2030 development targets at risk without adequate financing: UN

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The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed says without adequate financing, the 2030 development targets cannot be met.

She was speaking at the launch of the 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report, which warns that financing challenges are at the heart of the global sustainable development crisis, exacerbated by staggering debt burdens and high borrowing costs, which contribute to the difficulties developing countries face in responding to a confluence of crises.

The report is clear that only a massive surge in financing and a major reform of the international financial architecture can rescue the Sustainable Development Goals ahead of its 2030 deadline.

The 2024 Report: Financing for Development at a Crossroads echoes a long-standing concern that – the SDGs are in peril and urgent steps are needed to mobilise financing at scale to close the development financing gap – estimated at $4.2 trillion annually. This gap is estimated at $4.2 trillion annually, up from $2.5 trillion before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mohammed says, “The report is truly the international system speaking with one voice. The result of collaboration between more than 60 international agencies through the inter-agency Task Force on Financing for development.

“This kind of cooperation for us is vital. And because of this, the report sets out, we face what I think we can say is a serious development crisis, a crisis with finance at its heart that requires an immense amount of international effort to try to turn it around, that if it’s got to start now or it is for many, many countries – game over.”

With just six years remaining until 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals are now worryingly off track due to multiple global shocks.

The Deputy Secretary-General says, “With six years to the SDG implementation deadline, development gains are going in reverse with current trends pointing to 600 million people continuing to live in extreme poverty by 2030 and beyond; debt burdens and rising borrowing costs are making a bad situation worse; stronger and more frequent climate disasters account for more than 50% of the debt upsurge in vulnerable countries while roughly 40% of the world’s population live in countries where governments spend more in interest payments than on education and health.”

Mohammed adds, “Developing countries have no space to maneuver. Their borrowing costs are high, that 3.3 billion people, around 40% of humanity, are living in countries that are spending more on interest payments than on health or education. In 25 developing countries, more than a fifth of tax revenue goes on servicing external debt. As countries struggle to service their external debts, attention naturally turns to efforts to increase domestic tax revenues. But in an increasingly digital, globalised economy, resource mobilisation is really hampered without strong and inclusive international cooperation to define how to uphold tax norms, as evidenced by the continued presence of tax havens and illicit financial flows.”

‘2030 development targets cannot be met’

She also echoes calls from the Secretary-General for a remaking of the international financial architecture to better support the development agenda.

“We need public money to incentivize private investment that has a real and veritable impact on sustainable development. Private finance also brings technology and entrepreneurship, which are key to any society’s development and we can see that moving in many of our emerging economies. Second, we must remake the international financial architecture, you’ve heard the SDGs say this a lot, and it is a feature of the Summit of the Future. Our current system, set up in 1944, is no longer fit for purpose – I think most, most people and things at 75 years old would have lost their shelf life. Yet it’s still determining the conditions for investment. So we have to increase the voice of developing countries in global economic governance and improve the architecture for the debt crisis resolution,” she explains.

Just 15% of the 140 SDGs targets are currently on track to be achieved by 2030.

The UN Development Programme warns that almost two decades of gains are being lost in Ukraine while Gaza’s economy shrunk by 24% in 2023 alone, nearing levels last seen in1994 – poverty up, food insecurity acute, quality education and good health teetering … and international collective action that today appears incapable of meeting the moment.