Admitting to frustratingly slow progress, in some cases reverse progress, in the implementation of the UN’s anti-poverty Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN leaders on Monday recommitted themselves unanimously in a declaration drafted by Ireland and Qatar to meeting their targets. “As we stand here today, halfway to our deadline of 2030,” Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told leaders, “there is no hiding the fact we are not where we would wish to be.” But they can still be met, he insisted with UN Secretary General António Guterres, who deplored current efforts by the developed world as woefully off-track.
The 2030 targets were set in 2015 but, at halftime, the score is depressing: just 15 per cent of the 17 targets aimed at ending extreme poverty and hunger, safeguarding the environment, and eradicating gender inequality are on track to be achieved on time. Eight are going backwards, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preventing species extinction and ensuring sustainable fish stocks.
The world is currently set to fall 600 million people short of its goal of ensuring not one person goes hungry, while by 2030 half a billion are likely to remain in poverty and 100 million children will still be out of school. Hunger, is now at levels not seen since 2005, with food prices higher in more countries than in the period 2015–19. On current progress it would take 286 years to close the gender gaps in legal protection and to remove discriminatory laws.
Food poverty is a development priority for Ireland, with Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin on Sunday saying that transformation of food systems is key to reinvigorating the SDG. Ireland will this year provide at least €284 million support to global food, agriculture and nutrition programmes. The declaration – albeit non-binding – calls for an annual international commitment of €480 billion to the SDG, and for the recapitalisation of the multilateral development banks and a reworking of the “international financial architecture” to assist alleviating debt.