I am starting to write this blog on Thursday, October 1st. Pope Francis is back home in the Vatican, President Xi has returned to China, and most of the 150 or so world leaders that spoke in the United Nations’ 70th session and signed the global sustainable development agenda, are also on their way home. Now it’s time to start analyzing, contemplating and exploring the effects of their visits. I will start this week with a look at the new United Nations Sustainable Events declaration.
The declaration came out with 17 sustainable development goals for 2030 and 169 targets. The goals, in the form of attractive colorful tiles are given below:
These new goals and targets replace the Millennium Development Goals that were formulated in 2000.
The goals, the targets and the preamble to the agenda are published in a document that is too long to be reproduced here. The rest of the blog will summarize what I consider to be the essence of this document with a focus on sustainability of the physical environment.
More than 150 world leaders out of the 193 member states of the UN signed the document as representatives of their countries. I didn’t see accounts of the representatives of the 43 countries from which leaders were not able to attend. Nevertheless I consider the broad participation and the power and scope of the participants reflective of a legitimate voice for humanity.
The stated goals are to be implemented by 2030. I consider this time period shorter than my definition of “Now” that I use in my book, Climate Change: The Fork at the End of Now (This blog derives its name from the book’s title.), where I equate it to the projected lifespan of my teenaged grandchildren.
The preamble to the document recognizes that the goals are not independent of each other:
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this universal agenda seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.
It adds:
Planet
We are determined to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations.
33. We recognize that social and economic development depends on the sustainable management of our planet’s natural resources. We are therefore determined to conserve and sustainably use oceans and seas, freshwater resources, as well as forests, mountains and drylands and to protect biodiversity, ecosystems and wildlife. We are also determined to promote sustainable tourism, tackle water scarcity and water pollution, to strengthen cooperation on desertification, dust storms, land degradation and drought and to promote resilience and disaster risk reduction. In this regard, we look forward to COP13 of the Convention on Biological Diversity to be held in Mexico in 2016.
Among the 17 goal I will enumerate the targets that are connected with accomplishing goal #6 (clean water), goal #13 (climate action) and goal #17 (partnership):
Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
6.1 By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all.
6.2 By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations
6.3 By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally
6.4 By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity
6.5 By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate.
6.6 By 2020, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes
6.a By 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water- and sanitation related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse technologies.
6.b Support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management.
Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
13.1 Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.
13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning.
13.3 Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning
13.a Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible
13.b Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized Communities.
* Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.
Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
Finance
17.1 Strengthen domestic resource mobilization, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection
17.2 Developed countries to implement fully their official development assistance commitments, including the commitment bymany developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of ODA/GNI to developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20 percent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries; ODA providers are encouraged to consider setting a target to provide at least 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries
17.3 Mobilize additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources
17.4 Assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring, as appropriate, and address the external debt of highly indebted poor countries to reduce debt distress
17.5 Adopt and implement investment promotion regimes for least developed countries.
Technology
17.6 Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms, including through improved coordination among existing mechanisms, in particular at the United Nations level, and through a global technology facilitation mechanism
17.7 Promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed.
17.8 Fully operationalize the technology bank and science, technology and innovation capacity-building mechanism for least developed countries by 2017 and enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology
Capacity-building
17.9 Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation.
Trade
17.10 Promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization, including through the conclusion of negotiations under its Doha Development Agenda.
17.11 Significantly increase the exports of developing countries, in particular with a view to doubling the least developed countries’ share of global exports by 2020.
17.12 Realize timely implementation of duty-free and quota-free market access on a lasting basis for all least developed countries, consistent with World Trade Organization decisions, including by ensuring that preferential rules of origin applicable to imports from least developed countries are transparent and simple, and contribute to facilitating market access
Systemic issues
Policy and institutional coherence
17.13 Enhance global macroeconomic stability, including through policy coordination and policy coherence.
17.14 Enhance policy coherence for sustainable development.
17.15 Respect each country’s policy space and leadership to establish and implement policies for poverty eradication and sustainable development Multi-stakeholder partnerships.
17.16 Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries.
17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.
The strength of this pronouncement, in my opinion, lies in its global focus. However, global pronouncements of this magnitude require major compromises among the participating signatories in order to work. I suspect that these compromises will make up the framework required to enforce such a vision. These include population planning, research, and development to facilitate economic progress using sustainable tools. They also call for a more active role on the part of developing countries, which must contribute to the pattern of sustainable growth by way of the use of both domestic resources and good trade patterns with developed countries. More next week.
I really like the goals listed above, however idealistic. I just have hard time seeing how these goals are going to be achieved in such short notice, especially by currently struggling economies. Let alone now in 2020 with the virus hitting economies so hard that priorities shit quickly, and very much to the national and not global level