earns a living retrieving items from it and selling them. |
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The truth about slums
Pupils do a quiz about slums, then think about how this problem could be overcome. |
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Preferable futures
Pupils draw diagrams to map out what the future will probably be like if we do nothing about the environment. |
Download Goal 7 poster (114KB pdf)
Download background information and activities for this poster (73KB pdf)
From the Change the World in Eight Steps online resource.
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