Only “Total Systemic Change” Will Make 2030 Goals Viable — Maduro at UN

Concerns about how to reduce inequality loom large. When they do, impressive progress can be achieved. Businesses have enormous power, resources and knowledge to assist.

The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 17 goals and 169 targets aimed at resolving global social, economic and environmental problems.

In India, the bank is organising a drawing competition for students across the country to raise awareness of the UN’s 17 Global Goals. The United Nations is very explicit about the expectations placed on the for-profit sector around the world.

Humanitarian emergencies created by war and conflict are overwhelming the worldwide community’s capacity to respond. The urgent need for a concerted global effort to tackle the root causes of these disasters by promoting sustainable development has never seemed stronger.

“Today in Venezuela we can say that the huge wealth of our country has successfully been distributed for health, housing, the right to food, the right to life, we have succeeded in reversing the excluding tendencies of capitalist culture”, the socialist leader proclaimed, highlighting the South American nation’s accomplishment in raising social expenditure from 33% to 62% of its national budget as well as its gains in combatting the precarization of work under the new labor law.

The United Nations and others are not naive.

Why do we need them?

We already got a hint of this new era in July, at the UN Financing for Development Conference in Ethiopia, where developing countries put the onus on the rich ones not on aid, but on fixing the broken tax rules that allow multinational corporations to hide their profits instead of paying their taxes, which in turn could be used for schools, clinics, roads and other development priorities. It has developed innovative processes and practices to do so. “This is going to be about sustained political will by northern governments but also by southern governments to use their own money to tax corporations more effectively, to make sure the money from their natural resources goes to poverty reduction”. The plan details changes in production patterns (from sourcing raw material to transporting goods) and sustainable consumption by offering consumers better products. A commitment to lasting peace and stability based on peaceful and inclusive societies is essential. Clearly, governments acting alone can’t achieve the goals envisaged in the new global agenda. The goals acknowledge that no person should be forced to live in hunger or die of a preventable disease, and that poverty hits women and girls hardest.

Last night 300 CEOs signed on to the SDGs at the UN Private Sector Forum. Ultimately, this is all about governance and about inclusiveness: societies will only accept transformation if people feel their voices have been heard. He announced Facebook’s commitment to make universal internet access a reality in the next decade.

To be met over the next 15 years, beginning on January 1, 2016, the SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were adopted in 2000 and expire this year.

“They are a to-do list for people and planet, and a blueprint for success”, said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after an opening ceremony with performances by Colombian singer Shakira and Benin’s Angelique Kidjo, United Nations goodwill ambassadors. “That amounts to both an audacious challenge and an incredible opportunity”, said Elliot.

Drawing from the MDG implementation, Indonesia has just mainstreamed the Post-2015 Development Agenda into its national development planning, according to Kalla. But in many parts of the world, the WFP has had to shift gears.

“…Though the goals are not legally binding on any country, they gain moral force from having been adopted by consensus after three years of lengthy negotiations”.