The Challenge
This is the challenge that brings our efforts on all the other 16 goals together. An ambitious and interconnected global development agenda requires a new global partnership – this includes financing development, connecting people through information technology networks, international trade flows, and strengthening data collection and analysis. Even as the world comes together to unite for global development – in 2017, official development assistance stood at USD 146.6 billion, a small decrease of 0.6% from 2016 in real terms – only five OECD-DAC countries met the UN target of providing official development assistance to the tune of 0.7% of their gross national income in 2017. People around the world come closer together through physical and digital networks – well over half of the world’s population (more than 4 billion user) is now online, with the latest data showing that nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017.
Why is this important?
A successful sustainable development agenda requires partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society. These 17 ambitious goals and the complex challenges they seek to address fit neither neatly demarcated sectors, nor national borders. Climate change is global, and businesses are just as important to fighting it as governments. Innovation can’t happen without universities and scientists, and certainly not without exchange of knowledge across continents. Gender equality is as much about communities as it is about legal instruments. If our epidemics are global, their solutions are too. Inclusive partnerships built upon a shared vision and shared goals that place people and the planet at the centre, are needed at the global, regional, national and local level.
How can we address this?
Urgent action is needed to mobilise, redirect and unlock the transformative power of trillions of dollars of private resources to deliver on sustainable development objectives. Long-term investments, including foreign direct investment, are needed in critical sectors, especially in developing countries. These include sustainable energy, infrastructure and transport, as well as information and communications technologies. The public sector will need to set a clear direction. Review and monitoring frameworks, regulations and incentive structures that enable such investments must be retooled to attract investments and reinforce sustainable development. National oversight mechanisms such as supreme audit institutions and oversight functions by legislatures should be strengthened.
India and Goal 17
The Government of India is an important part of this new global partnership, and it has been strengthened by the country’s efforts to build networks within the region and with the world. South-South co-operation has been a crucial part of this, as is India’s membership and leadership in institutions like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS and its New Development Bank, and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, as well as with UN agencies and programmes around the world.
Targets
Finance
Strengthen domestic resource mobilisation, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection.
Developed countries to implement fully their official development assistance commitments, including the commitment by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7% of ODA/GNI to developing countries and 0.15% to 0.20% of ODA/GNI to least developed countries. ODA providers are encouraged to consider setting a target to provide at least 0.20% of ODA/GNI to least developed countries.
Mobilise additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources.
Assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring, as appropriate, and address the external debt of highly indebted poor countries to reduce debt distress.
Adopt and implement investment promotion regimes for least developed countries.
Technology
Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international co-operation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms, including through improved co-ordination among existing mechanisms, in particular at the UN level, and through a global technology facilitation mechanism.
Promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed.
Fully operationalise the technology bank and science, technology and innovation capacity-building mechanism for least developed countries by 2017 and enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology.
Capacity building
Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including through North-South, South-South and triangular co-operation.
Trade
Promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization, including through the conclusion of negotiations under its Doha Development Agenda.
Significantly increase the exports of developing countries, in particular with a view to doubling the least developed countries’ share of global exports by 2020.
Realise timely implementation of duty-free and quota-free market access on a lasting basis for all least developed countries, consistent with World Trade Organization decisions, including by ensuring that preferential rules of origin applicable to imports from least developed countries are transparent and simple, and contribute to facilitating market access.
Systemic issues
Policy and institutional coherence
Enhance global macroeconomic stability, including through policy co-ordination and policy coherence.
Enhance policy coherence for sustainable development.
Respect each country’s policy space and leadership to establish and implement policies for poverty eradication and sustainable development.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships
Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilise and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries.
Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.
Data, monitoring and accountability
By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to developing countries, including for least developed countries and small island developing States, to increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts.
By 2030, build on existing initiatives to develop measurements of progress on sustainable development that complement gross domestic product, and support statistical capacity-building in developing countries.
Copyright: UN India, SDG TAGS: Dominic Dixon, United Nations, Dominic F Dixon, Dr. Dominic Dixon, UN SDG
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