The world knows what needs to happen in order to end hunger and poverty and to limit climate change. Delivering on the SDG Agenda, that is the framework of what needs to be done. Now we are at half-time of the Agenda 2030 and I am writing this while in New York, at the „halftime“ SDG Summit. The balance of outcomes is unfortunately very sad so far. Only 15% of that which the world needed to have reached has indeed been reached. Thus, looking forward to 2030, if we do not speed up our tempo massively, and heavily invest in development, especially in those states most hard hit by climate change in Asia and Africa, we will simply not meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

It is clear, climate change must be limited, we must fight it and its impacts. But excessive alarmism and simply describing catastrophic scenarios does not help those countries who need assistance, or the people struggling there. Not talk, but action is what we need. We have the solutions, we have the technologies and the knowledge necessary. So we need to keep our promises and commitments, above all the industrialized countries have a particular responsibility here. Who still speaks of the 0.7% Official Development Assistance target? It is surely at least as important as the 2% goals for defense spending. Today the world spends over two trillion dollars on defense and armaments budgets. At the same time, the international development cooperation budgets have been reduced to well under a tenth of that! 

There must be a rethink and a new forward thinking in development and partnerships with developing countries. I fully support Secretary-General Guterres' call to not only review and reconsider the international financial architecture, but also to actually make changes. Developing countries must have access to financial markets. There is a huge debt crisis in these countries, and they need support immediately. $500 billion was what Secretary General Guterres called for - it sounds like a lot, but if you consider it in relation to what is now invested in defense and armaments worldwide - more than $2 trillion every year - it is absolutely feasible. The Global North and the Global South, we need a new partnership between developed and developing countries. Because we have to understand that we live in an interconnected world on one planet, everything is interdependent.