2023-09-21 02:18:32
Christoph Hasselbach
Various crises have distracted the world from sustainable development goals. The differences between the global south and industrialized countries were also manifested at the New York summit.
In 2015, the United Nations set 17 sustainable development goals. Among them, freeing the world from hunger and poverty until 2030 and ensuring that all human beings have access to education, drinking water and energy. Gender equality and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees are also among the declared goals.
Now, halfway through, it is clear that most of those goals will not be achieved. According to an interim report by the UN, in more than 30 percent of the objectives there is no progress, or even setbacks. If things continue as they are, in 2030 more than 600 million people will still suffer from hunger.
Johannes Varwick, a political scientist and international relations expert at the University of Halle, described the situation to DW: “The goals were certainly ambitious, but with the corresponding political will they were not completely unattainable. “Too few states really took the commitments seriously.” In his opinion, one of the problems lies in the short-term political vision. «Crises such as the financial crisis of 2008, the pandemic, or now the war in Ukraine, have displaced priorities. That is, on the one hand, understandable, but also shortsighted,” he says.
Germany saves on development aid
However, 193 nations recommitted to those goals in a political declaration. It states: “We will act without delay” to realize this “plan of action for people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership, leaving no one behind.”
The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, urged to accelerate efforts to achieve the goals, despite everything. And the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, stated in his speech that “time is of the essence.”
The German chancellor had little audience at the UN. Image: Michael Kappeler/dpa/picture alliance
However, there are those who attribute part of the responsibility for the lack of progress to Berlin. The aid organization Misereor, for example, stated that it is not encouraging that the next German federal budget provides for 15 percent less funds for development cooperation.
For now, Germany invited a conference in Hamburg next year to seek “solutions for the necessary socioeconomic transformations.” In addition, Germany is preparing, together with Namibia, the UN “Summit of the Future” for 2024.
Erosion of Western power
While Chancellor Scholz spoke to a small audience in New York, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stole the show in the general debate. But the issue of the Ukraine war is generating tensions within the UN. Countries from the global south accuse Western states of attributing too much importance to it and neglecting issues such as the fight against poverty.
Temporarily, Russia and ten other countries threatened to block the joint statement. They argued that the sanctions harm their development.
According to Johannes Varwick, the West is losing momentum. ”This is demonstrated, above all, by the growing influence of the BRICS+ format, which can also be understood as a challenge to the West. Also the last meeting of the G-77 + China, in Havana, is a sign of the growing demand for the global south’s capacity for action,” he points out. However, he sees no alternative to the UN: “We have nothing better than the United Nations,” he concludes.
(ers/cp)
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