Name: UN: Sustainable Development Goals in deep peril | DW News
Uploaded: 2024-09-29T03:44:30.000Z
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The 193 members of the United Nations have unanimously reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

It's a rare sight, the entire world agreeing on something.

And it speaks volumes about what's at stake here.

Adopted in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals are a to-do list, a 17-point rescue plan for ending or at least diminishing the greatest threats facing the greatest number of people on this planet.

But today, as the UN Secretary General himself said, that rescue plan needs rescuing.

The UN chief was all smiles as he walked into the opening ceremony of the annual UN General Assembly.

But his message to world leaders was anything but cheerful.

Excellencies, the SDGs need a global rescue plan.

The Sustainable Goals are the centrepiece of this year's international gathering.

Guterres says they provide the best roadmap out of today's many crises.

They carry the hopes, dreams, rights and expectations of people everywhere.

Yet today, only 15% of the targets are on track.

The SDGs, or Sustainable Development Goals, are made up of 17 targets.

That were adopted by all member states in 2015.

An ambitious blueprint or to-do list, which includes fighting climate change, protecting our oceans, combating disease, eradicating poverty, ensuring quality education and gender equality.

This year marks the halfway point for achieving the 2030 deadline and, according to the latest progress report, the world is in trouble.

Only some 15% of targets are on track to be reached by 2030.

Close to half are moderately or severely off track.

And some 37% have either seen no movement or regressed below the 2015 baseline.

As we mark the midpoint of the 2030 agenda, I have to remind you that if only 15% of the Sustainable Development Goals are met, that is a failure.

In recent years, the UN has turned more and more to young people for hope, vitality and a measure of guilt when it comes to getting governments and corporations to act.

We are the young people of the world, demanding you, the leaders of the world, to fulfill your obligations.

In New York and cities across the world, climate protesters took to the streets ahead of this week's gathering, demanding world leaders help protect future generations and end the use of fossil fuels.

The UN says now is the time for leaders to prove they are listening and keep the pledges they made.

Let's take a closer look and bring in Daniel Forti, he's a senior UN analyst at the International Crisis Group, and he joins us tonight from New York.

Now, it's halftime for the SDGs and it's not looking good.

We don't think it's failed, but there are serious challenges in many of the areas for countries all around the world.

Very few of the goals overall will be on track.

These are essential issues for populations all around the world.

It's about access to clean water, having a safe environment, and escaping poverty.

And these are the standards that most civilizations are holding their leaders to adjust for.

Whether progress can be made over the next few years is hard to see, but at this rate, there needs to be a serious push for improvement on the SDGs, and that's why the Secretary General has tried to make this event the centerpiece of this year's high-level week.

All right, so what are the main hurdles in achieving the goals?

I think most importantly, there are financial issues, there are governance issues, and there are policy issues in many of these countries.

Each country has its own specific context, and that makes it challenging to draw universal trends, but we've seen in broader terms how the prioritization of the SDGs is not always very common in the countries that need this recovery and support the most.

Many of these countries that have achieved the lowest progress on SDGs or seen reversals in many of these areas are those that face significant governance challenges, have issues with armed conflict, and are really struggling to deliver for the population's basic needs.

There are, though, of course, states that wield more power in advancing the entire world towards the SDGs.

Who are the worst offenders here, and who's holding the rest back?

Well, this has been an interesting debate over the past few months, is how much will the SDGs shine at this year's high-level week.

Countries in the so-called global south, developing countries, impoverished countries spread over much of the world have tried to shine light on this and have called for countries in the global north, the wealthiest countries of the world, to provide more development support, to live up to their commitments on climate, and to reform multilateral institutions that shape a lot of the rules and processes that allow them to implement these basic services at national and local levels.

However, we've seen a lot of pushback and challenges from the global north to try and find common ground on this.

There has been a lot of hard work over the past few months leading up to the political declaration that was adopted by world leaders today.

However, there's still a lot more to be done from reaching agreements on a political declaration to actually implementing commitments many of these countries and their international partners have had.

I want to talk about the financial aspect that you mentioned earlier, because multilateral development banks such as the World Bank were supposed to be key in helping countries achieve the SDGs.

But critics now argue that the current system is holding sustainable development back.

One of the things we've noticed over the past few months is the prominence of conversations about reforming the multilateral development banks, the IFI, the World Bank.

There are lots of different challenges that countries in the global south point to, whether it's on the lack of debt alleviation that these countries can offer and access from the World Banks, whether it's predictable development assistance channeled through them and the ease of accessing that money, and also governance issues.

Whose priorities are they responding to and how easily can these countries engage with them?

We've noticed over the past few months that countries in the global north have started to hear and listen to these concerns more carefully.

But again, making progress on such a difficult multilateral issue cannot be done overnight and certainly not during the next couple of days of the high level summit.

And these conversations will need to continue elsewhere in capitals around the world, especially in Washington, D.C.

I think the most important thing that we've noticed in multilateral conversations and context on all issues is a lack of trust.

That's very apparent in the U.N. context and especially with issues around development and serving the needs of the most vulnerable people in the world.

This is a hard challenge to overcome, but having events like the SDG summit, having countries go on to the world stage tomorrow and for the rest of the week and explicitly acknowledge that they hear the concerns of their partners and are willing to work with them to give them development support and live up to those commitments is an important not just for helping countries meet the SDGs, but also actually reducing the likelihood of instability and armed conflict in many of these areas and have negative repercussions throughout the world.

Those negative repercussions, I want to briefly, before I let you go, talk about those.

What happens if we don't manage to turn the tide?

What will our world look like in 2030 if we don't meet the goals?

Look, I think we'll be seeing a lot more of the trends that we've noticed over the past few years.

You know, poverty and economic crises in and of themselves do not lead to armed conflict directly, but they do make governments less prepared to handle the shocks that we're seeing, whether it's floods and other natural disasters, whether it's uprisings from different parts of the population who will no longer tolerate governments that are not providing support and basic services.

And if we don't see these, we'll see more pushes from these populations to have changes in government leaders to push for more securitization, possibly even more rises in armed movements that are looking to spread across regions and, you know, commit acts of violent extremism.

And, you know, as we've seen in places like the Sahel in Central Asia, these can have negative repercussions for not just countries, but entire regions.

That was Daniel Forti of the International Crisis Group.

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