Responding to a challenging global environment, marked by difficult macroeconomic conditions as well as humanitarian crises and conflicts, the 193 United Nations members states today agreed on a series of measures to ensure the full and timely implementation of the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda  to finance development and support the Sustainable Development Goals.

Countries reached agreement on the new measures at the second ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development follow-up—which runs until 25 May at UN Headquarters—and is charged with monitoring and assessing implementation of the Addis Agenda. The agreement came after four weeks of negotiations led by Ambassador Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, Belgium, and Ambassador Jerry Matthews Matjila, South Africa.

The Addis Agenda provides a global framework for financing sustainable development and is an integral part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the historic and transformational agenda that countries unanimously adopted in 2015.

Speaking at the Forum, ECOSOC President Frederick Musiiwa Makamure Shava said: “The intergovernmentally agreed conclusions and recommendations include a wide range of policy measures and actions that can change the trajectory of the global economy and support countries toward achieving the SDGs.”

In acknowledging “the significant impacts of the challenging global environment on implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” countries agreed to steps that would ensure that the current trends would not jeopardize achievement of the SDGs.

In particular, countries agreed to accelerate national and international efforts in all areas of the Addis Agenda, as well as on a range of issues that affect all areas, such as gender equality, infrastructure investment and social protection. In addition to reaffirming many key commitments of the Addis Agenda, countries agreed on new commitments on a range of policies and actions that build on and go beyond the Addis Agenda. In this context, Member States called for:

• Transformative policies and actions on gender equality, such as calling on development banks to consider the impact of their investments on the empowerment of women and girls;
• Peer learning and experience-sharing on how to finance social protection systems;
• A strong focus on connectivity, transit and transport development as a key component of sustainable and resilient infrastructure investments;
• Whole-of-government approaches to improve national tax systems, while strengthening international efforts to increase tax cooperation and curb illicit financial flows;
• A concerted effort to map priority investment areas as a way to guide private investors towards SDG investment;
• Steps to facilitate market access for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) products and innovative policies that encourage access by micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to adequate and affordable trade finance;
• The fulfillment of Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments and efforts to reverse the trend of declining bilateral net ODA to LDCs;
• The use of state-contingent debt financing instruments and better ways to address aggressive litigation by minority creditors;
• SDG sensitive financing strategies, policies and practices by regional and global organisations and institutions;
• A better understanding of the transformative and disruptive potential of new technologies for labour markets;
• Policy incentives to direct the flow of finance into productive sectors;
• Efforts to strengthen the collection of data to determine the value of unpaid care work and its contribution to the national economy.

The intergovernmentally agreed conclusions and recommendations will help guide deliberations of the 2017 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which is the central platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs.

Countries agreed to hold the third Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development follow-up from 23 to 26 April 2018.