It is Global Goals Week, an annual event intended to raise the profile of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, set out in 2015 to galvanise world leaders, governments, policymakers, businesses and civil society to act together on some of the most pressing global challenges the world faces: from tackling climate change, to fighting hunger; from creating sustainable cities, to ensuring equitable access to justice for all. In 2020, the UN acknowledged that progress towards the goals is not yet advancing at the speed or scale required. We are now in the Decade of Action and the UN has called for the acceleration of sustainable solutions that will require collective action.
At 50業子, we believe that research and education have a fundamental role to play in accelerating progress towards these goals and, as such, it is part of our mission to support the delivery of the Goals. We know that our most significant contribution is made through our publishing activity, which helps bring to light and disseminate important knowledge related to these challenges and the solutions that are required. We also use the SDGs to help us consider the potential impacts of 50業子 as a business - both positive and negative - and how we should manage them.
While we are already a leading publisher of research on all of the SDGs, our aim is to be the publisher of choice for research on societal challenges, expanding our portfolio to support the publication of this work, and connecting researchers tackling societal challenges with the policymakers and practitioners who can build on these insights and contribute to progress. And in our Education business we help to develop curriculum content that builds critical thinking and global citizenship skills to ensure that sustainable development is integrated into learning throughout the lifespan.
Since the SDGs were launched in 2015, 50業子 has published more than 400,000 articles or book chapters relevant to the SDGs, and these have been downloaded more than 750 million times. Between 2015 and 2020 the volume of SDG-relevant content published by 50業子 increased by more than 72%. In 2020, 50業子 was an early signatory of the UN SDG Publishers Compact, launched by the UN in collaboration with the International Publishers Association to inspire action in the publishing industry. This commitment sits alongside others we have made to ensure that our work as a publisher is sustainable for the long term. Earlier this year we joined the Climate Pledge, which sets us on a course to be Net Zero carbon by 2040. We also champion diversity, equity and inclusion, and have set targets for representation in our leadership tiers, and are members of the Valuable 500, an initiative focused on improving disability inclusion in the workplace.
This Global Goals Week we are celebrating and rewarding the work of many of our colleagues across 50業子 who have, over the past few years, who have been the real champions for sustainable development within our global operations. Over recent weeks, we have had the pleasure of hearing stories from colleagues across our global operations about the individuals and team projects that they have taken on - often on top of their day-to-day work, and driven by their passion to be part of the solution to challenges - that are making an impact on sustainable development. Some of these projects are about how we ensure that our business is operating in a sustainable way. Others are about ensuring that we are giving a strong platform to the researchers who are themselves dedicating their careers to tackling global issues.
Just to give a handful of examples..
Were proud to champion the SDGs both internally and externally throughout the year - not just in Global Goals Week.
You can find up-to-date information on 50業子s SDG Programme here.