Nightingale and the UN SDGs
Advocacy for a Healthy World to Celebrate Her 2020 Bicentenary Deva-Marie Beck, PhD, RN Featuring UN Sustainable Development Goals • SDGs 10 — 13
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In the above photo, thirty-old-year-old Tizezew works for the NGO called 'Finote Hiwot' and sees the change the programme is making to girls’ lives. “Now the community and the students are leading the conversations,” she says. “People from every part of the community - from religious leaders to schools - are talking. They’re coming up with solutions on the ground. To see the voice of change passing down from 'Finote Hiwot,' to community facilitators to schools, to girls, it makes me feel proud.” Girls and women everywhere have the right to live free from violence and discrimination. Help end child, early and forced marriage in a generation. Take the pledge now @ http://www.girlsummitpledge.com. Photo Source: Wikimedia and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), photo by Jessica Lea. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. SDG Logo # 10 posted using the official UN SDG Guidelines.
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Nightingale certainly reflected upon and worked to achieve what is now known as SDG # 11 — Sutainable Cities and Communities — to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” She applied this concern directly saying, “It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.” (1868) She also saw the connections between the quality of life in a community and the well-being of its peoples, “The health of the unity is the health of the community. Unless you have the health of the unity, you have no community health.” (1893)
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The above image of a 'sustainable city' was selected as 'Picture of the Day' on Wikimedia Commons for 14, October, 2015. Its caption reads: Panorama of Todi — a town and municipality of the province of Perugia (region of Umbria) in central Italy. It is perched on a tall two-crested hill overlooking the east bank of the river Tiber, commanding distant views in every direction. In the 1990s, Richard S. Levine, a professor of architecture at the University of Kentucky, chose Todi as the 'Model Sustainable City' because of its scale and its ability to reinvent itself over time. After that, the Italian press reported on Todi as the world's most livable city. Photo Source: Wikimedia, posted by author ‘Livioandronico2013’ on 10, August, 2014. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 International license. SDG Logo # 11 posted using the official UN SDG Guidelines.
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Although not widely known, Nightingale was herself an ardent environmental activist. She would be appalled at our air pollution and encourage all of us to take action and identify things that impact climate change
Throughout the 1850s to 1880s, she collaborated with a series of leaders based in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras to address environmental concerns affecting the health of the Indian people, including issues related to deforestation resulting in loss of tillable soil during monsoon seasons and acid rain. |
This work directly anticipated SDG # 13 — Climate Action — “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact.”
Earth Day, 2008, site unidentified. Photo Source: Wikimedia, posted by author: ‘Karendotcom127.’ This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. SDG Logo # 13 posted using the official UN SDG Guidelines.
Image Credits, above left: the UN Logo Color wheel used based on official UN SDG Guidelines.
Above right: the face of Florence Nightingale is a photograph in the public domain.