UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan’s Ambassador Munir Akram, in his capacity as the President of United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), has, at a major UN event, renewed his call for redoubling efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development goals (SDGs) aimed at ending poverty, fighting inequalities and tackling climate change.
At the same time, he underscored that the highest priority was to control the coronavirus pandemic which has inflicted unparalleled human suffering, killing a million people worldwide, with hundreds of millions are at risk.
“The global magnitude of the challenge we are facing today from the COVID pandemic is the greatest since the creation of the United Nations,” the ECOSOC president said at a high-level side event of the General Assembly on Friday.
In his remarks at the inaugural ‘SDG Moment’ event, he highlighted three challenges facing member states: the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, the realization of the SDGs and the existential threat of climate change.
“My own priorities as president of the Economic and Social Council is to focus on practical actions,” he told world leaders in the virtual event.
“We need to find the financing required to respond to the COVID 19 pandemic and to build back better,” Akram said, noting that the IMF Managing Director has estimated that developing countries will need over $2.5 trillion to recover from the current COVID induced recession.
In this regard, the proposals discussed in the initiative launched by the UN Secretary-General, Canada and Jamaica, will be followed up in ECOSOC’s forum on financing for development to ensure that commensurate commitments will be made to make that degree of financing available.
Sustainable infrastructure, he said, was the key to promoting all 17 SDGs. “We need to focus on investment in sustainable infrastructure, renewable energy, transportation, housing, water, sanitation,” he said, adding an additional investment of over $1.5 trillion annually in sustainable infrastructure was essential.
The ECOSOC president said he had proposed the establishment of an infrastructure investment facility as a public-private partnership to accelerate sustainable infrastructure development in developing countries.
He also stressed the need to find ways to bridge the digital divide between the developed and developing countries.
Earlier, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted that in embarking on a Decade of Action to deliver the SDGs by 2030, we must “strike out for a world of dignity and opportunity for all on a healthy planet”.
“We must look beyond the current crisis and set our sights high…to show that transformation is possible and is happening right now”, he said.
