Decade of Action 'Our Opportunity’ to Bridge Gap between Sustainable Development Goals Policy, Impact, Deputy Secretary-General Tells Qatar Foundation

Following are UN Deputy Secretary‑General Amina Mohammed’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at the Qatar Foundation Speaker Series on “Bridging the gap between policy and impact during the Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals”, in Doha today:

I am very pleased to take part today in the Qatar Foundation Education City Speakers Series on bridging the gap between policy and impact during the Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.  Behind the eloquent title of today’s event lies a critical question, namely, how can we translate the Sustainable Development Goals into concrete actions that deliver for the people we serve and the planet we depend on?

What makes this challenging is that the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals are a radical departure from their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals.  So, business as usual — or development as usual — will not be enough.

The Sustainable Development Goals are transformative, integrated and universal; they apply to all countries and to all aspects of development.  They call for a fundamental rewiring of our economies and our societies to simultaneously deliver for people and planet alike — ending poverty and hunger; achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls; reducing inequality and overcoming the existential threat of climate change.

Translating this core paradigm shift into the decisions, policies, budgets and laws that get the results we so desperately need — that is our task and our challenge for the Decade of Action that lies ahead.

Since 2015, we have seen unprecedented engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals.  Across the world, Governments, businesses, cities, the finance industry, media, the scientific community, young people, parliamentarians and more have embraced the goals — launching new plans, new initiatives and new coalitions.  At the United Nations annual High‑level Political Forum, we see evidence of this enthusiasm, including from States presenting their Voluntary National Reviews. 

But what we are not seeing is evidence that this engagement is leading to the real‑world change we need.  In fact, we see the contrary.  More and more people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition.  Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.  More frequent climate‑related disasters are wreaking havoc on communities and economies.  Inequalities are growing wider.  Biodiversity is in an unprecedented crisis.  Women and girls continue to be subjected to gender‑based violence.  Millions of people are still denied access to justice.

The Decade of Action is our opportunity to reverse these trends.  It is a global call to people everywhere to mobilize, to act and to advocate for change at speed and at scale.  It is an opportunity to embark in earnest on a sustained period of concrete yet ambitious implementation efforts.  We have solid foundations to build on.  We have gained valuable experience and expertise.  We know the focused approaches and catalysts that can deliver — at speed and at scale.

Today, I will outline some of these.  The first priority is localization:  supporting local governments and local communities in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals.  Local governments and leaders have a pivotal role in realizing all of the Sustainable Development Goals — from reducing greenhouse gas emissions and shifting energy systems away from fossil fuels, to transforming education, public transport and local economic development systems and policies. 

But they often face significant roadblocks in harnessing this potential.  With the right policy tools, we can enable and elevate their work.  I want to highlight two critical bottlenecks local governments face — data and finance — and suggest some solutions.  In a world defined by data, national averages can hide the harsh reality of daily life for millions of people.  Many local and regional governments struggle to monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly for those left farthest behind.

We are seeing some progress, from a Sustainable Development Goals Metropolitan Observatory in Rio de Janeiro to local government networks across Germany.  We need more of this leadership, and my own office is playing a part.  We have worked with city and local government networks and the United Nations system through the Local 2030 movement to develop a local‑level data platform.

This is a good start, but we need to raise awareness about the importance of this work and strengthen the local level data revolution.  We also need to look at finance at the local level.  Local governments continue to face difficulties accessing finance and have limited capacities to raise their own.  Lifting these barriers is critical to accelerated Sustainable Development Goals implementation.

There is massive investment potential in Sustainable Development Goals and climate action by local governments like states and provinces.  For climate change alone, the investment opportunity in cities alone is estimated at more than $29.4 trillion by 2030.  But these opportunities are going to waste, because the global financial architecture was designed with national Governments and large companies in mind rather than the community‑level projects that are essential for Sustainable Development Goals implementation.

Without the ability to raise their own capital, small towns, cities and states struggle to finance the new infrastructure that is aligned with Sustainable Development Goals implementation — from low‑emission housing to improved water and sanitation systems and climate mitigation measures.

We should also look closely at Sustainable Development Goals review mechanisms at the local level.  Accountability is essential if we are to engage with new partners who require regulatory frameworks and demonstrable results.

There are examples of good practice.  The city of Freetown in Sierra Leone is planning to develop a voluntary local review — committing to advance the 17 Goals, evaluate its efforts, and empower stakeholders.  Mexico City has launched a green municipal bond and established a Climate Change Fund.  We need to learn from these and build on them in the next few years if we are to make real progress towards our goals.

The second priority I want to highlight is public mobilization.  The Sustainable Development Goals are an agenda by, for and of the people.  Yet most people across the world are not aware of the Goals.  Formal engagement and events are essential.  That’s why I am here today.

But we need to take the Goals beyond these formal frameworks and engage ordinary people and the global public, in the communities where they live and work.  We need to rethink how we communicate the Goals.  We need stories that resonate and connect to the challenges people experience in their daily lives.  We need to navigate the new media landscape with an eye on the values and information needed to inspire change.  And we need to find the right messengers and influencers to reach new audiences.

We also need to energize and empower young people so that they can leverage their agency, their networks and their command of new technologies to take up the fight for the Sustainable Development Goals.  As we see around the climate crisis, young people are incredible agents of change, shifting consumer behaviour, demanding political leadership and building a movement from the local to the national and the global level.

