Closer global collaboration urged to reach UN goals

Prospects of achieving the United Nations' 2030 sustainable development goals are bleak, and countries need to make a much more concerted effort if progress is to be made, a top United Nations official says.

Beate Trankmann, resident representative of the UN Development Programme in China, said on Friday that at present just 15 percent of SDG targets are on track, and progress on more than 30 percent of the targets has stalled or things are even worse than they were.

The UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015, at the heart of which are the 17 SDGs, including ending poverty in all its forms everywhere, ending hunger and ensuring healthy lives, and promoting well-being for all people of all ages.

Following three years of shocks and crises including the pandemic and wars and conflicts, most developing countries are faced with increasingly constrained fiscal space and spiraling debt, Trankmann said, and the combined impact of these challenges has set back global development progress by decades.

"But more must be done and must be done fast. Only through collective efforts and by continuing to raise our ambition levels can we hope to set the world back on a trajectory toward a sustainable future."

More international collaboration on development issues is also essential to maximize effectiveness in light of scarce resources and ever-growing demands, she said.

In particular, through avenues such as South-South collaboration, stakeholders such as China, now among the top providers of development finance, can make important contributions to sustainable development globally, she said.

By promoting two-way knowledge exchanges and demand-based collaboration that draws on international best practices and norms, China has the opportunity to help advance sustainable development results in partner countries in areas such as green energy transformation and green finance, building on its strength and experience, she said.

Trankmann was addressing a session of the Fourth China and International Development Forum in Beijing, in which global participants discussed development collaboration ideas and mechanisms, best practices and how to promote a global partnership for development and accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The forum was co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce and the UNDP in China.

Trankmann said that apart from governments, other action by others is critical. "With the SDG financing gap standing at around $4 trillion, public development banks, with their $23 trillion in total assets, will be critical to scale up lending and collaboratively explore more effective pathways to mobilize resources for the SDGs."

At the same time, the private sector needs to strengthen investments in SDGs including by redirecting finance toward sustainability and by contributing technology and know-how to power innovation for development, she said.

Challenges ahead

Yu Zirong, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, said that tackling global challenges cannot rely on the efforts of one country or a few countries. The world has to go beyond traditional collaboration frameworks, ideological differences and geopolitical interests to motivate various parties, including developed economies, emerging economies, international organizations and the private sector.

China, the largest developing country and the second-largest economy, can make indispensable contributions to more inclusive international development collaboration, including providing more abundant international public goods and working with other countries to build a global development partnership that is united, equal, balanced and that benefits all, Yu said.

Khamis Omar, Tanzania's ambassador to China, said that though the world is already halfway to implementing the SDGs, convergence in reaching the targets is far from satisfactory, and in some instances, divergence is being registered. This is a matter of shared interest, he said, because it touches the "prosperity of mankind and sustainability of the planet we live on".

This precarious situation calls for an assessment beyond a routine monitoring exercise, he said. An objective, pragmatic and critical midterm review of SDGs should be conducted, including of whether they are effectively designed, of operational or implementation effectiveness, and of the critical issue of SDGs' financing.