Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 20th Sept. UN chief António Guterres on Tuesday said that a “rescue plan” for the Sustainable Development Goals must result in policies, budgets and investment to ensure a more equitable and green future by 2030.
Mr. Guterres was addressing the closing session of the SDG Summit in New York, where world leaders adopted a political declaration to boost progress to achieve the 17 goals are in danger of derailment due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other global crises.
He noted that goals that address hunger, health, biodiversity, strong institutions, pollution, and peaceful societies are all off-track.
“Now is the time to lift the declaration’s words off the page, and invest in development at scale like never before,” he said.
He stressed the political declaration includes a commitment to financing for developing countries and clear support for an SDG Stimulus of at least $500 billion annually.
Guterres urged Member States to make the most of the momentum from the Summit, presenting a “development to-do list” for the way forward.
He stressed the need to transform support for the SDG Stimulus “into real investments in developing countries.”
The Secretary General called to set up a Leaders Group that will develop clear steps to get funds flowing before the end of 2024.
Leaders must turn commitments made at the Summit into concrete policies, budgets, investment portfolios and actions, he said.
They should strengthen support for action across six key SDG areas, food, energy, digitalization, education, social protection and jobs, and biodiversity.
He advised them to “start planning now for massive increases in investments in social protection”, and to “bring to life” a global initiative to ensure an additional four billion people are covered by 2030.
“As the political declaration makes clear, it’s high time for developed countries to meet their Official Development Assistance target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income,” he added
He warned that the upcoming meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank must not be “business as usual”.
Guterres said “In addition to recapitalization, we need to see an urgent additional rechanneling of $100 billion in unused Special Drawing Rights’ ‘.
He noted special Drawing Rights are an international reserve asset developed by the IMF to supplement the official foreign exchange reserves of its member countries and help provide them with liquidity.
The largest-ever allocation, worth $650 billion, was carried out in August 2021 in response to the economic crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, he stressed.
Mr. Guterres pressed Governments attending the meetings to also bring proposals to “massively leverage private funding in support of developing countries.”
He urged them to take part at the COP28 UN climate conference in Dubai next month with concrete plans and proposals to avoid the worst effects of climate change, upholding global promises of support, and helping developing countries to transition to renewable energy.
He concluded “the development to-do list is not just homework. This is my hope work. And action is the price of hope.”
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