title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine was cast as a photojournalist in a short-lived television sitcom, "Shirley's World" (1971–1972), co-produced by Sheldon Leonard and ITC and shot in the United Kingdom. Her documentary film "" (1975), co-directed with Claudia Weill, concentrates on the experiences of women in China. It was nominated for the year's Documentary Feature Oscar. In 1976 MacLaine appeared in a series of concerts at the London Palladium and New York's Palace Theatre. The latter of these was released as the acclaimed live album "Shirley MacLaine Live at the Palace". Co-starring with Anne Bancroft in "The Turning Point" (1977), MacLaine portrayed a retired ballerina much like herself; she was nominated for an Oscar as the Best Actress in a Leading Role. In 1978, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In 1979 she starred alongside Peter Sellers in Hal Ashby's satirical film "Being There". The film revolves around Chance (Sellers), a simpleminded, sheltered gardener, who becomes an unlikely trusted advisor to a powerful businessman and an insider in Washington politics, after his wealthy old boss dies. The film received widespread acclaim with Roger Ebert writing that he admired the film "for having the guts to take this totally weird concept and push it to its ultimate comic conclusion". Despite not receiving an Academy Award nomination, MacLaine received a British Academy Film Award, and Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In 1980, MacLaine starred in "A Change of Seasons" (1980) alongside Anthony Hopkins. The two famously did not get along with each other and the film was not a success due to what critics faulted as the screenplay. MacLaine however did receive positive notices from critics. Vincent Canby wrote in his "The New York Times" review that the film "exhibits no sense of humor and no appreciation for the ridiculous … the screenplay [is] often dreadful … the only appealing performance is Miss MacLaine's, and she's too good to be true. "A Change of Seasons" does prove one thing, though. A farce about characters who've been freed of their conventional obligations quickly becomes aimless."


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In 1983, MacLaine starred in James L. Brooks's comedy-drama film "Terms of Endearment" (1983) playing Debra Winger's mother.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: The film focuses on the strained relationship between mother and daughter over 30 years. The film also starred Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, and John Lithgow. The film was a major critical and commercial success, grossing $108.4 million at the domestic box office and becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 1983. The film received a leading eleven nominations at the 56th Academy Awards, and won five including Best Picture. MacLaine earned her first Academy Award for her performance.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine has continued to star in major films, such as the family southern drama "Steel Magnolias" (1989) directed by Herbert Ross and also starring with Sally Field, Julia Roberts, and Dolly Parton. The film focuses around a bond that a group of women share in a small-town Southern community, and how they cope with the death of a loved one. The film was a box office success earning $96.8 million off a budget of $15 million. MacLaine received a British Academy Film Award for her performance. She starred in Mike Nichols' film "Postcards from the Edge" (1990), with Meryl Streep, playing a fictionalized version of Debbie Reynolds from a screenplay by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher. Fisher wrote the screenplay based on her book. MacLaine received another Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine continued to act in films such as "Used People" (1992), with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates; "Guarding Tess" (1994), with Nicolas Cage; "Mrs. Winterbourne" (1996), with Ricki Lake and Brendan Fraser; "The Evening Star" (1996); "Rumor Has It…"(2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston;" In Her Shoes" (also 2005), with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette; and" Closing the Ring" (2007), directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer. She would later reunite with Plummer in the 2014 comedy film "Elsa & Fred" directed by Michael Radford. In 2000, she made her feature-film directorial debut, and starred in "Bruno", which was released to video as "The Dress Code". In 2011 MacLaine starred in Richard Linklater's dark comedy film "Bernie" alongside Jack Black, and Matthew McConaughey.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine has also appeared in numerous television projects, including an autobiographical miniseries based upon the book "Out on a Limb"; "The Salem Witch Trials"; "These Old Broads" written by Carrie Fisher and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Joan Collins. In 2009, she starred in "Coco Before Chanel", a Lifetime production based on the life of Coco Chanel which earned her Primetime Emmy Award, and Golden Globe Award nominations. She appeared in the third and fourth seasons of the acclaimed British drama "Downton Abbey" as Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham (played by Elizabeth McGovern), and Harold Levinson (played by Paul Giamatti) in 2012–2013.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In 2016, MacLaine starred in "Wild Oats" with Jessica Lange. She starred in the live-action family film "The Little Mermaid", based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, in 2018. In 2022, she returned to the small screen in the series "Only Murders in the Building".


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker from 1954 until their divorce in 1982; they have a daughter, Sachi. Their daughter has said that, when she was in her late twenties, her mother revealed her belief that an astronaut named Paul was Sachi's real father, not Steve Parker.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In April 2011, while promoting her new book, "I'm Over All That", she revealed to Oprah Winfrey that she had had an open relationship with her husband. MacLaine also told Winfrey that she often fell for the leading men she worked with, the exceptions being Jack Lemmon ("The Apartment", "Irma la Douce") and Jack Nicholson ("Terms of Endearment"). MacLaine also had long-running affairs with Lord Mountbatten whom she met in the 1960s, and Australian politician and two-time Liberal leader Andrew Peacock.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine has also gotten into feuds with such notable co-stars as Anthony Hopkins ("A Change of Seasons"), who said that "she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with," and Debra Winger ("Terms of Endearment").


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine has claimed that, in a previous life in Atlantis, she was the brother to a 35,000-year-old spirit named Ramtha channeled by American mystic teacher and author J. Z. Knight.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: She has a strong interest in spirituality and metaphysics, the central theme of some of her best-selling books, including "Out on a Limb" and "Dancing in the Light". She has undertaken such forms of spiritual exploration as walking the Way of St. James, working with Chris Griscom, and practicing Transcendental Meditation.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: Her well-known interest in New Age spirituality has also made its way into several of her films. In Albert Brooks's romantic comedy "Defending Your Life" (1991), the recently deceased lead characters, played by Brooks and Meryl Streep, are astonished to find MacLaine introducing their past lives in the "Past Lives Pavilion". In "Postcards from the Edge" (1990), MacLaine sings a version of "I'm Still Here", with customized lyrics created for her by composer Stephen Sondheim. One of the lyrics was changed to "I'm feeling transcendental – am I here?" In the 2001 television movie "These Old Broads", MacLaine's character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: She has an interest in UFOs, and gave numerous interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox news channels on the subject during 2007–08. In her book "Sage-ing While Age-ing" (2007), she described alien encounters and witnessing a Washington, D.C. UFO incident in the 1950s. On an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in April 2011, MacLaine stated that she and her neighbor observed numerous UFO incidents at her New Mexico ranch for extended periods of time.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: Along with her brother, Warren Beatty, MacLaine used her celebrity status in instrumental roles as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern's campaign for president in 1972. That year, she wrote the book "McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs". She appeared at her brother's concerts Four for McGovern and Together for McGovern, and she joined with Sid Bernstein to produce the woman-focused Star-Spangled Women for McGovern–Shriver variety show at Madison Square Garden. So much of her time was spent away from acting in 1972 that her talent agent threatened to quit; she turned down film projects and spent $250,000 of her own money on political activism, .


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: MacLaine is godmother to journalist Jackie Kucinich, daughter of former Democratic U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: On February 7, 2013, Penguin Group USA published Sachi Parker's autobiography "Lucky Me: My Life With – and Without – My Mom, Shirley MacLaine". MacLaine has called the book "virtually all fiction".


