World leaders must prioritize implementation of sustainable development goals

World leaders must prioritize implementation of sustainable development goals

Subject : Environment

Section: Protected Area

Context:

• The midterm assessment of the progress made on the sustainable development goals (SDG) was carried out in the 2023 SDG Summit, which took place on September 18-19, 2023, in New York.

Global People’s Assembly:

• 2,045 activists from 145 countries joined physically and virtually in the Global People’s Assembly, organised by 64 civil society organisation networks, coordinated by Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP).

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG):

• The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
• There are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets.

The SDGs build on decades of work by countries and the UN:

• In June 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, more than 178 countries adopted Agenda 21, a comprehensive plan of action to build a global partnership for sustainable development to improve human lives and protect the environment.
• The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development and the Plan of Implementation, adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa in 2002, reaffirmed the global community’s commitments to poverty eradication and the environment, and built on Agenda 21 and the Millennium Declaration by including more emphasis on multilateral partnerships.
• At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012, Member States adopted the outcome document “The Future We Want” in which they decided, inter alia, to launch a process to develop a set of SDGs to build upon the MDGs and to establish the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
• In January 2015, the General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 SDGs at its core, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015.
• 2015 was a landmark year for multilateralism and international policy shaping, with the adoption of several major agreements:
  • Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (March 2015)
  • Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development (July 2015)
  • Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 SDGs was adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York in September 2015.
  • Paris Agreement on Climate Change (December 2015)
• Now, the annual High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development serves as the central UN platform for the follow-up and review of the SDGs.

Assessment of the progress made on SDGs:

• The United Nation’s own estimate suggests that only 12 per cent of the targets are currently on track.Thirty percent of the SDGs are worse now than eight years ago.
• Poverty:
  • There is enough food to feed everyone on the planet, yet over 820 million people,roughly one in ten people on Earth, are going hungry.
  • Nearly 860 million belong to the extreme poor category.
• Inequality:
  • Oxfam’s 2023 report, Survival of the Richest, suggested that the richest 1 percent has bagged twice as much wealth as the rest during the pandemic.
  • The economic structure is heavily tilted towards the benefit of the rich and the social structures further push the people from the marginalised communities into despair, discrimination and indignity.
  • The groups that traditionally faced exclusion and discrimination are women, communities discriminated by work and descent (CDWD), indigenous communities, persons with disabilities, the old and the LGBTQI+, among others.
  • The welfarist nature of the state is fast dwindling. It’s all about corporate growth.
• Issues facing by the global south:
  • Inequality, crack down on their people’s and civil society’s rights, political parties are dividing people in the name of religion, caste and race, debt crisis.
  • Sixty countries are currently facing debt crises amid skyrocketing interest rates.
  • Financial systems dominated by wealthy Western countries are not creating global prosperity.
• Climate change:
  • There is no clear commitment to end the use of fossil fuels. Countries like the Philippines, Fiji and others are struggling to cope with the increasing disasters, including sea-level rise.

Source: DownToEarth