China role crucial in UN plan

Agreement will redefine how nations cooperate

China has made "important contributions" to seeking an agreement among all 193 UN member states on the global development plan, a draft blueprint for sustainable development that will be adopted in September and last through 2030, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Sunday.

The agreement will redefine how the global community works together to tackle poverty and improve living standards while protecting the environment.

The draft document has included positions of China and other developing countries in many aspects, said Wang Min, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, at the UN Headquarters in New York.

China is looking forward to the adoption of the agenda at the United Nations Summit in September, which will create a better international environment for the development of developing countries and world prosperity, Wang said.

The plan, known as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, called on countries and their citizens to respect and safeguard the planet, and recognizes that sound management of natural resources is the foundation of economic and social development.

The draft document outlines 17 ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ranging from issues of poverty, gender equality and economic development to climate change and ocean resource protection.

The SDGs are universal goals that will commit all countries to take action both within their own borders and in support of wider international efforts.

Individual national commitments must add up to a worldwide result that helps all people and ensures a healthy environment.

Meeting the goals would cost between $3.3 trillion and $4.5 trillion a year in state spending, investment and aid, analysts say, an amount roughly equivalent to the United States 2016 federal budget of $3.8 trillion.

The Agenda will be adopted at the United Nations Summit in September at UN Headquarters in New York. The SDGs, part of the post-2015 global agenda, is to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight anti-poverty targets to be reached by the end of this year.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the agreement. "This is the People's Agenda, a plan of action for ending poverty in all its dimensions, irreversibly, everywhere, and leaving no one behind," Ban said.

Building on the successful outcome of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, the upcoming summit will chart a new era of sustainable development in which poverty will be eradicated, prosperity shared and the core drivers of climate change tackled, Ban said.

"Critically, the summit will also contribute to achieve a meaningful agreement in the COP21 in Paris in December," he said.

Xinhua and Reuters contributed to this story.

(China Daily USA 08/03/2015 page1)