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In 2015, she sparked criticism for her comments on Jews, Christians, and Stephen Hawking. In particular she claimed that victims of the Holocaust were experiencing the results of their own karma, and suggested that Hawking subconsciously caused himself to develop ALS as a means to focus better on physics.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In 1959 MacLaine sued Hal Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that has been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.


title: Shirley MacLaine

text: In 1966, MacLaine sued Twentieth Century-Fox for breach of contract when the studio reneged on its agreement to star MacLaine in a film version of the Broadway musical "Bloomer Girl" based on the life of Amelia Bloomer, a mid-nineteenth century feminist, suffragist, and abolitionist, that was to be filmed in Hollywood. Instead, Fox gave MacLaine one week to accept their offer of the female dramatic lead in the Western "Big Country, Big Man" to be filmed in Australia. The case was decided in MacLaine's favor, and affirmed on appeal by the California Supreme Court in 1970; the case is often cited in law-school textbooks as a major example of employment-contract law.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: Jennifer Maria Syme (December 7, 1972 – April 2, 2001) was an American actress, personal assistant and record company executive. She was in a relationship with actor Keanu Reeves that began in 1998 and ended in early 2000, following the stillbirth of their daughter. The couple reunited in 2001. Syme died at the age of 28 in an automobile accident on April 2, 2001.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: Syme was born in Pico Rivera, California, and was raised in Laguna Beach. Her parents were Maria St. John and Charles Syme, a retired California highway patrol officer, and they divorced some time after Syme was born.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: When Syme was about to start high school, she and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where Syme developed a passion for moviemaking and especially for David Lynch's films. Actor and filmmaker Scott Coffey said that Syme was 16 years old when she walked into Lynch's office. "She was a huge fan and wanted to do anything on "Twin Peaks"", Coffey said. Syme landed a job at Lynch's company, Asymmetrical Productions, where she started as an intern and ended up working for five years. She introduced Lynch to many of the musicians he used in his projects, and according to Coffey, she had a huge influence on the music in the 1997 film "Lost Highway".


title: Jennifer Syme

text: Syme also did some acting, and Scott Coffey directed her in five independent short films, the last one, "Ellie Parker", was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2001. Syme later joined the staff of a music label. She was also a personal assistant to guitarist Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction and, later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: In 1997, Syme made her film debut in a small role credited as "junkie girl" in David Lynch's "Lost Highway".


title: Jennifer Syme

text: Syme had a small role credited as "casting chick" in Scott Coffey's film "Ellie Parker", released in 2005, reprising the role she played in the 2001 short film of the same title.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: At the time of her death in 2001, Syme had enrolled in a film-supervision course at UCLA, and was working as a record company executive.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: According to reports, Syme met actor Keanu Reeves in 1998 at a party thrown for Reeves's rock band, Dogstar, and they started dating. However, Syme's mother, Maria St. John, disputed the reports and said the two had known each other for a decade, and that she was with Syme when she met Reeves, and it was not at a party.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: On December 24, 1999, after eight months of pregnancy, she gave birth to her child with Reeves, who was stillborn. Syme's and Reeves's grief over the loss put a strain on their relationship, which ended several weeks later. They remained close friends after their break up and were back together in 2001.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: St. John said that Syme became very depressed when her grandfather, Alfonso Diaz, died in March 2001. She even ended up in the hospital for the first time since her baby had died.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: Marilyn Manson mentioned Syme and how she helped him work with director David Lynch in his 1998 memoir "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell", and later depicted her in a painting called "A Mother Without a Daughter and a Daughter Without a Mother (In Memory of Jen)".


title: Jennifer Syme

text: On the night of April 1, 2001, Syme attended a party at the home of musician Marilyn Manson. After being driven home by another party guest shortly before dawn, she left her home, reportedly to return to the party. She drove her Jeep Grand Cherokee into a row of parked cars on Cahuenga Boulevard in Los Angeles. She was partially ejected from the vehicle and died instantly. She was 28 years old. Keanu Reeves, Dave Navarro, Scott Coffey, Anthrax's guitarist Scott Ian, and David Lynch acted as pallbearers at Syme's funeral, who was eulogized to the sound of Barbra Streisand's "Higher Ground" and Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings" as Lynch screened a series of snapshots from Syme's life at the Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills. She was buried next to her daughter at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. David Lynch dedicated his 2001 film "Mulholland Drive" to Syme in the closing credits.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: An investigation into the collision found that Syme was not wearing a seatbelt and was intoxicated at the time of the collision. Police found two rolled-up dollar bills that contained a white, powdery substance, and two bottles of prescription drugs: a muscle relaxant and an anticonvulsant. Syme's mother told police her daughter had recently sought treatment for back pain from an earlier automobile collision, and for depression stemming from her daughter's stillbirth.


title: Jennifer Syme

text: While Syme and Keanu Reeves had broken up shortly after the stillbirth of their daughter, Reeves told investigators that they were back together. On April 1, 2001, they were brunching together at Crepes on Cole in San Francisco. The next day, Reeves called the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office and asked, according to Lt. Mac Willie, "if Jen Syme was there."


