SDG 17 - Partnerships to achieve the Goal

New York City, 14 July 2017: With the first week of deliberations at the 2017 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development coming to a close this Friday at the UN in New York, civil society activists are criticizing a piecemeal approach to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Especially worrisome to activists is a growing gap between aspirational goals and a lack of proper and comprehensive means of implementation.

On many occasions – during side-events as well [...]

New York 13 July 2017: As the SDG 17 is under review today at the HLPF 2017, civil society groups express their concern for the inadequacy of the combined MoI/AAAA framework to match the ambition of the 2030 Agenda. The worrying slogan of ‘making the business case for sustainable development’, clearly exemplifies how private finance, rather than public policies and investments, is being portrayed as the fundamental key to SDG implementation, says the Spotlight Report, a comprehensive independent assessment released [...]

New York, 13 July 2017: Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), usually portrayed as a useful tool towards sustainable development, actually “involve disproportionate risks and costs for people and the public purse”, claims a global coalition of civil society organizations and trade unions in the Spotlight Report 2017 launched earlier this week.

New York, 12 July 2017: SDG2 ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, articulates one of the highest aspirations of the 2030 Agenda. Failure to advance it will significantly affect the entire agenda, claims the Spotlight report, a comprehensive independent assessment released in New York on the opening day of the High Level Political Forum 2017.

New York, 12 July 2017: Corporate power threatens women´s human rights by promoting a race to the bottom in labour standards and avoiding taxes in the countries where profits are obtained, concludes the report Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2017, in its analysis of the fifth Sustainable Development Goal which promises to achieve gender equality by 2030 and empower all women and girls.

New York, 11 July 2017: “The promise made by governments to eradicate poverty by 2030 is doable if countries cooperate to fight tax evasion and capital flights” argues an independent report submitted to the High Level Political Forum of the United Nations as an input to its debate today around the first of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

New York, 10 July 2017: A global coalition of civil society organizations and trade unions presents today the report Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2017. It is published on the opening day of the High Level Political Forum at the United Nations in New York. The report provides the most comprehensive independent assessment of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

By Roberto Bissio, Social Watch

In October 2011, a World Bank press release proudly announced that “IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is providing an innovative US$ 50 million partial credit guarantee to a longstanding IFC client, Construtora Norberto Odebrecht S.A., to support the development of infrastructure in Brazil and other Latin American countries”. [fn]See for this and the following quotes http://ifcext.ifc.org/IFCExt/pressroom/IFCPressRoom.nsf/0/0F649A1A15FC4B0885257936005218E0. [/fn] Those US$ 50 million almost magically multiplied by a factor of 40 in the title [...]

By Stefano Prato, Society for International Development [fn]This article draws and further builds on the author’s editorial, “Financing for Development: The progress money cannot buy”, SID Development Journal on Financing for Development, vol. 59:1. [/fn]

SDG 17: “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development”, articulates key actions that are expected to unlock progress in the pursuit of the 2030 Agenda. It is contextualized and complemented by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) and the [...]

Measuring progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is more complicated than it was for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Although a total of 60 indicators were identified for the one or more targets for each of the MDGs, in practice, the measure of success was largely limited to a single target. Thus the promise to reduce extreme poverty by half, which was the primary concern, was celebrated as accomplished when the World Bank target of halving the number of [...]