The United Nations member states have endorsed an agenda on sustainable development up to the year 2030. The ambitious, wide-ranging plan is to be ratified next month at a meeting of heads of government. United Nations member states agreed the agenda "Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" on Sunday night. The 29-page document will be presented for ratification at a meeting of world leaders between September 25 and 27. The agenda sets out a plan of action recognizing that "eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development." The agenda – with 17 goals and 169 targets – is a plan to be developed over the next fifteen years. It is to "build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what these did not achieve," according to the document. The agenda has taken two years to draw up and was greeted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as an "agenda of the people, an action plan to end poverty." Ban said that the agenda, together with the agreement reached in Addis Ababa last month to bankroll development goals, was the start of a "new era." In its declaration, the agenda sets out for Heads of State and Government to "resolve, between now and 2030, to end poverty and hunger everywhere." jm/gsw (UN, EFE)
