Report on sustainable development goals for the West Africa subregion

Abstract

One of the key commitments of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) was the compelling need for elaborating sustainable development goals (SDGs) because of their potential usefulness for pursuing focused and coherent action on sustainable development at global, regional, national and local levels. Among other things, SDGs are intended to address and incorporate in a balanced way all three dimensions of sustainable development (i.e. economic, social and environmental) and their inter-linkages without diverting focus or effort from achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The present report Identifies and analyses priority sustainable development issues and challenges in the subregion; it also analyses and articulates key priority areas/issues of sustainable development for West Africa to inform the formulation of SDGs. The report also proposes SDGs as well as related targets and indicators for the subregion.