Guterres urges countries to recommit to achieving SDGs by 2030 deadline

(United Nations News) More than half the world is being left behind at the midpoint for achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told ambassadors in New York on Tuesday. 

Launching a special edition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) progress report, he warned that their collective promise made in 2015 of a more green, just and equitable global future, is in peril. 

“Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been,” he said. 

The report reveals that just 12 per cent of the 169 SDG targets are on track, while progress on 50 per cent is weak and insufficient. Worst of all, he said is the fact that progress has either stalled or even reversed on more than 30 per cent of the goals. 

The 17 SDGs are in a sorry state due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating “triple crisis” of climate, biodiversity and pollution, amplified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  

As a result, the number of people living in extreme poverty is higher than it was four years ago.  Hunger has also increased and is now back at 2005 levels, and gender equality is some 300 years away.   Other fallouts include record-high inequality and rising greenhouse gas emissions. 

Read more at: United Nations News

Source: CARICOM TODAY