What are they?
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for ensuring that the human rights of every person on the planet are met. There are eight goals consisting of 21 targets and are measured by a variety of indicators.
Follow this link for further information on the Millennium Development Goals
How can your project contribute? The ILCB program and its grants focus on projects that attempt to fulfill the seventh millennium development goal and its targets.
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Target 9
Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources
Target 10
Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
Target 11
Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers In particular your project could contribute towards these targets directly or through research in these areas by focusing on sustainable development, biodiversity: reversing the loss of environmental resources and safe water access.
What can young people do?
Research into the biodiversity of a local area, and developing knowledge of the area is essential for ensuring its conservation.
“Given that biodiversity underpins the provision of ecosystem services, which in turn affects human well-being, long term sustainable achievement of the MDGs requires that biodiversity loss is controlled as part of MDG7” (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 200a 15).
Local management of biodiversity can not only help reduce its loss but also enhance sustainable development indirectly, through initiating cash income, small enterprises, jobs, food security, water and soil fertility and empowering the community.
See the 2007 IIED Environment for the MDGs report for more information.
“Achieving a healthy, sustainable environment first requires understanding the drivers of environmental change, assessing the state of the environment and identifying people’s dependence on it, and identifying the obstacles to ameliorating environmental degradation.”
Conservation research is integral to developing this understanding and so supports the MDGs directly.
Research and developments in science and technology are essential for improving the understanding and monitoring of the state of the environment and by developing means to mitigate environmental degradation.
Look at the UN Millennium Project website or the Wildlife Conservation Society's website for information on how conserving biodiversity helps towards achieving the MDGs.
For suggestions about what you can personally do to help combat biodiversity loss and meet MDG 7 see here...
You can search for reports on field research projects led by students relevant to the MDG via our database of 5,000 field research and expedition reports