Hits and misses:  

Hits and misses:  

Context:

• The United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) recently held its meeting to discuss the the progress made on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.

What is Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), officially known as “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, is a set of 17 “Global Goals” with 169 targets among them.
• Governments have created new institutions, or have used existing institutions, to facilitate execution of the SDGs.

India and Sustainable Development Goals:

• The National Institution for Transforming India – NITI Aayog is the national body primarily responsible for implementing the SDGs in India.
• The task at hand for NITI Aayog primarily is:
• to periodically collect data on SDGs,
• to act productively on the goals and targets not only quantitatively but also maintaining high standards of quality.

Steps taken:

• Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has already undertaken a parallel exercise of interaction with the ministries to evolve indicators reflecting the SDG goals and targets.
• To achieve these tasks, the draft mapping of the goals and targets as an initial step on proposed Nodal and other Ministries has been carried out in consultation with MoSPI.
• Further, as an illustration, the Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSSs),including the ‘core of the core’, ‘core’ and ‘optional’ Schemes being implemented by the States have been mapped along with some of the recent initiatives undertaken by the Central Government.
• In addition, Ministries are implementing Central Sector Schemes and States are also implementing various State Schemes aligned with one or more SDGs.

How can India achieve the Sustainable Development Goals?

• The country needs to clearly identify priorities, have locally relevant and people-centric development policies, and build strong partnerships.
• The government also needs to have a focused plan for tracking and evaluating impact and scaling up successful interventions.
• A multidimensional poverty index ought to be adopted to analyse domestic poverty conditions as suggested by some nations.
• A clear road map needed to address pressing challenges of refugee crisis, terrorism, fundamentalism, increasing hunger, inequality and climate change.
• The HLPF process needs to be strengthened by formalising multi-stakeholder consultations, discussing critical challenges, and making the ministerial declaration mandatory for nations to fulfil.

What is High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development?

• The establishment of the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) was in 2012.
• It replaced the Commission on Sustainable Development.

High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development aims to:

• provide political leadership and recommendations for sustainable development,
• follow-up and review progress in implementing sustainable development commitments,
• enhance the integration of economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development,
• have a focused, dynamic and action-oriented agenda,
• consider new and emerging sustainable development challenges,
• from 2016 take on the functions of the ECOSOC Annual Ministerial Reviews on the post-MDG/Sustainable Development goals.