"If we don't change the ways in which we live, consume and address waste, we'll destroy our planet," warned President of the 72nd UN General Assembly and Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák (a Smer-SD nominee) at Monday's United Nations session.
The meeting involved the plans of individual countries to meet their Agenda 2030 goals. Over the following months, Slovakia is set to embrace a national development strategy and national investment plan based on six national priorities presented by Vice-premier for Investments and Informatisation Richard Raši (Smer-SD). These development priorities are education, inclusion, reducing poverty, sustainable cities, good governance and a knowledge-based economy.
"It's an enormous UN agenda," said Lajčák, adding that more than 100 countries have already presented their contributions and that the sustainable development targets are changing the fashion in which member states approach their development strategies. This sentiment was echoed by Raši. "The 2030 Agenda is something we're doing for our children and future. In order to have Slovakia and the whole world hospitable, we need to take measures to ensure that our world will be sustainable long term," claimed Raši, adding that it's not only developing countries that face problems with poverty, water shortages, health care and education. "It's also developed countries such as Slovakia. Even our consumption and economy needs to change because the way it is now is simply not sustainable in the long term."
The Agenda 2030 goals were decided upon in a landmark UN agreement in 2015 and include seventeen individual goals from eliminating poverty and hunger to combatting climate change and creating sustainable cities and sustainable human population levels. All goals are non-binding, however, and targets are already expected to be missed, according to the initiative Global Policy Watch. The publication The Economist further stated that the approximate global cost of around $40,000,000,000,000 to meet the targets by 2030 make them "pure fantasy".
