The goal of FiveBecomings (Pañchabhūmi)^[1] projects is to restore the interconnected (ecosymbiotic) wellbeing of diverse humans and ecologies across all bioregions. The multi-layered local and global impacts of FiveBecomings projects can be partially conceptualized through established anthropocentric lenses, including: (a) the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), (b) the rights framework (e.g., human rights^[2]  and ecological rights), (c) climate resilience/stabilization^[3], and (d) ecosystem services^[4]. Each lens offers a particular set of indicators and priorities; read together they provide complementary vantage points for assessing project outcomes. However, none of these lenses alone captures the full conceptual and transformative depth and breadth of FiveBecomings projects. This series of articles uses the SDG lens to analyze how FiveBecomings projects map onto, reinterpret, and extend all 17 SDGs set by the United Nations (UN).

Historical Context of the SDGs

The SDGs did not emerge in isolation; they are the product of decades of international cooperation aimed at reducing extreme poverty and environmental decline. In 2000, the UN convened member states and international agencies to adopt the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight targets that concentrated global attention on reducing poverty, hunger, and disease — priorities driven by donor governments, multilateral institutions, and advocacy networks. The MDGs focused resources and reporting on measurable outcomes in low-income regions, but they were critiqued for a narrow emphasis on headline targets and for insufficiently addressing structural drivers of inequity and ecological loss.

When the MDG timetable concluded in 2015, there was recognition across UN member states, civil society, and technical experts that a broader, universal approach was required. Consequently, the 2030 Agenda and its 17 SDGs were shaped through multi-stakeholder negotiations (including the UN Open Working Group, member states, and civil society entities) to create a set of interlinked goals and targets meant to guide policy, finance, and collective action worldwide. 

The shift from the MDGs to the SDGs reflected two key changes: a move from a primarily ‘North-to-South’ aid model to a universal set of responsibilities applicable to all nations and an expansion of scope beyond basic needs to include inequality, ecological systems, and governance. The SDGs function as a framework in the sense that they articulate shared objectives, measurable targets, and reporting mechanisms that align diverse actors — governments, municipalities, NGOs, and communities around common priorities, while leaving room for context-specific pathways. 

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The SDGs present themselves as a roadmap for ‘peace and prosperity for people and the planet.^[5]  They aim to link together environmental, social, and economic aspects of sustainability. Below is a short description of each SDG, along with a re-conceptualization/interpretation by the Śramani Institute in the context of the FiveBecomings projects.

SDG 1: No Poverty 

UN goal: End poverty in all its forms everywhere. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Effectively ending poverty necessitates restoring ecosymbiotic livelihoods^[6], enabling communities to self-reliantly produce the basic Commodities and Services (C/S) from their local ecological webs (ecowebs)^[7], so households can fulfill basic needs without depending on extractivist income pathways.^[8] 

SDG 2: Zero Hunger 

UN goal: End hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: The basis of food security must be ecoweb-rooted regenerative agroecological practices that rebuild native biodiversity, ecosymbiotic resilience^[9], and dietary sovereignty, rather than homogenized commodity- and monoculture-based global supply chains.

SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing

UN goal: Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages.

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Good health hinges on ensuring ecosymbiotic wellbeing, namely interconnected human-ecological wellbeing that encompasses plant-based healthcare, ecoweb restoration, and community Knowtep (Knowledge-Technologies-Practices) that sustain mental, social, physical, and ecological health.

SDG 4: Quality Education

UN goal: Ensure inclusive, equitable, and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: In the broadest sense, quality education encompasses effective inter- and intragenerational transmission of Knowtep that is relevant to ecoselves^[10]  and local ecowebs. Education, therefore, centers place- and community-rooted skills, languages, and identity formation.

SDG 5: Gender Equality 

UN goal: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Gender justice emphasizes equitable access to ecoweb resources, decision-making in the governance of community affairs, and transmission of Ādi-Knowtep^[11] (ancient Indigenous Knowtep) across genders.

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

UN Goal: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Water stewardship is organized as community-managed hydrosystems, rainwater harvesting, and collective irrigation networks that together restore aquifers and equitable water security.

SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

UN Goal: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Fuel production must prioritize regenerative Knowtep (e.g., dung- and compost-based biofuels) as the basis of local energy generation, instead of relying on globally centralized, extractivist, profit-making fossil fuel-based infrastructures.

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

UN Goal: Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Economic ‘growth’ is by definition an extractivist concept that must be reframed to ensure a sustainable and just future for humans and all livings beings. The Śramani Institute has introduced the concept of ecosymbiotic livelihoods^[6]  (see SDG 1 above), which result in interconnected human-ecological wellbeing without expanding extractivist ‘growth’.

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

UN goal: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: ‘Industry’ is interpreted as regenerative, ecoweb- and ecoself-rooted infrastructure and innovation that support ecosymbiotic livelihoods and local value chains of C/S that circulate locally within a cluster of villages, i.e., in a decentralized manner.