title: Jennifer Syme

text: In April 2002, Syme's mother, Maria St. John, sued Marilyn Manson for wrongful death, for giving Syme "various quantities of an illegal controlled substance" and for "instructing [Syme] to operate a motor vehicle in her incapacitated condition". Manson denied responsibility, stating that the lawsuit was "completely without merit". The case was dismissed in May 2003.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked objectives designed to serve as a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future". The goals are: No poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, Reduced Inequality, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, Life Below Water, Life On Land, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, Partnerships for the Goals. The SDGs emphasize the interconnected environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development by putting sustainability at their center.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The SDGs were formulated in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) as part of the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which sought to create a future global development framework to succeed the Millennium Development Goals, which ended that year. They were formally articulated and adopted in a UNGA Resolution called the 2030 Agenda, known colloquially as Agenda 2030. On 6 July 2017, the SDGs were made more "actionable" by a UNGA resolution that identifies specific targets for each goal and provides indicators to measure progress. Most targets are to be achieved by 2030, although some have no end date.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There are cross-cutting issues and synergies between the different goals; for example, for SDG 13 on climate action, the IPCC sees robust synergies with SDGs 3 (health), 7 (clean energy), 11 (cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production) and 14 (oceans). Conversely, critics and observers have also identified trade-offs between the goals,such as between ending hunger and promoting environmental sustainability. Other concerns include there being too many goals (resulting in compounding trade-offs), weak emphasis on environmental sustainability, and difficulties with tracking qualitative indicators.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The SDGs are monitored by the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, an annual forum under the auspices of the United Nations Economic and Social Council. However, it has so far failed to act as an orchestrator to promote system-wide coherence due to a lack of political leadership owing to divergent national interests. To facilitate monitoring of progress on SDG implementation, the online "SDG Tracker" was launched in June 2018 to present all available data across all indicators. The COVID-19 pandemic had serious negative impacts on all 17 SDGs in 2020; a scientific assessment released in 2022 determined that the world is not on track to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and concluded the SDGs have so far had only limited political effects in global, national and local governance.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: On 25 September 2015, the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda titled "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development". This agenda has 92 paragraphs. Paragraph 59 outlines the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the associated 169 targets and 232 indicators.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The SDGs were an outcome from a UN conference that was not criticized by any major non-governmental organization (NGO). Instead, the SDGs received broad support from many NGOs.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The lists of targets and indicators for each of the 17 SDGs was published in a UN resolution in July 2017. Each goal typically has 812 targets, and each target has between one and four indicators used to measure progress toward reaching the targets. The targets are either "outcome" targets (circumstances to be attained) or "means of implementation" targets. The latter targets were introduced late in the process of negotiating the SDGs to address the concern of some Member States about how the SDGs were to be achieved. Goal 17 is wholly about how the SDGs will be achieved.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The numbering system of targets is as follows: "Outcome targets" use numbers, whereas "means of implementation targets" use lower case letters. For example, SDG 6 has a total of 8 targets. The first six are outcome targets and are labeled Targets 6.1 to 6.6. The final two targets are "means of implementation targets" and are labeled as Targets 6.a and 6.b.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) website provides a current official indicator list which includes all updates until the 51st session Statistical Commission in March 2020.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The indicators were classified into three tiers based on their level of methodological development and the availability of data at the global level. Tier 1 and Tier 2 are indicators that are conceptually clear, have an internationally established methodology, and data are regularly produced by at least some countries. Tier 3 indicators had no internationally established methodology or standards. The global indicator framework was adjusted so that Tier 3 indicators were either abandoned, replaced or refined. As of 17 July 2020, there were 231 unique indicators.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The indicator framework was comprehensively reviewed at the 51st session of the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2020. It will be reviewed again in 2025. At the 51st session of the Statistical Commission (held in New York City from 3–6 March 2020) a total of 36 changes to the global indicator framework were proposed for the Commission's consideration. Some indicators were replaced, revised or deleted. Between 15 October 2018 and 17 April 2020, other changes were made to the indicators. Yet their measurement continues to be fraught with difficulties.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Many goals build on existing agreements and are integral parts of other political processes, such as international agreements on biodiversity, climate, oceans or standards and programs set by the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization and so forth.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 1 is to: "End poverty in all its forms everywhere". Achieving SDG 1 would end extreme poverty globally by 2030. A study published in September 2020 found that poverty increased by 7 per cent in just a few months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even though it had been steadily decreasing for the last 20 years.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 2 is to: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture". Globally, 1 in 9 people are undernourished, the vast majority of whom live in developing countries. Under nutrition causes wasting or severe wasting of 52 million children worldwide. It contributes to nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five – 3.1 million children per year.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 3 is to: "Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages". Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common causes of child and maternal mortality. Between 2000 and 2016, the worldwide under-five mortality rate decreased by 47 percent (from 78 deaths per 1,000 live births to 41 deaths per 1,000 live births). Still, the number of children dying under age five is very high: 5.6 million in 2016.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: A 2018 study in the journal "Nature" found that while "nearly all African countries demonstrated improvements for children under 5 years old for stunting, wasting, and underweight... much, if not all of the continent will fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target—to end malnutrition by 2030".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 4 is to: "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all". Major progress has been made in access to education, specifically at the primary school level, for both boys and girls. The number of out-of-school children has almost halved from 112 million in 1997 to 60 million in 2014. In terms of the progress made, global participation in tertiary education reached 224 million in 2018, equivalent to a gross enrollment ratio of 38%.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 5 is to: "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls". In 2020, representation by women in single or lower houses of national parliament reached 25 per cent, up slightly from 22 per cent in 2015. Women now have better access to decision-making positions at the local level, holding 36 per cent of elected seats in local deliberative bodies, based on data from 133 countries and areas. Whilst female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is becoming less common, at least 200 million girls and women have been subjected to this harmful practice.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 6 is to: "Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all". The eight targets are measured by 11 indicators. The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) of World Health Organisation WHO And United Nations International Children's Emergency fund UNICEF reported in 2017 that 4.5 billion people currently do not have safely managed sanitation. Also in 2017, only 71 per cent of the global population used safely managed drinking water, and 2.2 billion persons were still without safely managed drinking water. With regards to water stress: "In 2017, Central and Southern Asia and Northern Africa registered very high water stress – defined as the ratio of fresh water withdrawn to total renewable freshwater resources – of more than 70 per cent". Official development assistance (ODA) disbursements to the water sector increased to $9 billion in 2018. Evidence shows that both supply- and demand-side interventions financed by aid can contribute to promoting access to water, but consistent long-term investments are needed.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 7 is to: "Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all". Progress in expanding access to electricity has been made in several countries, notably India, Bangladesh, and Kenya. The global population without access to electricity decreased to about 840 million in 2017 from 1.2 billion in 2010 (sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the largest access deficit). Renewable energy accounted for 17.5% of global total energy consumption in 2016. Of the three end uses of renewables [electricity, heat, and transport) the use of renewables grew fastest with respect to electricity. Between 2018 and 2030, the annual average investment will need to reach approximately $55 billion to expand energy access, about $700 billion to increase renewable energy and $600 billion to improve energy efficiency.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 8 is to: "Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all". Over the past five years, economic growth in least developed countries has been increasing at an average rate of 4.3 per cent. In 2018, the global growth rate of real GDP per capita was 2 per cent. In addition, the rate for least developed countries was 4.5 per cent in 2018 and 4.8 per cent in 2019, less than the 7 per cent growth rate targeted in SDG 8. In 2019, 22 per cent of the world's young people were not in employment, education or training, a figure that has hardly changed since 2005. Addressing youth employment means finding solutions with and for young people who are seeking a decent and productive job. Such solutions should address both supply, i.e. education, skills development and training, and demand. In 2018, the number of women engaged in the labor force was put at 48 per cent while that of men was 75 per cent.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 9 is to: "Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation". In 2019, 14% of the world's workers were employed in manufacturing activities. This percentage has not changed much since 2000. The share of manufacturing employment was the largest in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (18 percent) and the smallest in sub-Saharan Africa (6 percent). The intensity of global carbon dioxide emissions has declined by nearly one quarter since 2000, showing a general decoupling of carbon dioxide emissions from GDP growth. As at 2020, nearly the entire world population lives in an area covered by a mobile network. Millions of people are still unable to access the internet due to cost, coverage, and other reasons. It is estimated that just 53% of the world's population are currently internet users.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 10 is to: "Reduce income inequality within and among countries". In 73 countries during the period 2012–2017, the bottom 40 per cent of the population saw its incomes grow. Still, in all countries with data, the bottom 40 per cent of the population received less than 25 per cent of the overall income or consumption. Women are more likely to be victims of discrimination than men. Among those with disabilities, 3 in 10 personally experienced discrimination, with higher levels still among women with disabilities. The main grounds of discrimination mentioned by these women was not the disability itself, but religion, ethnicity and sex, pointing to the urgent need for measures to tackle multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. In 2019, 54 per cent of countries have a comprehensive set of policy measures to facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 11 is to: "Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable". The number of slum dwellers reached more than 1 billion in 2018, or 24 per cent of the urban population. The number of people living in urban slums is highest in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia. In 2019, only half of the world's urban population had convenient access to public transport, defined as living within 500 metres' walking distance from a low-capacity transport system (such as a bus stop) and within 1 km of a high-capacity transport system (such as a railway). In the period 1990–2015, most urban areas recorded a general increase in the extent of built-up area per person.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 12 is to: "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns". By 2019, 79 countries and the European Union have reported on at least one national policy instrument to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns. This was done to work towards the implementation of the "10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns". Global fossil fuel subsidies in 2018 were $400 billion. This was double the estimated subsidies for renewables and is detrimental to the task of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: To ensure that plastic products are more sustainable, thus reducing plastic waste, changes such as decreasing usage and increasing the circularity of the plastic economy are expected to be required. An increase in domestic recycling and a reduced reliance on the global plastic waste trade are other actions that might help meet the goal.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 13 is to: "Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts by regulating emissions and promoting developments in renewable energy". Accelerating climate actions and progress towards a just transition is essential to reducing climate risks and addressing sustainable development priorities, including water, food and human security (robust evidence, high agreement). Accelerating action in the context of sustainable development involves not only expediting the pace of change (speed) but also addressing the underlying drivers of vulnerability and high emissions (quality and depth of change) and enabling diverse communities, sectors, stakeholders, regions and cultures (scale and breadth of change) to participate in just, equitable and inclusive processes that improve the health and well-being of people and the planet.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 14 is to: "Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development". The current efforts to protect oceans, marine environments and small-scale fishers are not meeting the need to protect the resources. One of the key drivers of global overfishing is illegal fishing. It threatens marine ecosystems, puts food security and regional stability at risk, and is linked to major human rights violations and even organized crime. Increased ocean temperatures and oxygen loss act concurrently with ocean acidification and constitute the "deadly trio" of climate change pressures on the marine environment.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: One indicator (14.1.1b) under Goal 14 specifically relates to reducing impacts from marine plastic pollution.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 15 is to: "Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss". The proportion of forest area fell, from 31.9 per cent of total land area in 2000 to 31.2 per cent in 2020, representing a net loss of nearly 100 million ha of the world's forests. This was due to decreasing forest area decreased in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South-Eastern Asia, driven by deforestation for agriculture. Desertification affects as much as one-sixth of the world's population, 70% of all drylands, and one-quarter of the total land area of the world. It also leads to spreading poverty and the degradation of billion hectares of cropland. A report in 2020 stated that globally, the species extinction risk has worsened by about 10 per cent over the past three decades.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 16 is to: "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels". With more than a quarter of children under 5 unregistered worldwide as of 2015, about 1 in 5 countries will need to accelerate progress to achieve universal birth registration by 2030. Data from 38 countries over the past decade suggest that high-income countries have the lowest prevalence of bribery (an average of 3.7 per cent), while lower-income countries have high levels of bribery when accessing public services (22.3 per cent).


