Integrating SDGs & Delivering a Sustainable Future: 2030 & Beyond, A Summit of the Future Side Event

Organized by Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future in Cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme in New York and co-sponsored by the Dominican Republic, Norway, and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the webinar highlighted why SDG progress has been too so slow and uneven to date, and flagged actions needed to remedy this situation with a specific emphasis on the power and effectiveness of integrated approaches to SDG implementation, drawing, among other things, on the experience with the Communities of Practice established by the IntigetrateSDGs Initiative - visit https://integratesdgs.org/.

The event also highlighted new and emerging issues and challenges not fully addressed in the SDGs that may need to be considered in any post-2030 sustainable development agenda (e.g., artificial intelligence and various new technologies that offer huge potential but also pose significant risks).

The session begins with welcoming remarks by Irena Zubcevic, Director, Stakeholder Forum, and followed by H.E. Mr. Pavel Isa Contreras, Minister of Economy, Planning and Development, the Dominican Republic, Meena Syed, Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations, Jamil Ahmad, Director, New York Office, the United Nations Environment Programme, and Mr. Juwang Zhu, Director, Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government and Acting Director of the Division for Sustainable Development Goals, UN DESA.

Those remarks were followed by Keynote Addresses from Mr. David Donoghue, Fellow of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and former Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations, and Elenita ‘Neth’ Daño, Asia Director, ETC Group (Erosion, Technology, and Concentration), Philippines.

The keynotes were followed by an intergenerational panel discussion moderated by Dr. David O’Connor, a Fellow at Stakeholder Forum, with Kehkashan Basu, Director and Founder of Green Hope Foundation, Olga Skaredina, Science-Policy Thematic Facilitator, Children, and Youth Major Group to UNEP, Jamie Cummings, Environmental Policy Analyst, Woodwell Climate Research Center and an Associate at Stakeholder Forum, Montserrat Koloffon Rosas, PhD Candidate in the FORMAS-funded project Transformative Partnerships 2030, based at the Institute for Environmental Studies of the Free University of Amsterdam, Dr. Nisha Kohli, CEO and Founder, CorpStage, Dr. Prajal Pradhan, Assistant Professor, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Dr. David Horan, a Fellow at Stakeholder Forum and Jan-Gustav Strandenaes, Board Member at Stakeholder Forum.