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

UN Goal: Reduce inequality within and among countries. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Reducing inequality necessitates redistributing access to ecoweb resources, recognition and revitalization of jīvadiversity (diversity in living)^[12], and measures that protect marginalized communities’ agency and livelihood security.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

UN Goal: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: One of the expected outcomes of the FiveBecomings projects is to reduce the forced migration to cities (and ensuing urban overcrowding) by establishing decentralized, diverse, and self-reliant rural hubs (re-conceptualized ‘cities’) that offer viable livelihoods and services in rural areas.

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

UN Goal: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Consumption based on needs not wants is key to reducing overconsumption and waste, as is a deep empathetic connection to our ecowebs that provide the ecological resources on which we rely for our survival. Thus, FiveBecomings projects catalyze both the internal and external transformation of communities and their ecowebs to ensure regenerative C/S production and consumption.

SDG 13: Climate Action

UN Goal: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Climate action encompasses, but is certainly not limited to, ecoweb restoration, carbon-positive production/consumption practices, and resilient food, energy, and water systems aligned with local ecowebs and seasonal cycles.

SDG 14: Life Below Water

UN Goal: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Those humans most aware of their ecosymbiotic relationship with and connection to a particular ecoweb are the ones who are most committed to conserving and preserving that ecoweb. FiveBecomings projects thus help communities reconnect with and reestablish stewardship over ecowebs that include aquatic systems, like rivers, ponds, lakes, streams, and oceans (along coasts).

SDG 15: Life on Land

UN Goal: Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, halt land degradation, and prevent biodiversity loss. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Similar to the reasoning for SDG 14, helping communities reconnect with and reestablish stewardship over the ecowebs they inhabit motivates them to restore the biodiverse and water secure health of their ecowebs and then to protect all the livings beings and abiotic components within these ecowebs.

SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

UN Goal: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies, provide access to justice for all, and build effective and accountable institutions. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Peace and justice can exist only if human communities have opportunities to understand and express their ecoselves, which includes inhabiting (and having stewardship over) their ancestral ecowebs and living in dignified self-reliance. Institutions should be formed and led by communities to enable them to create, avail of, and maintain these conditions.

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

UN goal: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. 

FiveBecomings reinterpretation: Partnerships must be hyperlocal, so that solutions that are implemented are ecoweb- and community-rooted. Thus, FiveBecomings projects are co-implemented by a beneficiary community, a local nonprofit organization (LNPO) that has a trusting relationship with the community, and the Śramani Institute, while engaging with local, state, and national governments, and other entities.

Moving from the SDGs to FiveBecomings

The SDGs provide a useful shared vocabulary and measurable targets that can align diverse actors; they thus function as a practical framework for policy-making and financing. Keeping as its goal ecosymbiotic wellbeing, FiveBecomings reinterprets the SDGs and several of their terms by: shifting priorities from externally driven growth metrics to multi-aspect measures of ecoweb-rooted ecosymbiotic self-reliance, from aggregate indicators to multi-perspective indeces of relational and qualitative wellbeing, and from centralized institutions to community stewardship over resources. 

Subsequent articles in this series examine how FiveBecomings projects operationalize these reinterpretations in practice and how indicators that capture ecosymbiotic livelihoods, Ādi-Knowtep transmission, and restored ecoweb integrity can complement existing SDG metrics.

[1] K. Mitra, Restoring the Interconnected Wellbeing of Humans and Ecologies Through FiveBecomings, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh082025-010 (26 Aug., 2025).

[2] S. Mukherjee & K. Mitra, The Human Rights Lens: Understanding FiveBecomings Project Impact, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh082025-012 (29 Aug., 2025).

[3] S. Mukherjee & K. Mitra, The Climate Resilience/Stabilization Lens: Understanding FiveBecomings Project Impact, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh082025-011 (11 Sep., 2025).

[4] S. Mukherjee & K. Mitra, The Ecosystem Services Lens: Understanding FiveBecomings Project Impact, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh082025-005 (28 Aug., 2025).

[5] Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, United Nations (2015).

[6] K. Mitra, Ecosymbiotic Livelihoods and Living Livelihoods: New Concepts in Self-Reliance, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh082025-013 (28 Aug., 2025).

[7] K. Mitra, Ecological Webs (Ecowebs): Collaborative Creativity Through Adaptation Feedback Loops, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh092025-006 (3 Sep., 2025).

[8] S. Mukherjee & K. Mitra, Ecosymbiotic Self-Reliance: Fulfilling Basic Needs from Ecowebs, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh092025-010 (11 Sep., 2025).

[9] K. Mitra, Ecosymbiosis: the Basis of Adaptive Resilience Involving Biodiversity (Ecosymbiotic Resilience), Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh092025-007 (3 Sep., 2025).

[10] K. Mitra, Individual Ecoself and Community Ecoself: Importance in FiveBecomings, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh092025-011 (10 Sep., 2025).

[11] K. Mitra, Ādi-Knowtep and Their Importance in Ecosymbiotic Resilience of Human Communities, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh092025-008 (4 Sep., 2025).

[12] K. Mitra, Beyond Biodiversity: Jīvadiversity — Diversity in Living, Ecosymbionts all Regenerate Together (EaRTh): DOI-EaRTh082025-003 (21 Aug., 2025).