Thomson Reuters Foundation: Global leadership deficit leaves development goals in doldrums
“The world has made far too little progress on the global goals governments agreed in 2015 to end poverty and hunger and tackle climate change, with a rising tide of nationalism acting as a wrecking ball, architects of the goals said on Thursday. Helen Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister who headed the United Nations Development Program from 2009-2017, said the foot-dragging on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — due to be met by 2030 — ‘has gone under the radar.’ … Changes in the world’s political landscape have also made the 2030 goals more elusive. … Both [Jeffrey Sachs, a U.S. economics professor who advised governments and the United Nations on the SDGs,] and Clark said the problem lay not with a lack of solutions to the world’s ills — whether using clean energy or getting basic services to those in need — but governments’ abdication of responsibility toward citizens, many of whom are trying to push ahead…” (Rowling, 1/17).