What is the roles of sustainability technology and the SDGs today as humanity faces one of its biggest existential struggles yet?

Humanity's struggle started hundreds of thousands of years ago, when homo sapiens arose the victors. Yet our current period of crisis can be traced back beyond the industrial revolution, to the agricultural revolution of the 18th century.

Today the confluence of centuries of societal and technology innovation present us with challenges that are already impacting humanity, the planet and the biodiversity on which it all depends. More worryingly, we find ourselves struggling to understand, let alone control what is essentially a planetary system that has gone an "open-loop".

The term "butterfly effect" was coined to express the interconnected nature of our planet, and how the flapping of a butterfly's wings could cause a much more significant, amplified effect in another part of the planet. Our societies and the planet we depend on are series of millions of complex, interwoven butterfly effects and this is why the work of this website focuses on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Why look for Technology focusing on the SDGs?

Note: If you're not sure what the SDGs are, check out this article - What are the UN SDGs.

There are many criticisms of the SDGs - Some say they are too confusing, too high-level, too ambitious, or even too political. Whilst I don't think they are perfect, they do, in my opinion, provide a number of important things:

1. They provide a common language for us all to understand the challenges we face
2. They provide a common framework in which we can work together
3. The illustrate the interconnected nature of everything - just try to pick the top three we should focus on and you'll soon discover as you dig deeper how they all connect
4. They are "stretch goals" which provide us with a serious collective challenge.

Addressing these goals is mammoth undertaking, and requires government, societies, and organisations of all sorts to collaborate. Technology is just one way to help address the UN SDGs, but a significant one.

With this in mind, this site sets out to discover the technologies, tech companies and leaders that are aligning with the UN SDGs and aspiring to make the world a better place for all that inhabit it.

Due to the criticality these challenges pose to all of us, this is an area that is set to grow massively in the coming years, as shown by the statistic below.

The work on this website looks for technologies aiming to help humanity address these tremendous challenges. Use the menus below to explore all the good that is actually going on.