The ninth global goal is to build resilient infrastructure and promote sustainable industrialization. While reaching this goal includes overcoming numerous challenges, the global community is on a good path to improve communication infrastructure and reduce CO2 emissions in the course of industrial production. There is still hope that SDG 9 will be realized until the SDGs are due in 2030
Video Transcript
For the ninth sustainable development goal, the United Nations focuses on building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive, sustainable industrialization, and fostering innovation.While moving towards a sustainable world, we want to protect against economic stagnation and reduce as much as possible the economic inequalities between nations. SDG 9 will help make this the case.
Increasing the spread of infrastructure, like regional and international transport routes, is very important for economic development, since economies grow through increases in the exchanges of goods and services. We want to make sure that the barriers to trade are low and the efficiency with which trade is carried out is maximised. Growing infrastructure also entails increasing access of people living in remote areas to all-access roads, so that they are better able to travel, and participate in the economy.
This increase in infrastructure extends especially to industry, since ameliorating industry infrastructure to make it more sustainable will “increase resource-use efficiency and promote more wide-spread adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes.”
If industry is built on a sustainable backbone, then it can be encouraged to expand, so as to provide employment and goods worldwide. Increasing the access of small-scale industry to financial services and increasing their integration into the supply chain and markets would also be a huge step towards more sustainable, stable industry practices.
A valuable way of moving forward this sustainable industrialization will be for the international community to again come together to offer financial, technical, and technological support to developing countries, so that they are better able to reach a level of sustainability on par with other developed nations.
Globally, we all stand to benefit from an increase in research towards sustainable technologies. Encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of researchers working on sustainable tech will help ensure that we have the means to build up our infrastructure and industry.
The last way outlined by the UN to promote sustainable industry is by increasing access to communication technologies, like mobile phone service and internet, whose role in empowering people to educate themselves, reach out, and achieve new things, should not be understated.
As for where we are now, unfortunately both the share of GDP and the share of employment attributed to manufacturing has been on the decline globally, which is a serious hindrance to meeting the goals of SDG 9 by 2030.
However, CO2 emissions from manufacturing have declined by more than 20% since 2000, and the number of researchers per one million people as increased from 800 in 2000 to 1,600 in 2016, although one should note that this increase has not affected every region, like in sub saharan africa, where there are only 91 researchers per a million people.
Concerning communication infrastructure, there is more good news: as of 2019, an estimated 96% of people were covered by at least 2G cell service, and though access to wifi is not as widespread, over half of the world’s population uses the internet today.
Industry and manufacturing has been hit hard by Covid-19, so more efforts are needed to make up for the negative effects of the economic downturn and to meet the goals of SDG 9 by 2030.