PUTRAJAYA: Countries in the Asia Pacific region need to work closely together in the next 11 years to catch up on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially on the environment and climate-related challenges, said a United Nations (UN) top diplomat in the region.
The UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, said these countries need to seek common ground to overcome their challenges in these areas.
“Overall for the Asia Pacific, I think quite a (lot of) catching up to do. Overall, the most lagging is on targets related to the environment, including climate change-related challenges, whether its ocean, land, maritime, land degradation, biodiversity, forest and pollution,” she told Bernama International News Service when met at the UN Malaysia office, here, during her recent visit to Malaysia.
The Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2017 released last year revealed that regional progress towards SDGs on promoting environmental sustainability has been insufficient across the board.
The Asia Pacific region stretches from Turkey in the west to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati in the east, and from Russia in the north to New Zealand in the south. The region is home to 4.1 billion people or two third of the world’s population.
Bangkok-based Alisjahbana said for example, countries in the Asia Pacific which suffers from challenges related to the environment due to rapid urbanisation could learn from each others’ best practices in the region, as well as benchmarking their national action plan among them.
“Yes, there’s still 11 years but time flies. To really catch up we need a very good, sharp focus on what are our progression track (of each goal)…What (goals) we need to maintain? What (goals) we need to catch up? Secondly, what will be the action plan in the remaining 11 years?” she said.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 SDGs and 169 targets, were adopted on Sept 25, 2015 at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York. It officially came into force on Jan 1, 2016.
The SDGs are not legally binding, but countries are expected to take ownership and establish a national framework to achieve the 17 goals through its own sustainable development policies, plans and programmes.
While commending Asean’s role as a sub-regional body in the Asia-Pacific region, Alisjahbana said the Asean Community Vision 2025 blueprint directly supports and complement the SDGs.
“Because Asean has their pillar, for example, people-centred, and this directly supports the SDG. But (the question) is how to work together? This is where ESCAP can help facilitate, whether it is at the regional or sub-regional level,” she said.
Made up of 53 Member States and nine Associate Members, ESCAP is the largest UN body serving the Asia-Pacific region and the most comprehensive of UN’s five regional commissions.
The former Indonesian minister said Asean and the Asia Pacific face similar issues on urbanisation or liveable cities, where more than 50 per cent of the Asean region’s population lives in urban areas.
The latest ESCAP analysis shows that Asean has made very good progress since 2000 on two SDGs (goal 1 – no poverty and goal 7 – affordable & clean energy), but the situation had worsened on goals 10 (inequality), 13 (climate action) and 16 (peace, justice, strong institutions).
The next SDG progress report will be out in May. – Bernama
