What Are the Sustainable Development Goals? A Practical Guide
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Sustainability Data
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August 2026
The Sustainable Development Goals are 17 targets adopted by all 193 United Nations member states in 2015. They cover everything from ending poverty and hunger to fighting climate change and building peaceful institutions. Together they form a shared global plan with a target completion date of 2030. The goal: progress on the world’s most pressing social, economic, and environmental problems, tackled at the same time rather than one at a time.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals?
The Sustainable Development Goals, often shortened to SDGs, are a set of 17 interconnected objectives. The UN General Assembly adopted them on 25 September 2015, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Each goal addresses a distinct area, such as clean water, gender equality, or responsible consumption. But the framework is explicitly designed so the goals reinforce each other. Progress on SDG 1 (No Poverty) depends partly on progress elsewhere. SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 4 (Quality Education) are two examples. No single goal moves forward in isolation.
Unlike a corporate strategy document, the SDGs are not legally binding. They function instead as a common reference framework. Governments, companies, nonprofits, and investors use the same 17 goals and 169 underlying targets. That shared vocabulary describes what “sustainable progress” means. It also makes it possible to compare initiatives across countries and sectors.
Who created the SDGs, and why?
United Nations member states negotiated and adopted the SDGs, replacing the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which ran from 2000 to 2015. The MDGs focused mainly on developing countries and poverty reduction. The SDGs were deliberately built to apply to every country, rich or poor. They also cover a far broader set of interlinked issues that the MDGs did not address directly, including climate action and sustainable industry.
The framework itself lives on the UN’s own site at sdgs.un.org. That site remains the authoritative source for the official goal descriptions, targets, and indicators referenced throughout this article.
How are the Sustainable Development Goals organized?
Each of the 17 goals breaks down into a set of specific targets, 169 in total. Each target is then tracked using one or more official indicators. SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), for example, includes a target on universal access to safe drinking water. That target is tracked through indicators like the proportion of the population using safely managed drinking water services. This three-layer structure, goal, target, indicator, turns a broad ambition into something governments and organizations can actually report against.
The Keys for Tomorrow directory uses this same goal-level structure to organize its project catalog. Every cataloged project is tagged to the SDG or SDGs it most directly supports. A reader interested in one goal can browse real initiatives working on it, rather than reading about the goal in the abstract. The SDGs hub page lists all 17 goals with a project count for each.
How is progress toward the SDGs measured?
Progress is tracked through the 169 targets’ official indicators. National statistical offices report this data to the UN, which reviews it annually in the UN Secretary-General’s SDG Progress Report. At the halfway point to the 2030 deadline, that reporting showed only a minority of targets on track globally. Climate action and biodiversity-related goals were among the furthest behind schedule. That gap is part of why goal-specific initiatives, not just national policy, have become a larger part of how progress actually gets made.
This is also where directories like Keys for Tomorrow fit into the picture. Rather than tracking national indicator data directly, the platform catalogs individual organizations and initiatives working toward specific goals. It currently spans more than 11,000 published project profiles. Those profiles are tagged across all 17 SDGs and organized by industry category and country.
Why do the SDGs matter to businesses and individuals?
For companies, the SDGs have become a common language for describing impact to investors, customers, and regulators. This matters more as ESG reporting requirements expand. A business doesn’t need to address all 17 goals. Most credible sustainability strategies focus on the two or three goals most relevant to what the organization actually does. They then measure progress against those specifically, rather than making broad, unverifiable claims.
For individuals, the SDGs offer a practical filter for evaluating where support is likely to have a verifiable effect. That support could be a purchase, an investment, or volunteer time. Browsing real, cataloged initiatives by goal is one concrete way to apply that filter, rather than relying on general claims of “sustainability.” The Keys for Tomorrow directory’s category and country views make that possible alongside the SDG view.
Frequently asked questions
How many Sustainable Development Goals are there?
There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by UN member states in 2015. Each one breaks down into more specific targets and indicators.
What is the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals?
The SDGs were adopted as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, so 2030 is the target date for the goals and their underlying targets. Official UN reporting indicates many targets are currently behind that schedule.
What counts as an SDG-aligned project on Keys for Tomorrow?
A project is tagged to a specific SDG on Keys for Tomorrow when its work directly and verifiably supports that goal. Each one is sourced and cross-referenced against directories like B Corp, 1% for the Planet, and the Solar Impulse Foundation before being cataloged.
See the Sustainable Development Goals in action
Explore SDG-aligned projects on Keys for Tomorrow, organized by goal, category, and country.
Arnaud Michel is the founder and curator of Keys for Tomorrow. In 2014, his master’s thesis on community currencies and sustainable development won the Prix Recherche at Belgium’s Prix de l’Économie Sociale; the research was later published in Ecological Economics (Elsevier, 2015). He curates this directory to the same standard, cross-checking every project against B Corp, 1% for the Planet, and Solar Impulse Foundation records. Connect on LinkedIn.