Preparing to help implement the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN organisations in Geneva held a policy dialogue and established new tools for ensuring they can be tracked and implemented.

A special flag made up of pictograms representing each of the goals was also raised before staff at the city’s International Environment House on 25 September, on the day when the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted at the UN summit in New York.

New challenge

A policy dialogue held on 2 September in conjunction with the GEPP Executive Summer School 2015 discussed the challenge of implementing and monitoring the new goals while political commitment and financial resources are problematic.

Making the goals understandable to citizens, ensuring no country gets left behind, the importance of the private sector and the challenge of involving civil society were explored during the panel debate.

Opening the discussion, UNEP Regional Director Jan Dusik noted how half of the SDGs have a direct environmental focus and include 86 specific targets related to environmental sustainability overall.

The panel included Swiss Ambassador Michael Gerber, Carina Larsfälten - Managing Director of Global Policy and Strategic Partnerships at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development - and Arthur Dahl, President of the International Environment Forum.

UNEP live

A new portal for helping implement the SDGs has furthermore been launched on the UNEP Live platform.

The portal is designed to house indicators in order to track progress towards the goals and contains information from a wide range of sources tracking environmental trends and stakeholder perceptions.

For more information on the new SDGs please click here or contact isabelle.valentiny@unep.org.
For more details on UNEP Live contact tomas.marques@unep.org.

To read more on the policy dialogue event please click here or write to diana.rizzolio@unep.org