Global Mission, an Abu Dhabi-based nonprofit, has announced the launch of a $17 billion fund to help achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Global Fund for Sustainable Development—a collaboration between Global Mission and its public- and private-sector partners—intends to raise at least $1 billion for each of the 17 goals established in 2015. Although there are only eight years remaining before 2030—the original date set by the UN to achieve the SDGs—Global Mission views the end of the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to redouble international efforts.

Global Mission anticipates funding more than 100 projects worldwide within the next year to catalyze and encourage further investments and accelerate action by global stakeholders. Initially, the fund will prioritize health-related investments to improve access to medicine and address the global shortage of skilled workers in health-related fields, alongside environmental projects focused on carbon emissions, plastic pollution, and clean water.

“We have experienced more environmental deterioration, more hunger, and more climate change in the past few years,” said Mohamad Elsamad, Global Mission’s executive director of operation and administration. “But we are very much hopeful that we can still make the change....[W]e are so confident and certain that we are going to achieve, and even overachieve, our targets."

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