Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Explore free resources that align with your activity on the SDGs.
CFR Education offers a range of free resources that can help you to teach about the SDGs. Browse readings, timelines, videos, assessments, and simulations that align with the individual goals.
1. No Poverty
| Reading | Has life gotten better for people around the world? Learn how improvements in health, education, and income are measured and explore three countries' opportunities and challenges with development. |
What Are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund? Reading |
What's the difference between the World Bank and the IMF? Understand two institutions that undergird global development and the international monetary system. |
| Reading | Explore how severe inequalities and disparities in wealth and income can harm individuals, countries, and the global economy, and how some governments implement policies to reduce inequality. |
2. Zero Hunger
| Video | In this educational video, learn how climate change's effects on agriculture can have serious economic consequences for the world. |
Protecting Global Food and Water Supplies in a Warming World Reading |
Discover how climate change is diminishing global food and water security, and how the world can adapt to those vital resource challenges. |
3. Good Health and Well-Being
| Video | We have made advances in global health, but we face challenges from new disease trends—and need funding to treat them. |
| Reading | Experts agree that access to quality health care is the best way to improve global health. But health-care options vary greatly depending on where you are in the world. |
| Reading | What is the WHO? Learn how the UN agency in charge of international public health responds to crises that threaten global health coordination, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| Reading | A warmer world threatens more extreme weather and infectious disease, but policymakers can counter climate change’s damages to global health. |
5. Gender Equality
| Video | When migrants seek work abroad, what does their home country gain and lose? Explore one example of a country shaped by emigration, the Philippines. |
| Reading | Understand the various forms of human trafficking, including forced labor, forced marriage, and forced organ removal. |
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
| Reading | Is there a global water crisis? In this free resource, learn how climate change is causing water scarcity to worsen worldwide. |
| Reading | How do water, oil, and gold cause wars? Learn how competition over natural resources fuels and finances fighting and how climate change intensifies those conflicts. |
Protecting Global Food and Water Supplies in a Warming World Reading |
Discover how climate change is diminishing global food and water security, and how the world can adapt to those vital resource challenges. |
| Reading | A warmer world threatens more extreme weather and infectious disease, but policymakers can counter climate change’s damages to global health. |
| Reading | From the history of vaccines and medical quarantines to the origin of the World Health Organization, explore how innovations in global health increased human longevity and prepared the world for COVID-19. |
| Reading | In this free resource, explore how climate change disproportionately affects certain communities and could drastically increase global inequality. |
7. Affordable and Clean Energy
| Reading | Learn how energy storage can provide reliable renewable energy. |
| Reading | Conserving energy and maximizing efficiency means less strain on electricity grids and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. But is it working—and fast enough? |
| Reading | Learn how turning toward cleaner energy sources means factoring in economic and energy needs alongside environmental ones. |
| Reading | What is the IRA? In this free resource, learn what the United States' largest-ever climate change legislation does. |
| Reading | Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy can help mitigate climate change. |
| Reading | Climate change–related weather events will destroy bridges, roads, homes, and even power plants—unless those structures become more resilient. |
| Video | Climate change poses energy security challenges, but building more renewable sources and taking other steps can help strengthen supply and lower risks. |
| Reading | Electrifying the economy may play a crucial role in the fight against climate change. |
| Reading | Severe weather is causing costly disruptions. To protect the energy grid, countries need a smarter plan. |
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
| Reading | Is the global population declining? Learn how changes in birth, death, and migration rates affect society, economics, and politics around the world |
| Reading | What are the terms, trends, and debates that define international development? Learn about the evolution of efforts to improve the world—including global infrastructure, education, and health. |
9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
| Reading | Three innovations shaped how people and goods move around the world today. |
| Video | As Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution and India’s Green Revolution have shown, technological innovation can drive extraordinary development. Explore how digital advancements are further driving progress today. |
| Reading | Learn about the Industrial Revolution and how technological innovations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continue to shape society today. |
| Mini Simulation | In this mini-simulation explore whether or not the United States should ratify the UN Convention's Law of the Sea. |
| Reading | The ways we move around the world are making it hotter. Electric vehicles and other innovations offer climate change solutions. |
| Reading | Industrial emissions pose big challenges for the climate. Innovative industrial solutions can make a difference. |
| Reading | Climate change–related weather events will destroy bridges, roads, homes, and even power plants—unless those structures become more resilient. |
10. Reduced Inequalities
| Reading | In this free resource, explore how climate change disproportionately affects certain communities and could drastically increase global inequality. |
