Peace and prosperity are about more than a flourishing economy. It all starts with saving the planet. Reducing the amount of climate-related natural disasters and increasing the quality of human health are the major stepping stones on the road to achieving global prosperity and zero hunger.

These goals are on the list of the UN’s highest priorities in addressing climate change. The other priorities include food and security protection, protecting terrestrial and wetland ecosystems, expanding freshwater resources and contributing to key economic sectors and services that directly fund climate change administration. The climate change aspect of Sustainable Development Goals is now more crucial than ever, considering that the pandemic.

According to the UN’s goal to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”, 70-161 million more people had likely experienced hunger in 2020. This does not get any better with recent natural disasters like 2017’s Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, especially when the global average temperature was 34 degrees F above the pre-industrial baseline in 2020, further contributing to the growing climate crisis. Rising greenhouse gas emissions also contribute to this, and the UN suggests that by 2050, changing global economies will have to become carbon neutral as goal to battle climate change.

But the global climate change conversation is not all about the daily setbacks we face. Between 2015 and 2018, climate finance increased by 10%, which makes its annual average $48.7 billion. This monumental sum arguably reflects the way governments and citizens alike are taking climate change and its domino effect impacts more seriously. With all of this funding, there is hope for real change.

With Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s recent popularity, the question of morality has entered this conversation, making more people aware of just how far-reaching the effects of climate change are if it took a teenager to make government officials wake up to the real crisis that the Earth faces. This saw real progress with the UN’s E-Course on Harnessing Climate and SDGs Synergies, which not only engages policymakers with the effects of climate change but also addresses Sustainable Development Goals as a whole.

The goals can be reached by never letting climate change leave the mainstream conversation, both in society and politics, much in the way Greta Thunberg has done. And when we follow the resources found in Goal 13, educating ourselves is the first step we can do as individuals to fight this crisis that affects not only the Earth but human rights itself.