By Winnie Kamau
Synthesis Report on Goals to End Poverty launched by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has been lauded by many including the Climate Action Network a consortium of organizations working on climate change. The report was released during the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties and the 10th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol taking place in Lima, Peru. The report is the culmination of a number of strands of work over the last year, which started with Rio+20 in 2012, and will drive the next nine months of negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will be agreed in September 2015 in New York. Proposed 17 guiding principles of the Sustainable Development Goals will act as the world’s to-do list to end poverty and will come into effect in January, 2016 and run for the next 15 years to 2030. The report places action on climate change at the heart of a set of principles to achieve sustainable development. The report not only keeps the door open for a standalone goal on climate change but also to ensure that all the SDGS are aligned with climate action.
Building to the momentum towards both the agreement of strong and effective SDGs and a comprehensive, global agreement on climate change due in Paris in December 2015. The 17 guiding principles of the Sustainable goals acknowledge that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pointed “The members of the High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability recommended a sustainable path to enhance human well-being, further global justice, strengthen gender equity and preserve the Earth’s life-support systems for future generations.”
Unlike the previous agreement amongst member states in the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) as per the report, all countries are encouraged to adopt their own national sustainable development financing strategies that take account of all financing flows, based on continuing dialogue among relevant government entities and other stakeholders. Such strategies should review and strengthen the domestic policy, the legal and institutional environment and the policy coherence for sustainable development. All financing flows, including climate finance, should build stronger country ownership and lead to greater use of country strategies and systems. In order to be effective, the component parts of sustainable development financing strategies must have associated investible pipelines.
The National visions and plans and annual budgets and medium-term expenditure frameworks should be aligned with national sustainable development strategies. The urgency is particularly great in the case of low-carbon technologies as part of our efforts to mitigate human-induced climate change. Emphasis will also be placed on using data and evidence more effectively and transparently and developing greater analytical capacity for addressing inequalities, risk and vulnerability. Fiscal and macro-economic policies must include low carbon solutions for sustainable development. Carbon pricing, through different approaches, should be a key consideration. Harmful fossil fuel subsidies, both direct and indirect, should be phased out. Agricultural export subsidies should be removed.
In 2000 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were set to placing people at the center generating unprecedented improvements in the lives of many around the world. The global mobilization behind the MDGs showed that multilateral action can actually make a tangible difference in the lives of people. Yet the conditions in today’s world are a far cry amid great plenty for some, many have witnessed pervasive poverty, gross inequalities, joblessness, disease and deprivation for billions of people. There has been a lot of displacement of the highest level ever seen since the Second World War. Armed conflict, crime, terrorism, persecution, corruption, impunity and the erosion of the rule of law are daily realities. The impacts of global economic, food and energy crises are still being felt.
The consequence of climate change has only just begun. This failings and shortcomings have done as much to define the modern era as has our progress in science , technology and the mobilization of global social movements. Sound public policies inspired by the MDGs, enhanced by collective action and international cooperation, lead to remarkable successes. In two decades since 1990, the world has halved extreme poverty, lifting 700 million out of extreme poverty.
The world is now becoming a global village with the use of technologies and embracing of the same round the continent at the click of a button we connect. New demographic trends show the world is changing. The global family of 7 billion people is likely to reach 9 billion by 2050. We are increasingly urban with half of the world’s population living in towns and cities. We are a mobile world with more than 232 million international migrants and almost 1 billion when internal migrants are counted. These trends have direct impact on the goals that are set presenting both challenges and opportunities.
