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Top business executives joined the UN chief on Wednesday to present transformative solutions for bridging the estimated $4.3 trillion-dollar financing gap for countries that reach the ambitious 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the world’s agreed roadmap for a more peaceful and inclusive world.
The Fourth Annual Meeting of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance, is focused on supporting developing countries on the road to meeting the SDGs, and it took place at UN Headquarters in New York amid a worsening global economic outlook brought on by war in Ukraine, climate change, and COVID-19 – all of which is a threatening long-term investment, said a press release issued by GISD.
‘No time to waste‘
“The large and persistent SDG financing gap must spur our collective effort to scale up private finance and investment for the SDGs. There is no time to waste. We cannot afford for the SDGs to fall out of reach,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
The GISD Alliance — convened by the Secretary-General in 2019 — consists of prominent business leaders from across the world, including the heads of Standard Chartered, Pimco, Citibank, and Investec.
Finance boost
It seeks to align, scale up, and accelerate finance and investment for the 17 Goals. The GISD Alliance is led by co-Chairs Leila Fourie, Chief Executive Officer of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and José Viñals, Group Chairman of Standard Chartered.
“In the past year, building on pivotal work done in the preceding years, the GISD Alliance has focused on setting conditions for the scaling up of long-term private finance for sustainable development investment (SDI),” said Ms. Fourie.
“This was accomplished through the development of a credible definition for SDI, SDG-aligned metrics, a Model Mandate to assist in developing SDI strategies, making input into the development of a set of global sustainability reporting standards, and a roadmap for necessary MDB reforms.”
Source: UN News Centre
