SDGs — The Sustainable Development Goals Are Already Called By Many Names

Here’s a short glossary to help you

United Nations members have formally adopted 17 new “Global Goals” aimed at ending poverty, protecting the planet, and ensuring prosperity for all. Though The SDG Goals are well documented, but how to reference the goals by name is less apparent. Depending on the source, these same 17 Goals have been referred to as:

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

• The most used current term of the UN
• Created in 2015
• Refers to the Agenda that contains the SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• The most used current term of the UN referring to the Goals that make up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
• Created in 2015

UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, Global Goals, etc…

• Another way the UN references the SDGs
• Post-2015 Development Agenda

Agenda created to form the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs

• Commonly used before the finalization of the SDGs

If you add in social media references on Twitter, for example, you may need to follow the following hashtags to capture the conversation:

· #SDGs

· #GlobalGoals

· #Action2015

· #post2015

· #Agenda2030

· #2030Agenda

And there are likely to be more ways of referring to the SDGs!

For now, SDGCounting will be using SDGs — because it is short — unless there is good reason to use another term.