The World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit 2018was held this week in New York, in the midst of the UNGA. It aimed at providing a multistakeholder platform for concerted action for achieving the SDGs and climate policy goals.
The Sustainable Development Impact Summit builds on the agenda of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, and related projects of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco, California.
The Forum aims to provide a truly global platform for bringing the best minds together to solve the world’s most pressing and complex problems and provide the answers for the complex issues such as: What is needed for a transformation to a sustainable marketplace? How can leaders propel action to secure the global commons now? How can Digital Intelligence be Raised? How to mitigate the Impacts of Climate Change?
What does it take for international stakeholders to address fragility as a driver of extreme poverty, mass migration and violent extremism more effectively to ensure the SDGs targets are met? The discussions were organized in thematic sessions.
How do we finance impact? That was the main question discussed at the session “Mobilizing Finance for Impact“, moderated by Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, who opened the session with a strong stat: “14% of GDP is going to be needed in terms of fiscal space by low-income and developing countries in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goals.” The panelists expressed their opinion about the challenges they see.
Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Mittal called for stronger coordination and constructive dialogue between the public and private sectors coupled with reforms in global financial regulation to garner bigger investments for the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). “Mobilizing investments for SDGs requires unprecedented coordination between public and private institutions and significant reform to global financial regulation and financial institutions,” the Bharti chairman said Tuesday. Mittal said orienting a complex global financial system towards SDGs has challenges, “but it can be done”.
As the outcome of this meeting, The World Economic Forum connected 100 world-leading coalitionsto raise the ambition and turn commitments into action on climate change and sustainable development, including partnerships focused on closing the skills and gender gap, fighting disease, broadening the benefits of trade, and protecting the planet’s dwindling biodiversity.
