Yearender: New development agenda raises vision for sustainable future by 2030

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, unanimously adopted by leaders of all 193 United Nation member states in September, raised vision for an inclusive, sustainable, resilient future.

It has charted a new course for global development and offered new opportunities for international development cooperation.

TO-DO LIST

Composed of 17 ambitious Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets, the agenda is "a plan for action for people, planet and prosperity", which also "seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom", as the agenda said in its preamble.

"They is a to-do list for people and planet, and a blueprint for success," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit.

The to-do list embraces specific targets such as eradicating extreme poverty for all people everywhere, reducing the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births, as well as progressively achieving and sustaining income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average.

Building on the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)adopted in 2000 and on the guided development action for the last 15 years, the new agenda seeks to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, as well as to tackle climate change by 2030.

UN member states decided to launch the process to establish a set of Sustainable Development Gocals (SDGs) at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012.

An open working group was assigned with the job of developing a set of sustainable development goals, with governments, civil society, business, parliamentarians and all other stakeholders making contribution.

After more than a year of negotiations, the open working group presented its recommendation for the 17 sustainable development goals.

In August 2015, all the 193 member states of the United Nations reached consensus on the outcome document of the new agenda and decided to have the agenda adopted at a summit held also on the occasion of the UN's 70th anniversary.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT

After 15 years of development guided by the Millennium Development Goals, gaps still remain. According to the UN, around 800 million people are living in extreme poverty and 795 million still suffer from hunger, to name a few.

"If we implement these sustainable development goals, including climate change, I think we can expect that most of the people will be able to live in a much better, much more stable situation and much more prosperity," Ban said at his year-end press conference on Dec. 16.

The achievement of the SDGs will require the mobilization of trillions of dollars and the resources already exist.

"Along with other development banks and other groups, together we came up with a strategy of really increasing resources for development from billions to trillions of dollars. That plan is going to fundamentally change the way we think about funding development," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told Chinese media in September.

The agenda itself has also incorporated implementation as one of the 17 goals and stipulates ways to achieve them through means of finance, technology, capacity building, trade and system issues.

It asks developed countries to implement fully their official development assistance commitments to developing countries, calls upon enhancement of North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation, as well as international support for capacity-building of the developing countries.

"The North-South cooperation is the mainstream of global partnerships today," Wu Hongbo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, told Xinhua in an interview in August, noting that developed countries still bear the main responsibility to help developing countries.

"The developed countries should bear the primary responsibility for development financing, effectively honor their ODA (Official Development Assistance) commitments, and increase assistance to developing countries in special situations," Wang Min, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, told a UN General Assembly meeting on development issues in October.

Implementation and success will rely on countries' own policies and plans and will be led by countries, according to the UN. The 17 SDGs and 169 targets of the new agenda will be monitored and reviewed using a set of global indicators.

The global indicator framework, to be developed by the Inter Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators, will be agreed on by the UN Statistical Commission by March 2016.

CHINA'S ROLE

"The post-2015 development agenda is a high-standard list of deliverables that carries with it our solemn commitment," noted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the UN Sustainable Development Summit on Sept. 26, pointing out that "the worth of any plan is in its implementation."

To well implement the post-2015 development agenda, Xi put forward a four-point proposal for the international community: building up the development capacities; improving the international environment for development; updating the partnership for development; and strengthening the coordination mechanisms for development.

"The international community has a duty to help developing countries with capacity building and provide them with support and assistance tailored to their actual needs," the president noted.

By lifting 439 million people out of poverty and making remarkable progress in areas of education, health and women's welfare, China has basically realized the MDGs.

China's development has not only improved the well-being of the 1.3 billion-plus Chinese people, but also given a strong boost to the global cause of development.

Over the past six decades, China has provided 166 countries and international organizations with nearly 400-billion-yuan (61.7 billion-U.S. dollar) worth of assistance and dispatched over 600,000 aid workers, over 700 of whom have laid down their precious lives in aiding the development of other countries.

Xi announced at the summit that China will set up a fund, with initial contribution of 2 billion dollars, to support the South-South cooperation and assist developing countries in implementing their post-2015 development agenda. He said China will also do its best to raise its investment in the least developed countries (LDCs) to 12 billion dollars by 2030.

In addition, China will exempt the debt of the outstanding intergovernmental interest-free loans due by the end of 2015 owed by the relevant LDCs, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries, the president said.

"China has already played the largest role in human history in ending extreme poverty," noted President Kim of the World Bank.

"We think that with the global movement, everyone working closely together with the emergence of China, not just as an important player that has lifted its own people out of poverty but as an important player in lifting other people out of poverty, we will make a difference," Kim said. Endi