The recent IPCC special reportargued that limiting warming to 1.5 °C is possible, but requires urgent and unprecedented transformation across all aspects of society – including energy, agricultural, urban and industrial systems. In order to support and accelerate this all-embracing and deep societal change, broader integral policies that would include climate action, issues of security, technology, and other issues are necessary to provide fast and fair solutions and support those who need it most.
Against this background, the Global Conference on Strengthening Synergies between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda was held this month in Denmark. It was organized by UN DESA and the UN FCCC and hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Energy, Utilities and Climate, aimed to align the climate and SDG processes, and stimulate action from stakeholders at the global,
regional and country levels to maximize co-benefits.
The speakers of the Conference underscored the mutually interconnected and reinforcing character of global agendas and suggested designing policies, programmes and partnerships with the view to produce synergies between them to achieve both climate change and sustainable development goals, and reduce or eliminate the trade-offs. The potential of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development to support the synergetic implementation of the global agendas was also acknowledged. Participants underscored the critical role of government in simultaneous governance of climate change and sustainable development agendas which demand a decentralized multi-level multi-stakeholder approach. National governments need to work with other levels – with subnational and local governments, local communities and indigenous peoples. This inclusive engagement should be within both policy creation, implementation, follow-up, and review at all levels and factor in the interests of groups who face discrimination by gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, or other forms of a social, economic and political disadvantage as well as those who live in smaller, rural and/or impoverished urban communities.
Particular importance the participants gave to human rights-based approaches to climate action and acknowledged that UN member States have obligations, under international human rights law, to urgently mitigate climate change; build the capacity of all persons to adapt to climate change, and foster learning and cooperation across countries.
The Conference resulted in a number of the initiatives and the outcome document that will inform the review of SDG 13 on climate action at the 2019 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) to be held in New York in July.
