Dhaka seeks immediate bold steps to save planet

Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali on Thursday stressed forging a consensus to save the planet by taking some bold, ambitious and sustainable measures right now or never.
"Much of our hard-earned development gains are likely to be washed away unless we can forge consensus to save our planet by taking some bold, ambitious and sustainable measures right now or never," he said while addressing a seminar titled 'Moving from MDGs to SDGs: Bangladesh Experience and Expectations' at Bangladesh Institute of International Strategies and Studies (BIISS) in the city with BIISS chairman Munshi Faiz Ahmad in the chair.
He said they remain only too aware of the overriding challenges the world faces in the days ahead in realising the SDGs. "The rise in terrorism, violent extremism and armed conflicts poses some of the greatest risks to international peace and development. Similarly, the threats of climate change are too real for the world to remain on a denial or delaying mode."
Mahmood Ali said the persistent inequities due to geography, gender, ethnicity or disability deserve our focused attention to ensure that "no one is left behind in our shared development pursuits”.
He said there is a critical need for investing in enhanced capacity building for data collection and analysis to promote effective monitoring and evaluation. "The lack of sufficient data has posed considerable challenge in tracking progress under certain MDG targets, which needs to be duly factored in while designing the measurable indicators under the SDGs."
The Foreign Minister said there is no alternative to robust political will to pursue the development pathway defined by these time-bound internationally agreed goals. "In that respect, we’re fortunate to have a Prime Minister who would perhaps be among a very few world leaders to grace both the Millennium Summit and the upcoming UN Summit on Post-2015 Development Agenda."
The political will needs to be translated into specific action plans at the national level, ideally through integration with the national development strategy, a news agency report added.
"In Bangladesh, we had embraced the MDGs early on and immediately set ourselves in course of action. As regards the SDGs, we’re even further advanced since we’ve already initiated measures to incorporate the goals into our Seventh Five Year Plan under the broader framework of our Perspective Plan 2010-21."
He said it is imperative to build national ownership through involving a cross-section of actors, including the civil society and media, for implementing the internationally agreed development goals. "The partnership forged among the various actors would need to be recalibrated and reenergised from time to time in response to the shifting ground realities."
Mahmood Ali said there needs to be a healthy mix of domestic and external resource mobilisation with a view to ensuring scaling up and sustainability of the proven interventions. "Transparency and accountability in resource management will be crucial for achieving buy-in among all concerned actors."
International partnership must deliver on the relevant international commitments, and go beyond the traditional official development assistance to encompass meaningful and equitable terms for international trade, investment, migration and technology transfer.
He said the gaps in fulfilling certain critical targets under MDG8 on Global Partnership would not augur well for the legitimate expectations “we have around the SDGs”.
The Foreign Minister said the MDGs were the first-ever global blueprint for fighting poverty on such scale. When the Millennium Declaration was adopted in September 2000, no one perhaps had any illusion that it would manage to solve all the world's problems. "Yet, the MDGs have given us hope that it is within our means to create a Brave New World."
"The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development does indeed offer us a bold, ambitious and innovative package to transform our world. It’s only logical that our expectations around it would be high," he added.
According to him, there are, however, certain key lessons to be drawn from Bangladesh's experience with the MDGs as all turn the page to the SDG chapter.
PM's Foreign Affairs Adviser Dr Gowher Rizvi, Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque, PKSF Chairman Dr Qazi Khaliquzzaman Ahmad, BIISS DG Maj Gen AKM Abdur Rahman, CPD Executive Director Dr Mustafizur Rahman, BIDS Research Director Dr Binayak Sen and Senior Research Fellow BIISS Dr Mahfuz Kabir, among others, spoke in various sessions of the seminar.
-SS