| Reading | Explore how severe inequalities and disparities in wealth and income can harm individuals, countries, and the global economy, and how some governments implement policies to reduce inequality. |
| Reading | What are the terms, trends, and debates that define international development? Learn about the evolution of efforts to improve the world—including global infrastructure, education, and health. |
| Reading | Learn how efforts to slow emissions raise concerns over inequity and justice, and what we can do to ensure a more equitable and greener future. |
| Reading | Climate Change is bad for everyone, but it’s worse for some. |
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
| Reading | The buildings we live in cause emissions. Changing our edifices can set up a more sustainable future. |
| Reading | Extreme weather and climate change effects could drive millions of people to migrate. Government leaders can take steps to address those flows of people and prepare the communities at their destinations. |
How Earth’s Minerals Are Helping the World Meet Its Climate Goals Reading |
Minerals are vital for the clean energy transition. But taking them out of the earth can come with a cost. |
12. Responsible Consumption and Prodcution
| Reading | Agriculture is warming the planet. Changing how we farm and manage land can decrease greenhouse gas emissions. |
13. Climate Action
| Video | In this educational video, learn why the climate is changing, how it affects us, and what we can do about it. |
| Reading | Learn how governments can prevent international carbon leakage from their climate mitigation policies. |
| Reading | What is the Paris Agreement? In this free resource, learn what actions countries are taking to address the global threat of climate change. |
How Are International Agreements Helping Fight Global Warming? Reading |
Explore the challenges facing international cooperation and the major treaties where the world has agreed to work together. |
| Reading | In this free resource, explore how climate change disproportionately affects certain communities and could drastically increase global inequality. |
| Reading | Learn more about the promises and perils of artificially manipulating the environment to combat climate change. |
| Reading | In this free resource, explore seven ways countries are responding to a changing environment, from cap and trade policies to clean energy standards. |
Protecting Global Food and Water Supplies in a Warming World Reading |
Discover how climate change is diminishing global food and water security, and how the world can adapt to those vital resource challenges. |
| Reading | In this free climate change resource, learn how AI is helping countries reduce carbon emissions, but some innovations could ultimately contribute to a warming planet. |
| Video | The Paris Agreement offers the world a pathway for addressing climate change, but challenges persist. |
| Reading | What is the IRA? In this free resource, learn what the United States' largest-ever climate change legislation does. |
| Reading | Learn how the public and private sectors can collaborate to fund climate solutions. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States consider the use of solar geoengineering to combat climate change? Explore this simulation. |
| Reading | Standards and regulations can help countries achieve climate goals, but they pose some drawbacks and challenges. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States take action to stop deforestation in the Amazon to combat climate change? Explore this simulation. |
| Reading | Learn how efforts to slow emissions raise concerns over inequity and justice, and what we can do to ensure a more equitable and greener future. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States launch a new Arctic policy in response to climate change and investments from countries like China and Russia in the region? Explore this simulation. |
| Reading | Climate Change is bad for everyone, but it’s worse for some. |
| Mini Simulation | How should the United States assist small island nations facing disasters? Explore this simulation. |
| Reading | Electrifying the economy may play a crucial role in the fight against climate change. |
| Reading | Explore how eleven countries are adapting to the effects of climate change in this free resource. |
| Mini Simulation | In this mini-simulation explore whether or not the United States should ratify the UN Convention's Law of the Sea. |
| Reading | When it comes to climate action, the federal government can coordinate and fund many measures. But state and local governments also play a critical role in helping—or hindering—the fight against climate change. |
14. Life Below Water
| Mini Simulation | In this mini-simulation explore whether or not the United States should ratify the UN Convention's Law of the Sea. |
| Reading | Climate Change is straining the earth’s ecosystems. Learn how humans can adapt to protect them. |
15. Life on Land
| Reading | Climate Change is straining the earth’s ecosystems. Learn how humans can adapt to protect them. |
16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
| Reading | Learn about the most prominent international organizations tackling the world’s biggest issues in this free resource. |
| Reading | Are countries less democratic than they used to be? Learn how democratic principles like checks and balances, free elections, and freedom of the press are under threat around the world. |
| Video | Explore the organizations and agreements that have promoted global peace and prosperity since the end of World War II, as well as the challenges that the liberal world order now faces in this video. |
| Reading | In this free resource, learn more about the United Nations’ most powerful body working to maintain international peace and security. Explore the security council’s failures and successes, and why the UN Security Council’s veto power is so controversial. |
| Reading | Explore the history of international law, important international agreements and the courts that aim to hold countries accountable, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. |
| Reading | The effects of global warming are creating various security threats. Governments can take certain measures to adapt to those increasing risks. |