Nepal wants concerted efforts for sustainable development goals

Nepal has called upon all the UN member states to direct concerted efforts to complete the unfinished tasks of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Before embarking on the subsequent sustainable development goals post-2015, we have to jointly complete the unfinished tasks, said chairman of Interim Election Council Khil Raj Regmi, addressing the annual high-level debate of the UN General Assembly, today.

"There is a need to build on the foundation of the MDGs, leaving nobody behind in the global development efforts," he said, adding that any new development agenda that does not keep the elimination of extreme poverty at the center stage loses the spirit of sustainability. "We can hardly realise sustainable development when pervasive poverty, unsustainable consumption and production patters and spiraling environmental degradation are allowed to continue.”

The General Assembly has asked all the UN member states to set the stage for the post-2015 development agenda, which will be hammered out next year to define the global development in 2015 and beyond.

“It is an irony that one eighth of world population has to live without enough food at a time when 150 per cent of the earth's annual regenerative capacity is being consumed in total," Regmi said, “Nearly one billion people will still be forced to live in extreme poverty by 2015.”
"Looking at this unfair and unjust scenario, one can hardly envision global sustainability without a system of an economic growth and development that ensures the progress and well-being of people on this planet in an equitable, inclusive and judicious manner," he said, addressing the 193-member UN General Assembly.