Your Excellency Abdulla Shahid, President of the General Assembly,
Your Excellency Collen Vixen Kelapile, President of ECOSOC,
Your Excellency Sergiy Kyslytsya, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations,
Your Excellency Kennedy Gastorn, Permanent Representative of Tanzania to the United Nations,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres, I am pleased to extend warm greetings to this important Forum.
People, planet and prosperity are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, our path to achieving the Agenda continues to be paved with many complex challenges. In 2020, the world saw its first increase in poverty in over a decade, and the number of poor continue to surpass pre-crisis estimates. Inequalities also worsened in many countries. .
There is a grave danger of a sharply diverging world today. Some countries are recovering from the COVID-19 crisis due to broad vaccine rollouts, strong stimulus measures and digital acceleration. Yet others are sinking deeper into a cycle of uncertainty, poverty and hunger.
With just eight years left to 2030, we must act now as a global community to accelerate change towards a better world for all.
This is why today’s STI Forum is so important. It is expected to shine a spotlight on all the impressive efforts by Member States, the UN system and all stakeholders alike, and inspire much needed action.
It is essential that we work together -- across borders, sectors and disciplines -- to make science and technology work for everyone. Multi-stakeholder cooperation will continue to be the key, helping us to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, address climate change, reverse biodiversity loss, end the pollution crises, and rise up to effectively tackling our common challenges.
The United Nations Technology Facilitation Mechanism has been designed to bring the United Nations closer to the pulse of technological progress and to promote multi-stakeholder collaboration on science and technology for sustainable development. So, too, is the Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, which I launched the year before.
I count on this Forum to advance its vision for harnessing the full potential of science and technology for the benefit of all.
Thank you all for your engagement in this sensible endeavour.