COP28: Tackling Climate and SDG Action Together: Call for Minister-level Working Group on Climate-SDG Synergy
This event has now closed
The international society is falling short on delivering progress on the Paris Agreement and halfway towards 2030 only 15 percent of the SDG’s are on track. The weak link between the two agendas is a missed opportunity to accelerate actions. This was also underpinned in the first global report from the independent Expert Group on Climate-SDG synergies: “We must solve the climate emergency and sustainable development challenges together, or we will not solve them at all.” The report finds that co-benefits from an integrated approach by far outweigh trade-offs and is mutually reinforcing.
Against this backdrop, a group of Ministers, Heads of UN agencies, incl. the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina Mohammed and high-level representatives from international finance institutions met during UN General Assembly 2023 in New York. The participants stressed the importance of enhancing integration of the two agendas and proposed to establish a high-level working group to take climate-SDG synergies to a higher political level.
The side-event will follow up on this meeting and present a proposal for establishing a high-level working group with a clear purpose of addressing the topic of climate-development synergies at the Summit of the Future. After the introduction to the Minister-level Working Group, a technical panel discussion will discuss the findings from the Expert Panel’s report and the road ahead to maximize co-benefits of increased synergies between the two agendas.
