Priorities: Sustainable development

1. Accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals:

  • Keep the world solidly on track to meet poverty reduction targets focusing on inequalities, making particular efforts in countries with special needs and in those which have not achieved sufficient progress.
  • Complete the final drive to eliminate by 2015 deaths from top killers: malaria; polio; new paediatric HIV infections; maternal and neonatal tetanus; and measles.
  • Fully implement the global strategy on women and children's health to save tens of millions of lives, including through the provision of reproductive health services to meet unmet global needs.
  • Unlock the potential of current and future generations by putting an end to the hidden tragedy of stunting of almost 200 million children by mobilizing financial, human and political resources commensurate with the challenge.
  • Stimulate generational progress by catalysing a global movement to achieve quality, relevant and universal education for the twenty-first century.

2. Address climate change:

  • Facilitate mitigation and adaptation action on the ground:
    • Promote climate financing by operationalizing the Green Climate Fund and set public and private funds on a trajectory to reach the agreed amount of $100 billion by 2020. Ensure effective delivery of all fast-start financing. Deepen understanding of the economic costs of climate change, and the corresponding financing needs, including through mapping regional and subregional vulnerability hotspots.
    • Facilitate and execute agreements on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) to protect forests and sustain the livelihoods of the people who depend on them.
  • By 2015, secure a comprehensive climate change agreement applicable to all parties with legal force under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
  • Strengthen, defend and use climate science to make and promote evidence-based policy.

3. Forge consensus around a post-2015 sustainable development framework and implement it:

  • Define a new generation of sustainable development goals building on the MDGs and outline a road map for consideration by Member States.
  • Mobilize the UN system to support global, regional and national strategies to address the building blocks of sustainable development:
    • Energy: Mobilize a broad multi-stakeholder coalition under the Sustainable Energy for All initiative to achieve universal access to modern energy services, double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, all by 2030.
    • Food and nutrition: Adopt globally agreed goals for food and nutrition security, mobilize all key stakeholders to provide support to smallholder farmers and food processors and bolster the resilience of communities and nations experiencing periodic food crises.
    • Water: Launch and execute a UN-wide initiative to provide universal access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation globally.
    • Oceans: Agree to a compact on oceans that will address overfishing and pollution by improving the governance of oceans and coastal habitats and by developing an institutional and legal framework for the protection of ocean biodiversity.
    • Transport: Convene aviation, marine, ferry, rail, road and urban public transport providers, along with Governments and investors, to develop and take action on recommendations for more sustainable transport systems that can address rising congestion and pollution worldwide, particularly in urban areas.
    • Work with Member States to make Antarctica a world nature preserve.