Finance
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for concrete actions to improve global cooperation to address the world’s current and future challenges.
Briefing the UN General Assembly about his report “Our Common Agenda,” launched in September 2021 as a guide to realising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Guterres said important progress has been made but much more remains to be done, Xinhua reported.
“We need to go further and deeper,” he said. “On climate, on conflict, on inequality, on food insecurity, on nuclear weapons – we are closer to the edge than ever.”
“And yet our collective problem-solving mechanisms do not match the pace or scale of the challenges,” he said.
The UN Secretary-General stated that the current forms of multilateral governance, which were designed in and for a bygone era, are clearly insufficient for today’s complex, interconnected, rapidly changing, and dangerous world.
In September 2015, world leaders unanimously adopted the SDGs as the blueprint for global development efforts in the years leading up to 2030. The 17 goals seek to eradicate poverty, combat inequalities, and combat climate change.
Guterres warned that “we are far off track” halfway to 2030, and urged moving Our Common Agenda recommendations from ideas to action, as well as from abstract to concrete.
“We will only make up lost ground by addressing the gaps and challenges that have emerged since 2015 – including gaps in intergovernmental cooperation,” he said.
Guterres urged member states to bring a clear commitment to rescue the SDGs by outlining their national vision for transformation, grounded in concrete plans, benchmarks, and commitments, to the September SDG Summit at the UN headquarters.
Meanwhile, he stated that his office will issue a series of 11 policy briefs with concrete ideas throughout the year, addressing issues such as peace and security, finance, global digital cooperation, peaceful use of outer space, and how to strengthen the United Nations for the twenty-first century.
“This must be the year when we lay the foundations for more effective global cooperation that can deal with today’s challenges as well as new risks and threats down the line,” Guterres said.
Source:IANS
