According to President Irfaan Ali it is imperative that the international community not be distracted from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of Agenda 2030 even as it copes with the COVID-19 recovery.
“Even prior to the pandemic, progress on the 2030 agenda was slothful and lagging. The pandemic has only compounded this reality reversing many development gains and has threatened the attainment of the SDGs”, he explained in a pre-recorded video statement to the Sustainable Development Movement during the 76th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
President Ali and a team of Government officials are in New York for this week’s 76th Session of the UNGA.
Ali lamented that the “uneven” response to the pandemic has not helped and maintained that in order to avert a two-tier recovery and prepare for future exogenous shocks greater attention must be paid to resilience particularly to vulnerable countries including low-lying coastal states.
“This would require debt rescheduling. Increased access to soft resources and increased financing for climate adaptation,” he stated.
Guyana, he explained, has been engaged in several initiatives to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
These include spearheading the CARICOM Agri-food system agenda. According to Ali, this effort is a recognition of the importance of food systems in achieving several SDGs which prioritise regional food security and nutrition.
The Low Carbon Development Strategy which guides Guyana’s development simultaneously promotes sustainable development while combating climate change, he explained.
A third initiative is the government’s “tangible support to learning from Nursery to tertiary” including 20,000 online scholarships to universities around the world for vocational, under-graduate and postgraduate studies; intensifying digital learning and preparing to make university education free by 2025. This is a direct response to the learning loss observed during the pandemic, he said.
Further Guyana remains committed to presenting its second Voluntary National Review in the Decade of Action to realise the SDGs by 2030.
“Guyana will strive through its small but aggressive advocacy to ensure that this the third decade of the 21st century is characterised by transformation in which agenda 2030 remains the primary guiding framework,” he concluded.
