Posted on July, 19 2018

New York, 18 July 2018 - WWF acknowledges the efforts resulting in the Ministerial Declaration of the United Nations 2018 High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) announced today which reaffirms commitment to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, WWF regrets that the declaration is limited. WWF calls for a shift to pragmatic and tangible action, with the urgency, cohesion and ambition that is required for success.

The health of our planet underpins the health of our people. Without integral and healthy ecosystems which can be measured by the richness of biodiversity, there can be no ‘sustainable’ development. We must work together to create a better deal for nature and people. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) must be a global collective effort, bringing together the global agendas for climate, development and biodiversity. This will take the efforts of governments, private sector, civil society, producers and consumers. Failing to address these agendas together will see us fail to tackle the challenges of feeding and providing for a growing population, limiting temperature rises and halting and reversing biodiversity loss.

In this context we must act urgently to halt and reverse the trends in biodiversity loss by 2030. Several SDG targets relating to biodiversity have timelines only to 2020. While some progress has been made, to achieve these targets we need to see a faster pace and more scale and depth in action - at all levels. We also need to establish a timely, clear and coherent process for extending the targets to 2030. To ensure nobody is left behind, we must ensure no SDG or target is left behind. WWF calls for greater investment in responsible consumption and production (SDG12), currently the least funded of all the goals, with less than 50 per cent of the funds of the second-least funded goal and just 1.5 per cent of the most funded goal. WWF also calls for greater attention to the interlinkages between SDGs – successful implementation relies on understanding co-benefits and trade-offs, especially for nature, between SDGs and targets.

Heads of State must now take the mantle and maintain the momentum of discussions from the HLPF and recent UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meetings in Montreal, through November’s conference of parties to the CBD and beyond.

Achieving the 2030 Agenda, and with it a prosperous future for both people and planet, relies on whole-of-government involvement, building on the commitments of the ministers present at HLPF and the Montreal meetings, to implement transformational actions.

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For further information:
Peter McFeely | WWF | pmcfeely@wwfint.org