On the eve of the (virtual) United Nations 75th anniversary event and the Global Goals Week authors presented this year's global civil society report Spotlight on Sustainable Development.
If you missed the virtual launching event you can watch the recording here.
Find the report & further information here.
New York, 18 September
The COVID-19 crisis and the worldwide measures to tackle it have deeply affected communities, societies and economies around the globe. The implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been put at high risk in many countries. COVID-19 is a global wake-up call for enhanced international cooperation and solidarity.
But calls for “building back better” by just pushing the reset button will not change the game. We need structural changes [...]
By Vicente Paolo Yu, Third World Network
Climate change is intensifying. Record-breaking global temperatures, atmospheric greenhouse gas (especially CO2) concentrations, and rising sea levels and temperatures, as well as increasing ocean acidification, are constantly being reported. Global mean temperature has approximately increased by 1.1°C above the pre-industrial level. Climate change impacts are now undermining and will pose significant constraints on meeting sustainable development and poverty eradication in many developing countries due to the loss and damage [...]
New York, 8 July 2019: “The world is off-track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Most governments have failed to turn the transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda into real transformational policies. Even worse, xenophobia and authoritarianism are on the rise in a growing number of countries.”
“The implementation of the 2030 Agenda is not just a matter of better policies. It requires more holistic and more sweeping shifts in how power is vested, including through institutional and governance [...]
By Arthur Muliro Wapakala, Society for International Development (SID)
The world is not on track in meeting the Sustainable Energy for All targets. it is time to shift the focus to the governance realm and reshape it to ensure that the decisions taken, the policies promulgated and the finances leveraged are actually contributing more to the goal of ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all and less to the profits of the private companies involved. This [...]
By Arthur Muliro Wapakala, Society for International Development (SID)
Recent discoveries of hydrocarbons in various African countries and the massive investments in energy generation capacity have created expectations that the blackouts and brownouts that several African countries have endured for the past decades will soon be a thing of the past. In East Africa, national economies have in recent years also been recording stellar growth rates which promise new opportunities and discontinuity with the past.
Despite this record, in its [...]
By Stefano Prato, Society for International Development, Elenita Daño and Trudi Zundel, ETC Group, Lim Li Ching and Chee Yoke Ling, Third World Network
Food is at the core of the nexus between identities, health, ecology and livelihoods, an intrinsic space where different important dimensions of life converge. Yet, policy discussions and deliberations that impact on food and food systems are often fragmented and incoherent. This chapter explores the close connection between these different domains and offers feasible pathways on [...]
By Hans JH Verolme, Climate Advisers Network
Energy is one of humanity’s most basic needs and is rightly recognized in the 2030 Agenda as central to human progress. The global hunger for power seems insatiable and many countries are pursuing power sector development at any cost. The cost will thus be borne by the next generation. The existing mindset to achieve SDG 7, also in relation to the other SDGs, is inadequate. SDG 7 targets
The Africa Renewable Energy initiative (AREI) was launched at the COP21 in Paris, endorsed by 54 African Heads of State, and has two main goals:
1) to help achieve sustainable development, enhanced well-being, and sound economic development by ensuring universal access to sufficient amounts of clean, appropriate and affordable energy.
2) to help African countries leapfrog to renewable energy systems that support their low-carbon development strategies while enhancing economic and energy security.
AREI is set to add at least 300 [...]
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