New global agenda demands new approaches to public policy making – SV’s Chair at the HLPF of the UN, New York

30 June, 2015

Implementation of the new global development agenda demands balanced integration of economic, social and environmental dimensions in the national policy frameworks. Successful delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will also need to establish greater coherence within global governance structure. Chair of Southern Voice, Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, made these comments in New York yesterday (30th June 2015) while moderating a session at the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) of the United Nations. Bhattacharya is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Dhaka.

The HLPF has been created under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations to provide overall guidance to the implementation of the SDGs – successor to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The HLPF has been also entrusted with the task of monitoring the progress in SDG achievement during the next 15 years and ensuring accountability of the process.

The SDGs envisage a universal, transformative and inclusive development agenda. Dr Bhattacharya pointed out that public policy interventions and collective actions on the part of the citizens will be critical in meeting the challenges of SDG implementation.

In the future, single goal driven approaches will have to be replaced by cluster of goals as to promote synergy among them, to manage spill-overs and to contain the trade-offs. This has to be complemented with institutional reforms and enactment of new legal provisions, he added.

One of the important tasks in this regard will be putting in place monitoring and evaluation mechanisms at national, regional and global levels which can provide evidence-based assessment of the effectiveness of the new agenda.

The HLPF session was chaired by Ambassador of Croatia Vladimir Drobnjak, Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nation. He observed that implementation of the SDGs has to be managed at multiple levels which should include from local governments to the United Nations itself.

The panellists of the session were Ambassador Karel van Osteroom of the Netherlands, Dr Patrick Birungi, Director, National Planning Authority of Uganda and Vice-President of the Czech Parliament Ms Jaroslava Jermanova. The lead discussants Mr Yaya Junardy, President of the Global compact Network in Indonesia and Ms Galina Angarova representing the Major Stakeholder Group of the Indigenous People. A large number of delegates from the missions and the capitals as well as from various stakeholder groups took the floor to share their views.

Ms Sadia Faizunessa, Deputy Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations in her intervention emphasised the need to build capacity at all levels so as to face the emerging policy challenges. She also underscored the need to mobilise resources to meet this end.

Most of the commentators maintained that the national governments should create platforms so as to facilitate all stakeholders’ including the public representatives, private sector and non-government organisations’ participation in the SDG implementation process and review mechanism.

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