Action needed to achieve sustainable goals, says Johnson Smith
Published:Friday | September 27, 2019 | 12:25 AMPaul Clarke/Gleaner Writer
Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Kamina Johnson Smith has urged the United Nations (UN) member states to move beyond commitment and “act as needed to achieve the goals and targets of the 2030 development agenda”.
Calling the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the world’s “blueprint for development”, she said that there has been mixed success in achieving these goals, adding that a more strident approach towards further success was needed.
Johnson Smith, in her address to the international media at the joint African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) and European Union (EU) press conference on the ACP-EU Declaration on SDGs in the margins of the UN General Assembly, encouraged “pragmatic partnership and urgent action to eliminate poverty and promote sustainable development through the implementation of the 2030 Agenda”.
“The young people have signalled their impatience with our debates. We must not let them down with weak excuses. We must move beyond committing to actions,” she said.
She noted that despite the shared goals, the resources and capacities remained unequal amongst countries.
“While countries like ours in the Caribbean have been making steady progress in achieving some of the targets set, it is our unfortunate reality that accomplishments are either delayed or completely derailed by developments outside of our control – the devastating effects of climate change being the most prominent and persistent.
“Raising the bar towards the implementation of the SDGs and the commitments of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change has taken on a level of urgency for small island developing states, many of which are ACP members,” Johnson Smith stated.
She also indicated that the commitment to poverty reduction, promotion and achievement of sustainable development displayed by the ACP-EU grouping will “take on higher levels of significance in the post-Cotonou dispensation”.
The joint press conference preceded the high-level political forum on sustainable development. The ACP and EU member states, totalling 107 countries, represent more than half of the UN’s membership of 193.