G20 Summit: Leaders vow to join hands and speed up SDG progress

NEW DELHI: G20 leaders on Saturday announced their resolve to take collective action to accelerate progress on meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs), a collection of 17 global targets aimed at improving the planet and quality of human life by 2030. The goals include improved sanitation, reducing under-five mortality, neo-natal mortality, teenage sexual violence, anaemia in pregnant as well as non-pregnant women, and wasting and overweight, among others. According to the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration, released on Saturday after deliberations by the heads of states, the global progress on SDGs is off track with only 12% of the targets on their way to be met. "During this Decade of Action, we will leverage the G20's convening power and its collective resolve to fully and effectively implement the 2030 Agenda and accelerate progress toward the SDGs, in a timely manner, to shape the world we want to see for our future generations," the leaders declared. Plans to accelerate SDGs' progress include mobilisation of affordable, adequate and accessible financing from all sources to support developing countries in their domestic efforts to address bottlenecks for implementing the 2030 Agenda and to scale up sustainable finance.