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UN's new Sustainable Development Goals rest on climate action: UN official

Xinhua, September 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

An ambitious climate change agreement is needed if UN member states hope to meet the Sustainable Development Goals by the year 2030, the UN's most senior climate change official told press here Thursday.

"Without an ambitious climate agreement we will not be able to reach the sustainable development goals," said Janos Pasztor, UN assistant secretary-general on climate change.

The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 17 economic, social and environmental goals -- covering everything from hunger to gender equality. World leaders are expected to adopt the goals unanimously at a summit to take place here from Sept. 25 to 27.

Likewise, Pasztor added, the world will not be able to meet the needed global warming threshold -- considered to be a maximum two degree increase in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels -- if it doesn't also address other sustainable development issues.

"Without implementing the sustainable development we will not be able to remain below the two degrees threshold of global warming," said Pasztor.

The goals are seen as closely linked to another major summit to take place in Paris in December, the UN Climate Change Conference.

Pasztor said that he thought progress towards the Paris meeting has been positive to date.

"We are really moving into a key phase on the road to the Paris climate conference," he said.

"We see momentum building, engagement growing and action picking up. All good signs towards a successful outcome in Paris this December."

Pasztor said that so far 62 countries have submitted their climate change action plans -- known officially as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs.

"These plans will form the baseline for action, they form a floor, not a ceiling for action," he said.

Amina Mohammed, the UN secretary-general's special adviser on post-2015 development said that climate change and sustainable development were two mutually reinforcing parts of the same agenda.

"It is not just the climate action goal that makes for the interaction between sustainable development and climate change -- it is actually a number of the other goals...if not all of them," she said. Enditem