President of the UN General Assembly remarks to opening of the High-level Segment of ECOSOC/Ministerial Segment of the High-level Political Forum Csaba Kőrösi, President of the 77th session of the General Assembly

Madam President, Mr. Secretary-General, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The High-Level Political Forum is the world’s main platform offering political leadership and providing concrete guidance for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda.

What is hindering the timely implementation of SDGs?

We inherited

• accumulated risk factors,
• mostly old-fashioned policies,
• mostly old-fashioned market regulations,
• mostly old-fashioned incentives for investments,
• mostly old-fashioned institutions

But we have

• transformative goals,

• rapidly changing technologies and science.

We expect transformation from this combination of components. It is not surprising that transformation is happening much slower than what we wish to see.

So, what is needed to significantly accelerate the sustainability transformation?

1. Create national transformation strategies, aligned with SDGs. Everywhere.
2. Align regulations with announced goals.
3. Learn how to calculate all important externalities of actions (or inactions)
4. Learn how to reduce the negative externalities of our investments and increase the positive ones across all three pillars simultaneously.
5. Identify and prioritize on game-changing elements in the SDG implementation.
6. Build transparent road map of implementation.
7. Improve science-based validation mechanism of implementation.

The good news is that we are still in the game, but now the game itself needs to be changed.

In fact, it is now or never.

You, Member States, do feel a strong sense of ownership over your development, and we must all sharpen the tools of the UN system to track delivery of commitments and advise on correction of the course of action where needed.

Financing the transition needed for achieving the SDGs remains a critical challenge, with the financing gap now exceeding $4 trillion per year, up from $2.5 trillion – as we heard from the Secretary-General.

It is a huge amount of money. But let me invite our financing experts to calculate and quantify the benefits of sustainability transformation. Because what we invest should not be an add-on to the traditional way of development, but to change the course of it.

We must persist in our efforts to ensure that the international financial system supports the SDGs much better.

The Summit of the Future and the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development will serve as vital opportunities to reach an agreement on the reform package for the international – and consequently – national financial architectures.

In all these matters, we simply cannot afford to lose momentum.

Dear colleagues,

We have the knowledge we need to steer humanity out of the crises we face.

From updating Voluntary National Reviews to creating real time data sets on SDG implementation – we have pioneering tools at our disposal.

In two months, the SDG Summit will take place.

It will have to be a non-conventional summit.

The key challenge of it will be credibility: how to convince the world that, from now on, member states will do sustainable development better.

My vision – my hope – for the Summit is that it will result in the supercharging and accelerating of the SDGs’ implementation.

The Summit will be the moment to make new commitments to set in motion the gamechangers we will need to agree on in only a matter of weeks.

But, for this to happen, there should be an acknowledgement of the global state of affairs, and a genuine recognition of how desperately we need to change how we think and what we do.

Key building blocks such as the development of “Beyond GDP” or the creation of a scientific evaluation system for SDG implementation are transformative elements that we need to commit to.

At the March UN Water Conference, you have endorsed other gamechangers, including the integration of water and climate policies and the establishment of a Global Water Information System.

The political declaration and the SDG Summit itself should breathe a new life into the sustainability transformation.

But this process will not end in September. It will likely not end in 2030 either.

The 2030 Agenda is – and should remain – our map, our nautical chart.

Colleagues, Friends,

Be courageous. Be ambitious. Be determined in your vision of a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable future.

Let us keep the promise of the 2030 Agenda: the promise we have made to our 8 billion stakeholders.

Let us transform the world.

Let us save the world.

Thank you.