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDG 17 is to: "Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development". This goal has 19 outcome targets and 24 indicators. Increasing international cooperation is seen as vital to achieving each of the 16 previous goals. Goal 17 is included to assure that countries and organizations cooperate instead of compete. Developing multi-stakeholder partnerships to share knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial support is seen as critical to overall success of the SDGs. The goal encompasses improving north–south and South-South cooperation, and public-private partnerships which involve civil societies are specifically mentioned.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: With US$5 trillion to $7 trillion in annual investment required to achieve the SDGs, total official development assistance reached US$147.2 billion in 2017. This, although steady, is below the set target. In 2016, six countries met the international target to keep official development assistance at or above 0.7 percent of gross national income. Humanitarian crises brought on by conflict or natural disasters have continued to demand more financial resources and aid. Even so, many countries also require official development assistance to encourage growth and trade.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: To achieve sustainable development, three aspects or dimensions need to come together: The economic, socio-political, and environmental dimensions are all critically important and interdependent. Progress will require multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research across all three sectors. This proves difficult when major governments fail to support it. Sustainable development can enhance sectoral integration and social inclusion (robust evidence, high agreement). Inclusion merits attention because equity within and across countries is critical to transitions that are not simply rapid but also sustainable and just. Resource shortages, social divisions, inequitable distributions of wealth, poor infrastructure and limited access to advanced technologies can constrain the options and capacities for developing countries to achieve sustainable and just transitions (medium evidence, high agreement) {17.1.1.2}.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: According to the UN, the target is to reach the community farthest behind. Commitments should be transformed into effective actions requiring a correct perception of target populations. Data or information must address all vulnerable groups such as children, elderly folks, persons with disabilities, refugees, indigenous peoples, migrants, and internally-displaced persons.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Cross cutting issues include for example gender equality, education, culture and health. These are just some examples of various interlinkages inherent in the SDGs.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The widespread consensus is that progress on all of the SDGs will be stalled if women's empowerment and gender equality are not prioritized, and treated holistically. The SDGs look to policy makers as well as private sector executives and board members to work toward gender equality. Statements from diverse sources, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), UN Women and the World Pensions Forum, have noted that investments in women and girls have positive impacts on economies. National and global development investments in women and girls often exceed their initial scope.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Gender equality is mainstreamed throughout the SDG framework by ensuring that as much sex-disaggregated data as possible are collected.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Education for sustainable development (ESD) is explicitly recognized in the SDGs as part of Target 4.7 of the SDG on education. UNESCO promotes the Global Citizenship Education (GCED) as a complementary approach. At the same time, it is important to emphasize ESD's importance for all the other 16 SDGs. With its overall aim to develop cross-cutting sustainability competencies in learners, ESD is an essential contribution to all efforts to achieve the SDGs. This would enable individuals to contribute to sustainable development by promoting societal, economic and political change as well as by transforming their own behavior.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Culture is explicitly referenced in SDG 11 Target 4 ("Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage"). However, culture is seen as a cross-cutting theme because it impacts several SDGs. For example, culture plays a role in SDGs related to:


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: SDGs 1 to 6 directly address health disparities, primarily in developing countries. These six goals address key issues in Global Public Health, Poverty, Hunger and Food security, Health, Education, Gender equality and women's empowerment, and water and sanitation. Public health officials can use these goals to set their own agenda and plan for smaller scale initiatives for their organizations. These goals are designed to lessen the burden of disease and inequality faced by developing countries and lead to a healthier future.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The links between the various sustainable development goals and public health are numerous and well established:


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Synergies amongst the SDGs are "the good antagonists of trade-offs".With regards to SDG 13 on climate action, the IPCC sees robust synergies particularly for the SDGs 3 (health), 7 (clean energy), 11 (cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production) and 14 (oceans).


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: To meet SDG 13 and other SDGs, sustained long-term investment in green innovation is required: to decarbonize the physical capital stock – energy, industry, and transportation infrastructure – and ensure its resilience to a changing future climate; to preserve and enhance natural capital – forests, oceans, and wetlands; and to train people to work in a climate-neutral economy.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: A commentary in "The Economist" in 2015 argued that 169 targets for the SDGs is too many, describing them as "sprawling, misconceived" and "a mess" compared to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goals are said to ignore local context. All other 16 goals might be contingent on achieving SDG 1, ending poverty, which should have been at the top of a very short list of goals.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The trade-offs among the 17 SDGs are a difficult barrier to sustainability and might even prevent their realization. For example these are three difficult trade-offs to consider: "How can ending hunger be reconciled with environmental sustainability? (SDG targets 2.3 and 15.2) How can economic growth be reconciled with environmental sustainability? (SDG targets 9.2 and 9.4) How can income inequality be reconciled with economic growth? (SDG targets 10.1 and 8.1)."


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Scholars have criticized that the Sustainable Development Goals fail to recognize that planetary, people and prosperity concerns are all part of one earth system, and that the protection of planetary integrity should not be a means to an end, but an end in itself. A principal concern is that the SDGs remain fixated on the idea that economic growth is foundational to achieve all pillars of sustainable development. Doubts about the steering qualities of the SDGs towards environmental protection arise not only from their ability to steer, but also from the fact that they do not seem to prioritize environmental protection in the first place.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There is no overarching environmental or "planetary" goal. Instead, environmental protection is left to a cluster of environment-focused SDGs down the list at Goal 13, 14 and 15. While including these explicit environmental goals might advance environmental protection, some also argue that Goals 13, 14 and 15 could compartmentalize environmental issues (climate, land and oceans). The goals do not pursue planetary integrity as such, but do recognize the importance of protecting environmental aspects such as climate, land and the oceans.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The SDGs may simply maintain the "status quo" and fall short of delivering on the ambitious development agenda. The current status quo has been described as "separating human wellbeing and environmental sustainability, failing to change governance and to pay attention to trade-offs, root causes of poverty and environmental degradation, and social justice issues".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Continued global economic growth of 3 percent (Goal 8) may not be reconcilable with ecological sustainability goals, because the required rate of absolute global eco-economic decoupling is far higher than any country has achieved in the past. Anthropologists have suggested that, instead of targeting aggregate GDP growth, the goals could target resource use per capita, with "substantial reductions in high‐income nations."


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Environmental constraints and planetary boundaries are underrepresented within the SDGs. For instance, the way the current SDGs are structured leads to a negative correlation between environmental sustainability and SDGs. This means, as the environmental sustainability side of the SDGs is underrepresented, the resource security for all, particularly for lower-income populations, is put at risk. This is not a criticism of the SDGs "per se", but a recognition that their environmental conditions are still weak.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The SDGs have been criticized for their inability to protect biodiversity. They could unintentionally promote environmental destruction in the name of sustainable development.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Scientists have proposed several ways to address the weaknesses regarding environmental sustainability in the SDGs:


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There are concerns about the ethical orientation of the SDGs: their focus seems to remain on "growth and use of resources ... and [it] departs from an individual, not collective, point of view"; and they remain "underpinned by strong (Western) modernist notions of development: sovereignty of humans over their environment (anthropocentricism), individualism, competition, freedom (rights rather than duties), self-interest, belief in the market leading to collective welfare, private property (protected by legal systems), rewards based on merit, materialism, quantification of value, and instrumentalization of labor".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Regarding the targets of the SDGs, there is generally weak evidence linking the "means of implementation" to outcomes. The targets about "means of implementation" (those denoted with a letter, for example, Target 6.a) are imperfectly conceptualized and inconsistently formulated, and tracking their largely qualitative indicators will be difficult.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There is a lack of impact of the SDGs so far, especially in the are of protecting planetary integrity. Some design elements might have been flawed from the start, such as the number of goals, the structure of the goal framework (for example, the non-hierarchical structure), the coherence between the goals, the specificity or measurability of the targets, the language used in the text, and their reliance on neoliberal economic development-oriented sustainable development as their core orientation.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Some argue that the SDGs' focus on sustainable economic development is inevitably detrimental to planetary integrity and justice, which require both limits to economic growth and the removal of ‘developmental’ disparities between the rich and the poor.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2016, the UN ordered an analysis on the reception of the name "the 17 Sustainable Development Goals" with the communication bureau Trollback. It was found out that the word "sustainable" lead to confusion, it made the whole name confusingly long too, so it was rebranded into the "17 Global Goals".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: As part of a larger reform, governments decided to terminate the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and to establish in its place a High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. This new forum was meant to function as a regular meeting place for governments and non-state representatives to assess global progress towards sustainable development. The creation of this overarching institution for sustainability governance was also expected to enhance system-wide coherence in the follow-up and progress reviews under the 2030 Agenda.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) is the annual space for global monitoring of the SDGs, under the auspices of the United Nations economic and Social Council. In July 2020 the meeting took place online for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The theme was "Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development" and a ministerial declaration was adopted.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: High-level progress reports for all the SDGs are published in the form of reports by the United Nations Secretary General. The most recent one is from April 2020.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The literature indicates that the High-level Political Forum has failed to act as an orchestrator to promote system-wide coherence. The reasons for this include its broad and unclear mandate combined with a lack of resources and a lack of political leadership owing to divergent national interests. Attempts to strengthen the role of the HLPF and to harmonize the voluntary reporting system have not found consensus among governments. This reporting system remains a soft peer-learning mechanism of governments that might even lead to uncontested endorsements of national performances if civil society organizations are not able to act as watchdogs in policy implementation.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The online publication SDG-Tracker was launched in June 2018 and presents data across all available indicators. It relies on the Our World in Data database and is also based at the University of Oxford. The publication has global coverage and tracks whether the world is making progress towards the SDGs. It aims to make the data on the 17 goals available and understandable to a wide audience.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The website "allows people around the world to hold their governments accountable to achieving the agreed goals". The SDG-Tracker highlights that the world is currently (early 2019) very far away from achieving the goals.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Global "SDG Index and Dashboards Report" is the first publication to track countries' performance on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The annual publication, co-produced by Bertelsmann Stiftung and SDSN, includes a ranking and dashboards that show key challenges for each country in terms of implementing the SDGs. The publication features trend analysis to show how countries performing on key SDG metrics have changed over recent years in addition to an analysis of government efforts to implement the SDGs.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: A report in 2020 found that due to many economic and social issues, many countries are seeing a major decline in the progress made. In Asia for example, data shows a loss of progress on goals 2,8,10,11, and 15. Recommended approaches to achieve the SDGs are: "Set priorities, focus on harnessing the environmental dimension of the SDGs, understand how the SDGs work as an indivisible system, and look for synergies".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: A scientific assessment released in 2022 reviewed over 3,000 scientific articles, mainly from the social sciences. The review found that the world is not on track to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and concluded that the SDGs have so far had only limited political effects in global, national and local governance since their launch in 2015. The authors also state that the SDGs had some positive effects on actors and institutions. There is some evidence that the Sustainable Development Goals have influenced institutions, policies and debates, from global governance to local politics. While this impact has so far largely been discursive, the goals had some normative and institutional effects as well.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Experiences from the implementation of the SDGs in domestic, regional and international contexts reveal little evidence of steering effects towards advancing planetary integrity. This is because all countries largely prioritize the socio-economic SDGs over environmental ones, following their earlier national development policies. Whatever indirect steering effects the SDGs might have in this respect are merely implied through the environmental goals at the bottom of the list of the SDGs (Goal 14 and 15).


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There is even emerging evidence that the SDGs might have even adverse effects, by providing a "smokescreen of hectic political activity" that blurs a reality of stagnation, dead ends and business-as-usual. In this perspective, the goals could be seen as a legitimizing meta-narrative that helps international organizations, governments and corporations to merely pretend to be taking decisive action to address the concerns of citizens while clinging to the status quo.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 had impacts on all 17 goals. It has become "the worst human and economic crisis in a lifetime". The pandemic threatened progress made in particular for SDG 3 (health), SDG 4 (education), SDG 6 (water and sanitation for all), SDG 10 (reduce inequality) and SDG 17 (partnerships).


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2019 five progress reports on the 17 SDGs were published. Three came from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), one from the Bertelsmann Foundation and one from the European Union. A review of the five reports analyzed which of the 17 Goals were addressed in priority and which ones were left behind. In explanation of the findings, the Basel Institute of Commons and Economics said Biodiversity, Peace and Social Inclusion were "left behind" by quoting the official SDGs motto "Leaving no one behind".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: It has been argued that governments and businesses actively prioritize the social and economic goals over the environmental goals (such as Goal 14 and 15) in both rhetoric and practice.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Implementation of the SDGs started worldwide in 2016. This process can also be called "Localizing the SDGs". In 2019 António Guterres (secretary-general of the United Nations) issued a global call for a "Decade of Action" to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. This decade will last from 2020 to 2030. The secretary general of the UN will convene an annual platform for driving the Decade of Action.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There are four types of actors for implementation of the SDGs: national governments, sub-national authorities, corporations and civil society. All these types of actors are engaged – to differing extents – in implementing the SDGs. Civil society participation and empowerment is routinely promoted as a silver bullet, while not acknowledging the plurality and diverse interests and agendas that exist in this group.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Many governments seem to be committed to the SDGs, and some adjust administrative units or create formal coordinating arrangements. However, such new institutions often seem to reproduce existing structures and priorities. Especially for governments in the Global South with limited fiscal space it is often difficult to reallocate national budgets.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Discursive effects of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals at multiple levels are more dominant, while resource effects are observed the least. Across all actors, however, relationship building is an important motivation for actors to engage with the Sustainable Development Goals. But even with new partnerships, the voluntary nature of the framework makes it easy for incumbent actors to implement the Sustainable Development Goals only in ways that benefit their interests.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The United Nations estimates that for Africa, considering the continent's population growth, yearly funding of $1.3 trillion would be needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa. The International Monetary Fund also estimates that $50 billion may be needed only to cover the expenses of climate adaptation.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Estimates for providing clean water and sanitation for the whole population of all continents have been as high as US$200 billion. The World Bank says that estimates need to be made country by country, and reevaluated frequently over time.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2014, UNCTAD estimated the annual costs to achieving the UN Goals at US$2.5 trillion per year. Another estimate from 2018 (by the Basel Institute of Commons and Economics, that conducts the World Social Capital Monitor) found that to reach all of the SDGs this would require between US$2.5 and $5.0 trillion per year.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There is hardly any evidence that governments significantly reallocate funding to implement the Sustainable Development Goals, neither for national implementation nor international cooperation. The global goals do not seem to have changed public budgets and financial allocation mechanisms in any significant way. Lack of funding could prevent genuine steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals and indicate that the discursive changes that stem from the SDG process will not lead to transformative structural change and policy reform.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2019 António Guterres called for the following priorities with regards to allocation of funds: "a major surge in financing with Member States meeting their official development assistance commitments; fully replenishing Global Funds on Climate and Health; boosting funding for education and other Sustainable Development Goals; supporting innovative forms of financing like Social Impact Bonds; and increasing access to technologies and concessional and green finance for countries most at risk".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Rockefeller Foundation asserts that "The key to financing and achieving the SDGs lies in mobilizing a greater share of the $200+ trillion in annual private capital investment flows toward development efforts, and philanthropy has a critical role to play in catalyzing this shift." Large-scale funders participating in a Rockefeller Foundation-hosted design thinking workshop concluded that "while there is a moral imperative to achieve the SDGs, failure is inevitable if there aren't drastic changes to how we go about financing large scale change".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2017 the UN launched the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development (UN IATF on FfD) that invited to a public dialogue. The top-5 sources of financing for development were estimated in 2018 to be: Real new sovereign debt OECD countries, military expenditures, official increase sovereign debt OECD countries, remittances from expats to developing countries, official development assistance (ODA).


