Transforming Our World Launched Successfully in New York UN Meeting
So
after so many years of careful building blocks put in since Brazil suggested
that there should be a new Summit on Sustainable Development in 2012. Without
the work done to re-establish sustainable development as the central
development paradigm at Rio+20 then the Sustainable Development Goals would not
have been infront of member states in 2015.
As
history is written the role of Rio+20 will take its rightful place as the
catalyst for the SDGs. Initial opposition from the development agency and NGOs slowly
they started to understand that there is no development without it being
sustainable.
This
week has been an amazing opportunity not only to celebrate those 7 years of
very hard work by people all over the world but also an opportunity to now pivot
to what will be the focus on implementation. Former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld
said:
“Never look down to
test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed
on the far horizon will find his right road.”
I cannot
think of any UN Summit where the views if stakeholder, governments and intergovernmental
were all inline. Of course there are targets that could have been better but
those that took the chance to participate had the opportunity to have their
voice heard.
There
were a few voices against what had been achieved Bjorn Lomborg I’ve commented on
in previous blogs Lord (Mark) Malloch-Brown the architect of the MDGs which were imposed
on the world rather than from a bottom
up process said the SDGs are ‘higgledy-piggledy”.
Perhaps that is because the world is higgledy-piggledy – what was achieved was
an amazing consensus on the challenges and the work that needed to be done
Rachel Kyte the new head of SE4All she said now we need to be “Rolling
up our sleeves…we have work to do.” And that is what needs to happen its about outing
in to place the tools for implementation and getting on with it.
It has been an amazing weekend hearing not only what member
states are planning to do and what intergovernmental organizations are doing but
also what stakeholders are doing to realign their policies and practices to
help to deliver the SDGs.
In this moment we should celebrate what has been achieved and
the people who have contributed to that.
Comments
Post a Comment