On 14 April 2015, Maryam Niamir Fuller, Special Advisor to the Executive Director of UNEP on Post-2015 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), took part in a public event at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in Brussels that was dedicated to raising political awareness of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda.

Speaking during the “On the road to the UN Post-2015 summit and key elements of the new global partnership” panel, Maryam Niamir-Fuller expressed her appreciation of the leadership shown by EU governments and European civil society in the promotion of the sustainability agenda. According to her, “it has been a good 15 years journey” for sustainability.

In her presentation she identified inequality, universality and integration as the three key words that distinguish the Post-2015 agenda from the Pre-2015 one. She furthermore assessed the issues of pollution and over-consumption of natural resources.

She underlined that while the SDGs will not solve all the world’s problems, they represent the state of the art collection of the most urgent issues. The SDGs may not be ambitious enough but UNEP takes the position that they are a step forward. An important role of the SDGs is also to pull together already existing instruments.

Regarding the means of implementation, she strongly urged developed countries and the EU to recommit to the 0.7% ODA target. Furthermore, she emphasized the need to look at the whole financial system and pointed to UNEP’s Financial Inquiry 3rd progress report on aligning the financial system with sustainable development. She also indicated that the vast volume of data currently available needs to be brought together in order to realize an integrated monitoring review. UNEP Live is an effort in this direction

Other panel members in this debate were Gustavo Martin Prada, Director EU Development Policy and International Cooperation, Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, European Commission; and Kitty van der Heyden, Director of the World Resources Institute’s Europe Office.

Find their presentations here.

The event, organised by the Sustainable Development Observatory of the EESC, was attended by some 100 representatives from local, regional and national authorities, EU and UN level policy-makers and representatives from civil society, the private sector and academics.

Video interview of Maryam Niamir Fuller http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.videos