Your Excellency, President Danilo Turk,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to join you at this high-level “Action Lab”, focusing on building a path towards a sustainable future for 2030 and beyond.
Let me start by sincerely thanking Club de Madrid for your excellent work and continuing support, which is at the core of our long-standing partnership.
Excellencies,
We hit mid-way in our journey to achieving the 2030 Agenda and find ourselves way off track.
Earlier this week, at the SDG Summit, we heard that poverty is increasing, hunger is rising, and climate change is causing destruction beyond what we could imagine just a few years ago.
Despite these many interrelated challenges, world leaders stood up and reminded us that this is the time for hope, for action and for change.
Leaders called on the world to take urgent steps to accelerate progress and get the SDGs back on track.
Moreover, leaders reaffirmed commitments central to the 2030 Agenda, including on poverty eradication, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls; ensuring equitable quality education, universal health coverage, social protection, food security, safe drinking water and sanitation.
Excellencies,
The Summit’s outcome, the Political Declaration adopted by consensus, also includes a clear signal of support for convening a World Social Summit in 2025, that would add momentum in the final push to achieving the 2030 Agenda.
A World Social Summit in 2025 would mark the 30th anniversary of the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, which is a key piece of the current development framework.
It would be an opportunity to focus on the progress we have made in advancing the type of people-centred development that was envisioned in 1995 and is now embedded in the commitments, goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda.
The summit could build a new consensus around a social perspective on development that can put us on track towards achieving the SDGs, for everyone everywhere, and sustain the long-term gains of the SDGs.
A unifying outcome of the SDG Summit is the commitment that we leave no one behind. Whether solving the finance divide, bridging the digital divide, debt restructuring or fighting the climate catastrophe, the well-being of people and planet must take precedent. This is a core commitment that will resonate across future global conferences and summits.
It is still possible to build the future we want - a more inclusive world that is just, peaceful, resilient and sustainable.
But bold and urgent action is needed, and the time to act is now.
Thank you.