Mabel Bianco

Santiago, Chile, Apr 29 (RHC) Participants in the forum on the United Nations 2030 Agenda on Friday pointed out the negative impact of Covid-19 on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and called for speeding up the actions to achieve their fulfillment.

“We are very concerned as civil society and I think governments are too because the pandemic meant a process that prevented progress and, in many cases, made us go backward, for example in the reduction of poverty,” Mabel Bianco told Prensa Latina.

The member of the Foundation for Women’s Research Studies in Argentina considered it necessary to recover what has been lost to get to 2030 as well as possible.

Paola Siclari, a consultant for the United Nations System, recalled that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is the regional institution that has best monitored the impact of Covid-19 on growth and many other aspects.

“The pandemic had an impact in many ways, it changed the way we live in cities and rural areas and I feel that we are just starting over,” she said.

Siclari considered it necessary to make some adjustments to the actions to fulfill the SDGs and she thinks that there is enough work to be done in terms of drinking water and sanitation, the fight against climate change, and sustainable cities.

According to Elkin Velasquez, regional representative of UN-Habitat, progress towards the SDGs is moving very slowly and efforts must be made to accelerate them.

Among the tools that can help in this process is to involve local governments much more.

In the opinion of Patricia Torres, a member of the Continental Liaison of Indigenous Women of the Americas, indigenous peoples can contribute a great deal to the 2030 Agenda.

We have maintained ancestral care for Mother Earth, but with the current overexploitation and industrialization to the maximum degree, we are forgetting that it is our only place to live, she said.

With that opinion agrees Maria Jose Lubertino, president of the Citizens’ Association for Human Rights of Argentina, who expressed her concern about the deepening of extractivism after Covid-19, which impacts climate change and biodiversity.

“This meeting is always productive because we can listen to one another and talk, but well, we would like fewer words and more concrete deeds to achieve the commitments set long ago,” she said. (Source: Prensa Latina)