The UN Summit of the Future Is Here. Here’s Everything You Need to Know

New York:

With just six years to go until the deadline for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world is not on track to achieve these goals.

The COVID-19 pandemic, escalating conflicts and growing climate chaos have severely hampered progress.

To get back on track, the world needs massive investments in sustainable development, as well as accelerated action in several critical areas, including climate change, peace and security, and inequalities among countries, as shown in the recent Sustainable Development Report 2024.

To address these acute challenges, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has convened a Future Summit at the United Nations in New York on 22-23 September.

Under the theme “Multilateral Solutions for a Better Future,” the summit will bring together UN Member States and agencies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, the private sector and youth.

Humanity faces an unprecedented set of challenges that can only be solved through global cooperation, also known as multilateralism. During the summit, participants will collectively develop a new global consensus on what our future should look like – and what we can do today to ensure it.

The summit will focus on five core areas: sustainable development and financing; international peace and security; promoting digital cooperation and harnessing new technologies, such as artificial intelligence; empowering youth and future generations; and reforming the UN architecture.

The main challenge for sustainable development is to secure global financing. Indeed, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require considerable public investment.

With low-income and lower-middle-income countries, in particular, lacking the access to finance they need to achieve these goals, the global system will need to find a way to provide them with access to long-term, low-cost finance.

To achieve world peace, one of the major challenges today is the competition between the great powers, especially between the United States, Russia and China. The world will have to move towards a UN-led system in which this competition between the great powers is governed and limited by the UN Charter rather than by militarism and power politics.

To support this goal, countries must be genuinely engaged in global cooperation – and a new UN-based multilateralism index could play a role in tracking the degree of commitment of UN member states to this goal.

For digital cooperation and new technologies, the main challenge is to ensure that they are managed in a transparent and responsible manner.

For young people and future generations, quality education plays a vital role in their empowerment and progress. The world will need to work towards a new global financial arrangement to ensure that every child, even in the poorest countries, has the opportunity to receive a decent education.

All of these goals cannot be achieved without reforming the UN system, ensuring that UN institutions are empowered and more representative. For the UN to be as representative as possible, it is essential to strengthen diverse representation, including women, at leadership levels.

Furthermore, addressing decarbonization and other sustainable development efforts through a gender lens and strengthening women’s representation in this area is essential to progress on all of the above challenges.

Released on the occasion of the United Nations Future Summit, this special report, a collaboration between 360info and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), presents solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

(Authors: Alyson Marks, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the 360info editorial team)

Disclaimer: Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info

(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)