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: There is growing evidence that some corporate actors, including banks and investors, engage and invest in sustainability practices, promote green finance, facilitate large-scale sustainable infrastructure projects or expand their loan portfolios to environmental and social loans. Such practices are often discursively linked to the Sustainable Development Goals. Some studies warn here of "SDG washing" by corporate actors, selective implementation of the goals, and the political risks linked to private investments in the context of continued shortage of public funding.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Capital stewardship is expected to play a crucial part in the progressive advancement of the SDG agenda to "shift the economic system towards sustainable investment by using the SDG framework across all asset classes".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2017, 2018 and early 2019, the World Pensions Council (WPC) held a series of ESG-focused discussions with pension board members (trustees) and senior investment executives from across G20 nations in Toronto, London (with the UK Association of Member-Nominated Trustees, AMNT), Paris and New York – notably on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly. Many pension investment executives and board members confirmed they were in the process of adopting or developing SDG-informed investment processes, with more ambitious investment governance requirements – notably when it comes to climate action, gender equality and social fairness: “they straddle key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including, of course, Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Reduced Inequality (SDG 10) [...] Many pension trustees are now playing for keeps”.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The notion of "SDG Driven Investment" gained further ground amongst institutional investors in the second semester of 2019, notably at the WPC-led G7 Pensions Roundtable held in Biarritz, 26 August 2019, and the Business Roundtable held in Washington, DC, on 19 August 2019.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: UN agencies which are part of the United Nations Development Group decided to support an independent campaign to communicate the new SDGs to a wider audience. This campaign, "Project Everyone," had the support of corporate institutions and other international organizations.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Using the text drafted by diplomats at the UN level, a team of communication specialists developed icons for every goal. They also shortened the title "The 17 Sustainable Development Goals" to "Global Goals/17#GlobalGoals," then ran workshops and conferences to communicate the Global Goals to a global audience.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: An early concern was that 17 goals would be too much for people to grasp and that therefore the SDGs would fail to get a wider recognition. Without wider recognition the necessary momentum to achieve them by 2030 would not be achieved. Concerned with this, British film-maker Richard Curtis started the organization in 2015 called Project Everyone with the aim to bring the goals to everyone on the planet. Curtis approached Swedish designer Jakob Trollbäck who rebranded them as The Global Goals and created the 17 iconic visuals with clear short names as well as a logotype for the whole initiative. The communication system is available for free. In 2018, Jakob Trollbäck and his company (The New Division), went on to extend the communication system to also include the 169 targets that describe how the goals can be achieved.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The benefits of engaging the affected public in decision making that affects their livelihoods, communities, and environment have been widely recognized. The Aarhus Convention is a United Nations convention passed in 2001, explicitly to encourage and promote effective public engagement in environmental decision making. Information transparency related to social media and the engagement of youth are two issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals that the convention has addressed.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2019, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed SDG advocates. The role of the public figures is to raise awareness, inspire greater ambition, and push for faster action on the SDGs. They are:


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Global Goals Week is an annual week-long event in September for action, awareness, and accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals. Its a shared commitment for over 100 partners to ensure quick action on the SDGs by sharing ideas and transformative solutions to global problems. It first took place in 2016. It is often held concurrently with Climate Week NYC.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The annual "Le Temps Presse" festival in Paris utilizes cinema to sensitize the public, especially young people, to the Sustainable Development Goals. The origin of the festival was in 2010 when eight directors produced a film titled "8," which included eight short films, each featuring one of the Millennium Development Goals. After 2.5 million viewers saw "8" on YouTube, the festival was created. It now showcases young directors whose work promotes social, environmental and human commitment. The festival now focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Arctic Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by HF Productions and supported by the SDGs' Partnership Platform. Held for the first time in 2019, the festival is expected to take place every year in September in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 1972, governments met in Stockholm, Sweden, for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment to consider the rights of the family to a healthy and productive environment. In 1983, the United Nations created the World Commission on Environment and Development (later known as the Brundtland Commission), which defined sustainable development as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". In 1992, the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, where the first agenda for Environment and Development, also known as Agenda 21, was developed and adopted.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In 2012, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio+20, was held as a 20-year follow up to UNCED. Colombia proposed the idea of the SDGs at a preparation event for Rio+20 held in Indonesia in July 2011. In September 2011, this idea was picked up by the United Nations Department of Public Information 64th NGO Conference in Bonn, Germany. The outcome document proposed 17 sustainable development goals and associated targets. In the run-up to Rio+20 there was much discussion about the idea of the SDGs. At the Rio+20 Conference, a resolution known as "The Future We Want" was reached by member states. Among the key themes agreed on were poverty eradication, energy, water and sanitation, health, and human settlement.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Rio+20 outcome document mentioned that "at the outset, the OWG [Open Working Group] will decide on its methods of work, including developing modalities to ensure the full involvement of relevant stakeholders and expertise from civil society, Indigenous Peoples, the scientific community and the United Nations system in its work, in order to provide a diversity of perspectives and experience".


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In January 2013, the 30-member UN General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals was established to identify specific goals for the SDGs. The Open Working Group (OWG) was tasked with preparing a proposal on the SDGs for consideration during the 68th session of the General Assembly, September 2013 – September 2014. On 19 July 2014, the OWG forwarded a proposal for the SDGs to the Assembly. After 13 sessions, the OWG submitted their proposal of 8 SDGs and 169 targets to the 68th session of the General Assembly in September 2014. On 5 December 2014, the UN General Assembly accepted the Secretary General's Synthesis Report, which stated that the agenda for the post-2015 SDG process would be based on the OWG proposals.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary-General from 2007 to 2016, has stated in a November 2016 press conference that: "We don't have plan B because there is no planet B." This thought has guided the development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Post-2015 Development Agenda was a process from 2012 to 2015 led by the United Nations to define the future global development framework that would succeed the Millennium Development Goals. The SDGs were developed to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which ended in 2015. The gaps and shortcomings of MDG Goal 8 (To develop a global partnership for development) led to identifying a problematic "donor-recipient" relationship. Instead, the new SDGs favor collective action by all countries.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The UN-led process involved its 193 Member States and global civil society. The resolution is a broad intergovernmental agreement that acts as the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The SDGs build on the principles agreed upon in Resolution A/RES/66/288, entitled "The Future We Want". This was a non-binding document released as a result of Rio+20 Conference held in 2012.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Negotiations on the Post-2015 Development Agenda began in January 2015 and ended in August 2015. The negotiations ran in parallel to United Nations negotiations on financing for development, which determined the financial means of implementing the Post-2015 Development Agenda; those negotiations resulted in adoption of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda in July 2015.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Commonwealth of Australia was one of the 193 countries that adopted the 2030 Agenda in September 2015. Implementation of the agenda is led by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) with different federal government agencies responsible for each of the goals. Australia is not on-track to achieve the SDGs by 2030. Four modelled scenarios based on different development approaches found that the 'Sustainability Transition' scenario could deliver "rapid and balanced progress of 70% towards SDG targets by 2020, well ahead of the business-as-usual scenario (40%)". In 2020, Australia's overall performance in the SDG Index is ranked 37th out of 166 countries (down from 18th out of 34 countries in 2015).


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: 2020) and these were given emphasis while setting the priority areas of the 7FYP such that the achievement of Plan objectives and targets also can contribute towards the achievement of the


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Sustainable development process in Bhutan has a more meaningful purpose than economic growth alone. The nation's holistic goal is the pursuit of Gross National Happiness (GNH), a term coined in 1972 by the Fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, which has the principal guiding philosophy for the long term journey as a nation. Therefore, the SDGs find a natural place within the framework of GNH sharing a common vision of prosperity, peace, and harmony where no one is left behind. Just as GNH is both an ideal to be pursued and a practical tool so too the SDGs inspire and guide sustainable action. Guided by the development paradigm of GNH, Bhutan is committed to achieving the goals of SDGs by 2030 since its implementation in September 2015. In line with Bhutan's commitment to the implementation of the SDGs and sustainable development, Bhutan has participated in the Voluntary National Review in the 2018 High-Level Political Forum. As the country has progressed in its 12th five-year plan (2019–2023), the national goals have been aligned with the SDGs and every agency plays a vital role in its own ways to collectively achieving the committed goals of SDGs.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The Government of India established the NITI Aayog to attain sustainable development goals. In March 2018 Haryana became the first state in India to have its annual budget focused on the attainment of SDG with a 3-year action plan and a 7-year strategy plan to implement sustainable development goals when Captain Abhimanyu, Finance Minister of Government of Haryana, unveiled a annual 2018-19 budget.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Also, NITI Aayog starts the exercise of measuring India and its States’ progress towards the SDGs for 2030, culminating in the development of the first SDG India Index - Baseline Report 2018