In September alone, an estimated 6 million people took to the streets around the world to call for more climate action.  Hundreds of thousands have joined since.  A comparable mass global engagement is needed if the Decade of Action is to deliver transformative change. 

We can see its beginnings in the demonstrations that have taken place across the world in the past few months.  Many people have clearly had enough of the status quo — whether in terms of inequality, gender‑based violence or corruption.  Digital technology and social media mean people are more aware than ever before of their human rights and fundamental freedoms — and of the injustices and inequalities they face every day.  The 2030 Agenda is a way to channel these concerns into transformative, sustainable growth that benefits people, communities and our planet.

A third opportunity to move from policy to impact is by tackling Sustainable Development Goals challenges in a truly integrated manner.  Too often, the emphasis on advancing an integrated approach has failed to move beyond rhetoric.  Leaders and decision‑makers need to analyse and address the trade‑offs and synergies that come from their decisions, their policies and their interventions.

For example, addressing hunger — Sustainable Development Goal 2 — requires a sustainable food system that balances the need for ensuring universal access to nutritious foods and greater food security, with reducing emissions and pressures on water resources and biodiversity.  We can only move towards such an approach by establishing partnerships with the relevant actors across that system; shifting processes and priorities at scale and in a coordinated way; and holding each other to account as we do so.  The next phase of Sustainable Development Goals implementation demands this level of integration across a range of challenges.

Fourth, moving from the rhetoric to the imperative of leaving no one behind.  Yesterday morning, I addressed the Doha International Conference on Disability and Development.  We know that people with disabilities are all too often left out and left behind, the most vulnerable and the least able to make their voices heard.

At the conference, Governments, the United Nations system, academia, the private sector, and other key organizations came together to exchange ideas and learn from each other’s experiences of investing in the inclusion and agency of people with disabilities.  Efforts to include people with disabilities, refugees and migrants, people in humanitarian crises, the elderly and those subjected to discrimination of all kinds will be a litmus test for Sustainable Development Goals success. 

We need clear benchmarks to reach these vulnerable groups, in all our sustainable development planning.  That means developing new programmes that ensure social protection for all.  It means investing in data systems so that the marginalized and vulnerable are seen and the impact of policies, interventions and solutions on their well‑being is clear.  And it means changing the policy and legal frameworks that reinforce outdated stereotypes and exclude certain people and groups.

Such measures can have an enormous impact across the goals.  For example, in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, public transport has been made more accessible to people with disabilities by adding elevators and providing information in Braille.  These simple changes have helped people with disabilities to access education, healthcare and jobs.  Leaving no one behind means supporting all people everywhere to realize all their human rights.

Fifth, mobilizing and aligning financing in support of the Sustainable Development Goals.  The debate around financing the 2030 Agenda has evolved considerably over the past four years.  Today, many more partners are engaged, and many new initiatives have emerged.

At the same time, there are still significant gaps.  The Sustainable Development Goals financing gap for developing countries is more than $920 billion per year. Private investment in developing countries remains static.  Global investment remains overwhelmingly directed towards short‑term gains that are not aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.

We need to start seeing change that has real impact.  We need to step up our work on domestic resource mobilization.  At the same time, we need both an increase in official development assistance (ODA) and a much greater proportion of ODA being channelled to support the most vulnerable developing countries.

We also need to push out integrated national financing frameworks to ensure that financing is tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of individual countries.  And work aimed at aligning the global financial system with the 2030 Agenda needs to start delivering major change.

The Secretary‑General’s Taskforce on Digital Financing can play a key role here.  Its initial findings identified several ways in which fintech can shift the centre of gravity of the financial system towards ordinary people.  These include increasing the quality and user‑friendliness of financial information and providing platforms for people to take collective action, through crowd‑funding or through consumer, employee, or shareholder actions.

The Secretary‑General’s Alliance of Global Investors for Sustainable Development, launched just last month, will also deliver clear recommendations and initiatives to increase the supply of long‑term financing for sustainable development.

Sixth and finally, engaging the science and technology community.  Science and technology can be powerful agents of change for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.  This is one of the key messages of the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report.  But we are still behind on many targets related to knowledge and education.  For example, in 2015, an estimated 617 million children and adolescents of primary and lower secondary school age did not have a minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics.

Education, including higher education and life-long learning, has a critical role to play. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education, for example, is key to tackling critical challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss. 

Broader support for developing countries that lack science capacities and infrastructure is essential, if we are to strengthen the connection between science and policy.  I mentioned data collection earlier as a local priority, but it is also critical at the national level, to shape policies that respond to the realities on the ground.

To move from policy to impact, to succeed in implementing the 2030 Agenda, we need all actors and all people on board.  United, we can transform our world by 2030.  Next September, as the United Nations celebrates its seventy‑fifth anniversary, the Secretary‑General will convene the first Platform on the Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.

This platform will help us to understand the world’s trajectory on the Sustainable Development Goals.  It will show where we are on target and where more needs to be done.  It will provide a snapshot of what’s working and what’s not; and help us to understand where we need to do more, and who should do it. 

I look forward to Qatar’s participation, and to learning about your progress on the 2030 Agenda.  Let us move forward, together — with ambition and urgency.  Let’s build the world we want by 2030.  The United Nations is your steadfast partner as we strive together for peace, justice, and lives of opportunity and dignity for all.  Thank you.