Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, thank you all for joining this exciting Summit of the Future Action Day.
Your participation here today sends a strong message of hope that we can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the multiple challenges and setbacks, stakeholders from around the world remain fully committed to making our shared goals a reality, working together with our national governments.
The question we are tackling today is a straightforward one: How do we achieve a sustainable future for all? Today I offer one straightforward response: we need to get the financing right.
With the SDGs off-track, we need actions across all areas of financing to overcome the sustainable development crisis. Let me highlight five priorities that should drive our discussions today.
First, we need urgent action to deliver debt relief to countries with unsurmountable debt burdens that curtail their ability to invest in the SDGs.
Second, we must build robust tax systems and strengthen international cooperation. This is how we can empower efforts to reach the SDGs, finance climate action, and tackle inequality head-on¡ªboth within and among countries.
Third, we need unprecedented investment. The private sector must rise to this historic challenge, and, at the same time, we need increased public investment, including through national, regional and multilateral development banks. If public development banks work together as a system, and work with the private sector, they will deliver financing at scale for this SDG investment push.
Fourth, we need to get serious about reform of the international financial architecture. We need a system that works for all, promotes equity, and channels financing towards the SDGs, in developed and developing countries alike.
Fifth, we need to build a new multilateralism ¨C fit for purpose for the demands of the 21st century.
The Pact for the Future acknowledges that to match the scale of the challenge in front of us, we need transformative actions across all these five areas.
The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, to be held in Spain next year, will build on this commitment. It will give us the opportunity to unlock the financing needed to deliver the SDGs and combat climate change.
Without ambitious financing actions, we won¡¯t be able to turn the tide on the SDGs and achieve a sustainable future for all. We need to step up our ambitions rather than curb them. Today¡¯s discussions will be critical to getting us there.
We have heard many good ideas so far today and there are more inspiriting speakers to come. I look forward to the insights and perspectives that they will provide. DESA stands ready to take forward these conversations in our journey to 2030 and beyond.
Thank you.