Implementation will be the litmus test of SDGs – UN Advisor

World leaders last week adopted the new Sustainable Development Goals that replaced the Millennium Development Goals that have improved the lives of millions of people in the developing world.
The new agenda recognises that the world is facing immense challenges, ranging from widespread poverty, rising inequality and enormous disparity in opportunity, wealth and power to environmental degradation and the risks posed by climate change.
Amina J. Mohammed, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisor for Post-2015 Development Planning, emphasised that implementation will be the litmus test of the agenda, and welcomed the new commitments made at the summit across member states, businesses, civil society and international organizations that will support action on the 17 new Sustainable Development Goals.
The 17 SDGs and 169 targets of the new agenda will be monitored and reviewed using a set of global indicators. The global indicator framework, to be developed by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators, will be agreed on by the UN Statistical Commission by March 2016. Governments will also develop their own national indicators to assist in monitoring progress made on the goals and targets.
Already, countries have started announcing implementation strategies and actions in form of financial and partnership assistance to attain the goals by 2030. They targeted many areas for action, including poverty, health, climate change, institution building, gender equality and women empowerment; with several commitments grounded in an integrated cross-sectoral approach.
According to Mohammed, there was broad consensus that the overriding objective of the new goals was to end poverty, and many countries announced that they were aligning their national development plans with the Sustainable Development Agenda.
Ethiopia committed 70 per cent of its domestic budget to pro-poor activities including education, health, agriculture and food security while Mali committed to allocating 10 per cent of her budget to put an end to hunger. Namibia announced that the country’s national budget allocated 15.1 per cent to agricultural development.
The new global agenda to end poverty by 2030 and pursue a sustainable future was unanimously adopted by the 193 member states of the United Nations at the start of a three-day Summit on Sustainable Development.
The historic adoption of the new Sustainable Development Agenda, with 17 global goals at its core, ushered in a new era of national action and international cooperation.
The new agenda commits every country to take an array of actions that would not only address the root causes of poverty, but would also increase economic growth and prosperity and meet people’s health, education and social needs, while protecting the environment.