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Countries in Africa such as Ethiopia, Angola and South Africa worked with UN Country Teams and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to provide support to create awareness about SDGs among government officers, private sector workers, MPs and the civil society.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In Cape Verde, the government received support from the UNDP to convene an international conference on SDGs in June 2015. This contributed to the worldly discussions on the specific needs of Small Island Developing States in the view of the new global agenda on sustainable development. In the UN country team context, the government received support from UNDP to develop a roadmap (a plan) to place SDGs at the middle of its national development planning processes.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In Liberia, the government received support from UNDP to develop a roadmap to domesticate the AU Agenda 2063 and 2030 Agenda into the country's next national development plan. Outlines from the roadmap are steps to translate the Agenda 2063 and the SDGs into policies, plans and programs whiles considering the country is a Fragile State and applies the New Deal Principles.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Uganda was also claimed to be one of the first countries to develop its 2015/16-2019/20 national development plan in line with SDGs. It was estimated by its government that about 76% of the SDGs targets were reflected in the plan and was adapted to the national context. The UN Country Team was claimed to have supported the government to integrate the SDGs.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In Mauritania, the Ministry for the Economy and Finances received support from the UNDP to convene partners such as NGOs, government agencies, other ministries and the private sector in the discussion for implementing of the SDGs in the country, in the context of the UN Country Team. A national workshop was also supported by the UNDP to provide the methodology and tools for mainstreaming the SDGs into the country's new strategy.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The government of countries such as Togo, Sierra Leone, Madagascar and Uganda were claimed to have volunteered to conduct national reviews of their implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Support from UNDP was received to prepare their respective reports presented at the UN High-Level Political Forum. It was held during 11–20 July 2016 in New York in the United States. This forum was the UN global platform to review and follow up the SDGs and 2030 Agenda. It is said to provide guidance on policy to countries for implementing the goals.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Nigeria is one of the countries that presented its Voluntary National Review (VNR) in 2017 & 2020 on the implementation of the SDGs at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). In 2020, Nigeria ranked 160 on the 2020 world's SDG Index. The government affirmed that Nigeria's current development priorities and objectives are focused on achieving the SDGs. The Lagos SDGs Youth Alliance is another pivotal SDGs Initiative in Nigeria aimed at promoting the involvement of youth in achieving the 2030 Agenda and supporting long-term sustainable development strategy of Lagos state.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Ghana aims to align its development priorities in partnership with CSOs and the private sector to achieve the SDGs in Ghana together.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The World Pensions Forum has observed that the UK and European Union pension investors have been at the forefront of ESG-driven (Environmental, Social and Governance) asset allocation at home and abroad and early adopters of "SDG-centric" investment practices.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: In December 2016 the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran held a special ceremony announcing a national education initiative that was arranged by the UNESCO office in Iran to implement the educational objectives of this global program. The announcement created a stir among politicians and Marja' in the country.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: Lebanon adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. It presented its first Voluntary National Review VNR in 2018 at the High Level Political Forum in New York. A national committee chaired by the Lebanese Prime Minister is leading the work on the SDGs in the country. In 2019, Lebanon's overall performance in the SDG Index ranked 6th out of 21 countries in the Arab region.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: The UK's approach to delivering the Global SDGs is outlined in Agenda 2030: Delivering the Global Goals, developed by the Department for International Development. In 2019, the Bond network analyzed the UK's global progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Bond report highlights crucial gaps where attention and investment are most needed. The report was compiled by 49 organizations and 14 networks and working groups.


title: Sustainable Development Goals

text: 193 governments including the United States ratified the SDGs. However, the UN reported minimal progress after three years within the 15-year timetable of this project. Funding remains trillions of dollars short. The United States stand last among the G20 nations to attain these Sustainable Development Goals and 36th worldwide.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; , 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, "The Fountainhead". In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel "Atlas Shrugged". Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge; she rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism and rejected altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed collectivism, statism, and anarchism. Instead, she supported "laissez-faire" capitalism, which she defined as the system based on recognizing individual rights, including private property rights. Although Rand opposed libertarianism, which she viewed as anarchism, she is often associated with the modern libertarian movement in the United States. In art, Rand promoted romantic realism. She was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and classical liberals.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand's books have sold over 37 million copies as of 2020. Her fiction received mixed reviews from literary critics. Although academic interest in her ideas has grown since her death, academic philosophers have generally ignored or rejected her philosophy because of her polemical approach and lack of methodological rigor. Her writings have politically influenced some right-libertarians and conservatives. The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, to a Russian-Jewish bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg. She was the eldest of three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Borisovna (). She was twelve when the October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin disrupted the life the family had enjoyed previously. Her father's business was confiscated, and the family fled to the city of Yevpatoria in Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. After graduating high school there in June 1921, she returned with her family to Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then named), where they faced desperate conditions, occasionally nearly starving.


title: Ayn Rand

text: When Russian universities were opened to women after the revolution, she was in the first group of women to enroll at Petrograd State University. At 16, she began her studies in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. Along with many other bourgeois students, she was purged from the university shortly before graduating. After complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many of the purged students were reinstated in the university. Rand was among these reinstated students and she completed her studies at the renamed Leningrad State University in October 1924. She then studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For an assignment, Rand wrote an essay about the Polish actress Pola Negri, which became her first published work. By this time, she had decided her professional surname for writing would be "Rand", and she adopted the first name "Ayn" (pronounced ).


title: Ayn Rand

text: In late 1925, Rand was granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago. She departed on January 17, 1926, and arrived in New York City on February 19, 1926. Intent on staying in the United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with her relatives learning English before leaving for Hollywood, California.


title: Ayn Rand

text: In Hollywood, a chance meeting with famed director Cecil B. DeMille led to work as an extra in his film "The King of Kings" and a subsequent job as a junior screenwriter. While working on "The King of Kings", she met an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor; the two married on April 15, 1929. She became a permanent American resident in July 1929 and an American citizen on March 3, 1931. She made several attempts to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they were unable to obtain permission to emigrate.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand's first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay "Red Pawn" to Universal Studios in 1932, although it was never produced. Her courtroom drama "Night of January 16th", first staged in Hollywood in 1934, reopened successfully on Broadway in 1935. Each night, a jury was selected from members of the audience; based on its vote, one of two different endings would be performed.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Her first published novel, the semi-autobiographical "We the Living", was published in 1936. Set in Soviet Russia, it focused on the struggle between the individual and the state. Initial sales were slow, and the American publisher let it go out of print, although European editions continued to sell. She adapted the story as a stage play, but the Broadway production was a failure and closed in less than a week. After the success of her later novels, Rand was able to release a revised version in 1959 that has since sold over three million copies.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand started her next major novel, "The Fountainhead", in December 1935, but took a break from it in 1937 to write her novella "Anthem". The novella presents a vision of a dystopian future world in which totalitarian collectivism has triumphed to such an extent that even the word "I" has been forgotten and replaced with "we". It was published in England in 1938, but Rand could not find an American publisher at that time. As with "We the Living", Rand's later success allowed her to get a revised version published in 1946, which has sold over 3.5 million copies.


title: Ayn Rand

text: During the 1940s, Rand became politically active. She and her husband were full-time volunteers for Republican Wendell Willkie's 1940 presidential campaign. This work brought her into contact with other intellectuals sympathetic to free-market capitalism. She became friends with journalist Henry Hazlitt, who introduced her to the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Despite philosophical differences with them, Rand strongly endorsed the writings of both men throughout her career, and they expressed admiration for her. Mises once referred to her as "the most courageous man in America", a compliment that particularly pleased her because he said "man" instead of "woman". Rand became friends with libertarian writer Isabel Paterson. Rand questioned her about American history and politics long into the night during their many meetings, and gave Paterson ideas for her only non-fiction book, "The God of the Machine".


