From the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals to COP21 and the Paris Agreement

This chapter discusses the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The MDGs encompassed several goals that focused entirely on the transformation of developing countries. In the final MDG 2015 report attention focused on climate change, providing a launch for the 2016 SDGs, which more explicitly address climate change. Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change. Addressing the unabated rise in greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting likely impacts of climate change, such as altered ecosystems, weather extremes and risks to society, remains an urgent, critical challenge for the global community. One way that people from the developed world should look at climate change is to understand that for the most part the developed world caused it, while benefiting from early industrialization.