On Monday, top United Nations officials in New York called for urgent action to rescue the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and revive international cooperation.Speaking at the Economic and Social Council annual forum on financing for development, they warned that a staggering $4 trillion annual financing gap threatened global development goals.
UN secretary-general António Guterres, president of the General Assembly, Philémon Yang, and president of ECOSOC, Bob Rae, stressed the need for more resources and a global financial overhaul.
Without an effective response, they stressed, the world risked falling even further behind on ending poverty, fighting climate change, and building new sustainable economies.
Last week, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund held Spring Meetings where global growth, trade tensions and the rising debt burden in developing countries were front and centre.
Mr Guterres warned that global cooperation itself was under threat. He pointed to rising trade tensions as a major risk, noting that fair trade was a clear example of the benefits of international collaboration.
Mr Guterres said the surge in trade barriers posed a “clear and present danger” to the global economy. He said this was evident in recent downgrades to global growth forecasts by the IMF, the World Trade Organization, and UN economists.
Guterres highlighted how many donors were pulling back from aid commitments while soaring borrowing costs drained public investments, putting the SDGs “dramatically off track.”
Mr Rae echoed these concerns, emphasising that over three billion people live in countries where governments spend more on interest payments than health or education.
Mr Rae called for urgent reforms that would allow countries a fair chance to repay what they owed while investing in their futures. He also sounded the alarm over rising trade barriers, citing recent moves by major economies, like the United States, to impose new tariffs.
He urged countries not to see trade as a zero-sum game where there are only winners and losers. Mr Rae admonished them to embrace fair, open trading systems as a path to shared prosperity.
Mr Yang underscored the consequences of rising debts and shrinking fiscal space. According to him, governments in more than 50 developing countries now spend over 10 per cent of their revenues on debt servicing.
The UN economist said in 17 of them, debt servicing gulps over 20 per cent, which is a clear warning sign of default. He stressed that closing the financing gap, estimated at over $4 trillion annually, was critical to achieving the SDGs.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are all interconnected. For instance, progress on SDG 2 to end hunger is closely tied to advances in health and education.
Mr Rae added that the conversation must move beyond declarations to concrete, measurable action.