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand's first major success as a writer came in 1943 with "The Fountainhead", a novel about an uncompromising young architect named Howard Roark and his struggle against what Rand described as "second-handers"—those who attempt to live through others, placing others above themselves. Twelve publishers rejected it before Bobbs-Merrill Company accepted it at the insistence of editor Archibald Ogden, who threatened to quit if his employer did not publish it. While completing the novel, Rand was prescribed the amphetamine Benzedrine to fight fatigue. The drug helped her to work long hours to meet her deadline for delivering the novel, but afterwards she was so exhausted that her doctor ordered two weeks' rest. Her use of the drug for approximately three decades may have contributed to what some of her later associates described as volatile mood swings.


title: Ayn Rand

text: The success of "The Fountainhead" brought Rand fame and financial security. In 1943, she sold the film rights to Warner Bros. and returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay. Producer Hal B. Wallis hired her afterwards as a screenwriter and script-doctor. Her work for him included the screenplays for "Love Letters" and "You Came Along". Her contract with Wallis also allowed time for other projects, including a never-completed nonfiction treatment of her philosophy to be called "The Moral Basis of Individualism".


title: Ayn Rand

text: While working in Hollywood, Rand became involved with the anti-Communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and wrote articles on the group's behalf. She also joined the anti-Communist American Writers Association. In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the United States House Un-American Activities Committee that the 1944 film "Song of Russia" grossly misrepresented conditions in the Soviet Union, portraying life there as much better and happier than it was. She also wanted to criticize the lauded 1946 film "The Best Years of Our Lives" for what she interpreted as its negative presentation of the business world, but was not allowed to do so. When asked after the hearings about her feelings on the investigations' effectiveness, Rand described the process as "futile".


title: Ayn Rand

text: After several delays, the film version of "The Fountainhead" was released in 1949. Although it used Rand's screenplay with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end" and complained about its editing, the acting and other elements.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Following the publication of "The Fountainhead", Rand received many letters from readers, some of whom the book had influenced profoundly. In 1951, Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers that included future chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara's cousin Leonard Peikoff. Initially, the group was an informal gathering of friends who met with Rand at her apartment on weekends to discuss philosophy. Later, Rand began allowing them to read the manuscript drafts of her new novel, "Atlas Shrugged". In 1954, her close relationship with Nathaniel Branden turned into a romantic affair, with the knowledge of their spouses.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Published in 1957, "Atlas Shrugged" is considered Rand's "magnum opus". She described the novel's theme as "the role of the mind in man's existence—and, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest". It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement. The plot involves a dystopian United States in which the most creative industrialists, scientists, and artists respond to a welfare state government by going on strike and retreating to a hidden valley where they build an independent free economy. The novel's hero and leader of the strike, John Galt, describes it as stopping "the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds of the individuals contributing most to the nation's wealth and achievements. The novel contains an exposition of Objectivism in a lengthy monologue delivered by Galt.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Despite many negative reviews, "Atlas Shrugged" became an international bestseller, but the reaction of intellectuals to the novel discouraged and depressed Rand. "Atlas Shrugged" was her last completed work of fiction, marking the end of her career as a novelist and the beginning of her role as a popular philosopher.


title: Ayn Rand

text: In 1958, Nathaniel Branden established the Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later incorporated as the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), to promote Rand's philosophy through public lectures. He and Rand co-founded "The Objectivist Newsletter" (later renamed "The Objectivist") in 1962 to circulate articles about her ideas; she later republished some of these articles in book form. Rand was unimpressed by many of the NBI students and held them to strict standards, sometimes reacting coldly or angrily to those who disagreed with her. Critics, including some former NBI students and Branden himself, later described the culture of the NBI as one of intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand. Some described the NBI or the Objectivist movement as a cult or religion. Rand expressed opinions on a wide range of topics, from literature and music to sexuality and facial hair. Some of her followers mimicked her preferences, wearing clothes to match characters from her novels and buying furniture like hers. However, some former NBI students believed the extent of these behaviors was exaggerated, and the problem was concentrated among Rand's closest followers in New York.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through her nonfiction works and by giving talks to students at colleges and universities. She began delivering annual lectures at the Ford Hall Forum, responding to questions from the audience. During these appearances, she often took controversial stances on the political and social issues of the day. These included: supporting abortion rights, opposing the Vietnam War and the military draft (but condemning many draft dodgers as "bums"), supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 against a coalition of Arab nations as "civilized men fighting savages", saying European colonists had the right to invade and take land inhabited by American Indians, and calling homosexuality "immoral" and "disgusting", while also advocating the repeal of all laws concerning it. She endorsed several Republican candidates for president of the United States, most strongly Barry Goldwater in 1964, whose candidacy she promoted in several articles for "The Objectivist Newsletter".


title: Ayn Rand

text: In 1964, Nathaniel Branden began an affair with the young actress Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden kept the affair hidden from Rand. When she learned of it in 1968, though her romantic relationship with Branden had already ended, Rand ended her relationship with both Brandens, and the NBI was closed. She published an article in "The Objectivist" repudiating Nathaniel Branden for dishonesty and other "irrational behavior in his private life". In subsequent years, Rand and several more of her closest associates parted company.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974 after decades of heavy smoking. In 1976, she retired from writing her newsletter and, after her initial objections, allowed a social worker employed by her attorney to enroll her in Social Security and Medicare. During the late 1970s, her activities within the Objectivist movement declined, especially after the death of her husband on November 9, 1979. One of her final projects was work on a never-completed television adaptation of "Atlas Shrugged".


title: Ayn Rand

text: On March 6, 1982, Rand died of heart failure at her home in New York City. At her funeral, a floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket. In her will, Rand named Peikoff as her heir.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand described her approach to literature as "romantic realism". She wanted her fiction to present the world "as it could be and should be", rather than as it was. This approach led her to create highly stylized situations and characters. Her fiction typically has protagonists who are heroic individualists, depicted as fit and attractive. Her villains support duty and collectivist moral ideals. Rand often describes them as unattractive, and some have names that suggest negative traits, such as Wesley Mouch in "Atlas Shrugged".


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand considered plot a critical element of literature, and her stories typically have what biographer Anne Heller described as "tight, elaborate, fast-paced plotting". Romantic triangles are a common plot element in Rand's fiction; in most of her novels and plays, the main female character is romantically involved with at least two different men.


title: Ayn Rand

text: In school Rand read works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand, and Friedrich Schiller, who became her favorites. She considered them to be among the "top rank" of Romantic writers because of their focus on moral themes and their skill at constructing plots. Hugo was an important influence on her writing, especially her approach to plotting. In the introduction she wrote for an English-language edition of his novel "Ninety-Three", Rand called him "the greatest novelist in world literature".


title: Ayn Rand

text: Although Rand disliked most Russian literature, her depictions of her heroes show the influence of the Russian Symbolists and other nineteenth-century Russian writing, most notably the 1863 novel "What Is to Be Done?" by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Rand's experience of the Russian Revolution and early Communist Russia influenced the portrayal of her villains. Beyond "We the Living", which is set in Russia, this influence can be seen in the ideas and rhetoric of Ellsworth Toohey in "The Fountainhead", and in the destruction of the economy in "Atlas Shrugged".


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand's descriptive style echoes her early career writing scenarios and scripts for movies; her novels have many narrative descriptions that resemble early Hollywood movie scenarios. They often follow common film editing conventions, such as having a broad establishing shot description of a scene followed by close-up details, and her descriptions of women characters often take a "male gaze" perspective.


title: Ayn Rand

text: Rand called her philosophy "Objectivism", describing its essence as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute". She considered Objectivism a systematic philosophy and laid out positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.


title: Ayn Rand

text: In metaphysics, Rand supported philosophical realism and opposed anything she regarded as mysticism or supernaturalism, including all forms of religion. Rand believed in free will as a form of agent causation and rejected determinism.


title: Ayn Rand

text: In epistemology, Rand considered all knowledge to be based on sense perception, the validity of which she considered axiomatic, and reason, which she described as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses". Rand rejected all claims of non-perceptual knowledge, including instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing. In her "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", Rand presented a theory of concept formation and rejected the analytic–synthetic dichotomy. She believed epistemology was a foundational branch of philosophy and considered the advocacy of reason to be the single most significant aspect of her philosophy.


title: Ayn Rand

text: In ethics, Rand argued for rational and ethical egoism (rational self-interest), as the guiding moral principle. She said the individual should "exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself". Rand referred to egoism as "the virtue of selfishness" in her book of that title. In it, she presented her solution to the is–ought problem by describing a meta-ethical theory that based morality in the needs of "man's survival qua man". She condemned ethical altruism as incompatible with the requirements of human life and happiness, and held the initiation of force was evil and irrational, writing in "Atlas Shrugged" that, "Force and mind are opposites".