2020 created many challenges for all, but it also highlighted the ongoing concerns of Global Sustainability. The “takeaway” from 2020 has to, be that sustainability continues to be a significant issue and must be a key part of the ongoing recovery process during 2021. SDG3(Good Health & Wellbeing) is perhaps the best example in the current times of the importance of addressing sustainability. The benefit of ensuring “Good Health & Wellbeing” create many direct and indirect benefits, including:
- Reduced stress and tension, ongoing as citizens achieve better mental health and generally healthier.
- Reducing the number of deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents.
- More productive and committed workforce and engaged population.
- Greater concentration of resources on effective services and treatments
- Enhanced compliance with the goals of all other United Nations Sustainable Goals, including:
- Reduced poverty (SDG1) – a key link to better health and wellness
- Elimination of Hunger (SDG 2) – a key link to better health and wellness
- Better education (SDG 4) – better health and wellness promotes opportunities for better education due to commitment of citizens.
- Better water and sanitation services (SDG 6) and Energy Services (SDG 7) – a key requirement to better health and wellness
- Decent work and economic conditions (SDG 8) – a healthier workforce increase productivity and commitment.
- Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9) / sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11)
- Climate action including cleaner waters, land and air (SDG 13 – 15)
- Greater engagement with global opportunities, services and standards
- Increased economic opportunities
A single investment in Health & Wellbeing has an automatic significant multiplier effect, in that It generates “Savings” as waste is reduced, and “benefits” are created. This is just one of the examples of why Sustainability must be a key element of all that is done across the globe.
This theory was also researched in a recently published article:
Source: SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 – “In EU, 1 in 8 deaths linked to pollution”. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-eu-deaths-linked-pollution.html
In the EU, 13 percent of deaths are linked to pollution, said a new report published on Tuesday by the European Environment Agency (EEA), which stressed the current pandemic put environmental health factors in the spotlight. Europeans are constantly exposed to environmental risks like air pollution, noise and chemicals, and the COVID-19 pandemic provides an example of the links between “human health and ecosystem health.”