If national and international financial systems don’t change, the Sustainable Development Goalswill not be achieved, says a new 2019 UN Financing for Sustainable Development Report, prepared jointly with more than sixty international organizations, including the IMF, the World Bank Group and World Trade Organization. This report is the basis for discussions at the ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development (15-18 April 2019), where the Member States agree on measures necessary to mobilize sustainable financing.
The Report notes, that in response to the 2030 Agenda, many countries have revisited or introduced new sustainable development strategies. However, most strategies do not have concrete financing plans to fund their implementation.
In order to support the allocation of financial resources for sustainable development, there is a need to revisit and shape global financial architecture and develop relevant national financial frameworks that
are responsive to global and local societal challenges and needs. The Report underscores the importance of the multilateral action, that has to take a lead in a rapidly changing global environment. While this poses a challenge, it also “opens the door” to ensure that multilateral institutions are “fit for purpose”. They need to adapt and reform. “Rather than retreating, we must strengthen collective action in support of sustainable development,” said the U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed on the release of the Report. Many of today’s challenges cross borders; countries can’t deal with migration or climate change or cross-border conflict alone, and the U.N. will continue to make the argument that it is important to sit down and find solutions together, Mohammed said. And where there are strong regional institutions, the U.N. needs to collaborate more with them than they have in the past, she added.
The governments should recommit to multilateral action that is needed to address global risks and achieve the 2030 Agenda and align the action with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, which provides a global framework for financing sustainable development. It contains the recommendations and a number of concrete steps to overhaul the global institutional architecture and make the global economy and global finance more sustainable, including supporting a shift towards long-term investment horizons with sustainability risks central to investment decisions; revisiting mechanisms for sovereign debt restructuring to respond to more complex debt instruments and a more diverse creditor landscape; revamping the multilateral trading system; addressing challenges to tax systems that inhibit countries from mobilizing adequate resources in an increasingly digitalized world economy; and addressing growing market concentration that extends across borders, with impacts on inequality.
The Report underscores the integral character of financial policies that do not work in isolation. Integrated financing frameworks should not only respond to financing challenges, but also to the realities of a changing global landscape. The Report admits both the positive role of technology in achieving the SDGs and its disruptive effects that need to be addressed such as increasing market concentration, loss in jobs, etc. The Report suggests the governments revisit their labor market policies, social protection systems, fiscal policies, competition policies, financial sector regulations and strategies, and trade policies to ensure that these are in line with the new realities of technology and societal change.
