At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030.

The SDGs build on the Rio+20 outcomes and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight anti-poverty targets that the world committed to achieving by 2015.

The SDGs are universal, meaning they apply to every country in the world. Local and regional governments played an important role in influencing the definition of the SDGs, successfully campaigning for a stand-alone goal on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements (SDG 11), andfor international recognition of the pivotal role of local and regional government in sustainable development.