Category: News

As it has now become the norm, at the end of the every 15 years, the global community, under the cloak of the United Nations, comes together and formulates another ‘to-do list’ that should span over the next one and a half decades.

The script wasn’t any different this time around when on September 2015 the international community converged and approved a global agenda consisting of a series of 17 goals to be achieved before 2030.

The agenda, dubbed as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) takes over from the almost expired Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were drafted at the turn of the century.

An ambitious initiative

At the top of the 15-year blueprint, that some critics have lauded as overambitious and exorbitantly costly, is the initiative to ‘end global poverty in all its forms’ ( sic) and combat emerging issues such climate change.

The sustainable development goals come at a time when the world is sinking in a myriad of 21-st century problems such as environmental degradation, extreme poverty, famine, disease, etc. In particular, the goal to eradicate poverty comes at a time when the gap between the rich and poor, the wealth and the despicable has never been greater.
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Kickoff of the implementation of the 17 UN SDGs is only a fortnight away, and as it looks, the UN could be up against more than it really estimated.

According to a new report, a significant number of developing and least developed nations across Asia and Africa lack sufficient data to be used by development professionals and policymakers in making estimates. (more…)

It took them little under two weeks of drawn out discussions and debates, but finally on Saturday evening leaders and diplomats at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris, France came to an agreement on the much-anticipated global climate change accord.

The final draft of the agreement was presented by French President Francois Hollande to delegates on Saturday morning, while thousands of impatient protestors flooded the streets of Paris in bid to see the already delayed pact wrapped up.

In a year that the UN has laid a number of targets that would prove to be milestones if realised, the accord marks the first time developed and developing countries come together to jointly combat and adapt to the recent alarming climate change across the globe.

What’s the Climate Change Accord All About?

Inside the 31-page final agreement are two very important sections:

1. A commitment to maintain global warming at “well below” two degrees Celsius.
2. A bargain to protect low-lying nations against the slowly rising sea level by working to further reduce global warming to as low as 1.5 degrees Celsius.

That’s what the better part of the two-week debate has been all about: the two targets and, particularly, what should be done to achieve them.

One of the viable ways out of the warming crisis, as the Paris text states, is to increase “emission reduction efforts”. A promising number of nations have already submitted their pledges to reduce greenhouse emissions, which is a good sign, the UN notes, but that will only alleviate warming to 2.7 degrees, which according to experts, is still way above the “safe” maximum. The text calls for the “widest possible cooperation by all countries as climate change “represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet.”

That said, not everyone is 100% optimistic that the accord will bring about the climate change relief the world has been desperately hunting for. Not even after seeing numerous global talks over the subject in the past few decades come to sudden standstills. Some advocates who’ve voiced their doubts over the feasibility of the accord seem to be particularly dissatisfied with the lack of a well-defined parameter for measuring and verifying countries’ emission reductions. Also, the lack of a timeframe to eradicate the extraction and use of fossil fuels is a good reason the accord receives blemished support.

A Foundation For Progress

In an interview with huffingtonpost.com, though, one Mr. Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, thinks it’s too soon to start with the criticism. “This is a broad foundation for meaningful progress,” he said. “Anyone who suggests this is a success or a failure is only speaking based on ideology, not reality. Only 10 to 20 years from now, when we look at the implementation of all this, will we really know.”

Earlier this year at the Aspen Institute’s Action Forum, Anand Giridharada held a talk about the looming Sustainable Development agenda, and discussed it from a very atypical angle. He maintained that instigating the numerous targets attached to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals is not the solitary way to the conducive living atmosphere we are hunting for. The UN is telling us the opposite, but according to Anand, preventing what causes poverty, for instance, would be more rational than combating an already established crisis.

Looking at the direction the once-auspicious MDGs took, you would almost concur that facing the SDGs in the premeditated way is nothing but another well-fashioned reverie. (more…)