Bulgaria and Croatia
Open-Working Group on
Sustainable Development Goals
11th Meeting
Poverty eradication, building prosperity and promoting equality
Sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition
I have the honor to make this intervention on behalf of Croatia and Bulgaria.
Mr. Co-chair, let me begin by expressing our appreciation for your efforts to move our work forward and to achieve the mandate of this Open Working Group, namely to formulate a set of sustainable development goals, supported by targets. In this regard, we welcome the fact that some focus areas already have been combined and that in the current document we already have some proposals for concrete actions and timeframes.
I would like to refer to some comments made this morning. First of all Bg and Croatia would like to support the position expressed by Ireland, Romania, Australia that it is not necessary to shift to intersessional meetings. We find it more effective if we continue our discussion under your able leadership with the comparative advantages that the OWG format provides.
The second comment I have is about the necessity to reintroduce areas as inequalities for example. Bulgaria and Croatia’s view is that a lot of those areas are incorporated in the present document, in different areas and they just have a different shape now.
Before speak about poverty eradication I would like to say few words about the inequalities
- Our two countries welcome the focus on poverty eradication and sustainable development at the core of a truly transformative and inclusive development agenda that will fully integrate the three pillars of the sustainable development. And if we are to do this we have to address the existing inequalities;
- As we stated many times before, a right-based approach is fundamental to this. We need to ensure access to services for the most vulnerable and marginalized, including children, persons with disabilities, older persons etc. in order to fully integrate them in the post 2015 development agenda.
- We have to make sure we address justice, equality and equity, good governance, democracy and the rule of law, with a strong focus on the empowerment and rights of women and girls and gender equality.
- Last, but not least, Bulgaria and Croatia believe that if we want to have a post 2015 development agenda that overcomes the inequalities and cares about people and their needs, we have to make sure that we are living in peaceful societies, based on the good governance and the rule of law, thus making sure that we “leave no one behind”.
To summarize and as Bulgaria and Croatia stated before, we consider the issue of inequality as a crosscutting issue and we see that the current document contains a good number of proposed targets that address it.
Concerning the focus area on Poverty eradication, building shared prosperity and promoting equality our entity would like to make the following comments. We already expressed our position that poverty eradication should appear as a standalone goal in the future agenda. For the all reasons stated above, eradication of poverty should be an inclusive process, should have right based approach and be supportive to the basic living standards and gender equality, including the empowerment of women, ensuring long term social, economic and environmental sustainability, managing and reducing risks and strengthening community resilience.
We also consider the issues of peaceful societies and the rule of law and good governance
as fundamental for achieving poverty eradication and sustainable development.
Having said that we support the targets as they appear in the co-chairs document but we would like to make a change in the target e), namely, it should read “By 2030 eliminate barriers to productive employment for women, young people and people with disabilities”.
On the issue of agriculture and food security. Bulgaria and Croatia support a stand alone goal. We welcome the elaboration of targets, since it is through targets, that we shall be able to develop the framework that will contribute to sustainable agriculture practices, including the efficient use of resources, which places less strain on natural resources and lead to productivity increases and enhanced resilience. In that sense, we need to add a highlight on sustainable fisheries and sustainable aquaculture production that simultaneously contributes to ensuring healthy oceans and seas. These actions must be accompanied by addressing food waste – both post-harvest losses and consumption food waste. This issue is addressed by target d, g and h and we support them.
For 870 million people worldwide, hunger and lack of food security is an everyday problem that affects the health of women and children and the overall security of communities across the world. Food waste is just another side of the coin when we speak of food security since it affects the ability of our Planet to sustainably feed a continuously growing population.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to address the food waste – both post-harvest losses and consumption food waste along food supply chain, since food waste has enormous economic and environmental cost.
In order to tackle the core of the intergenerational transmission of poverty, we need to address persistent food insecurity and under-nutrition, as global health challenges that are simultaneously impediments to economic and human development. The above said issues are addressed by targets a, b and c and we support them.
Sustainable Development Goals
11th Meeting
Poverty eradication, building prosperity and promoting equality
Sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition
I have the honor to make this intervention on behalf of Croatia and Bulgaria.
Mr. Co-chair, let me begin by expressing our appreciation for your efforts to move our work forward and to achieve the mandate of this Open Working Group, namely to formulate a set of sustainable development goals, supported by targets. In this regard, we welcome the fact that some focus areas already have been combined and that in the current document we already have some proposals for concrete actions and timeframes.
I would like to refer to some comments made this morning. First of all Bg and Croatia would like to support the position expressed by Ireland, Romania, Australia that it is not necessary to shift to intersessional meetings. We find it more effective if we continue our discussion under your able leadership with the comparative advantages that the OWG format provides.
The second comment I have is about the necessity to reintroduce areas as inequalities for example. Bulgaria and Croatia’s view is that a lot of those areas are incorporated in the present document, in different areas and they just have a different shape now.
Before speak about poverty eradication I would like to say few words about the inequalities
- Our two countries welcome the focus on poverty eradication and sustainable development at the core of a truly transformative and inclusive development agenda that will fully integrate the three pillars of the sustainable development. And if we are to do this we have to address the existing inequalities;
- As we stated many times before, a right-based approach is fundamental to this. We need to ensure access to services for the most vulnerable and marginalized, including children, persons with disabilities, older persons etc. in order to fully integrate them in the post 2015 development agenda.
- We have to make sure we address justice, equality and equity, good governance, democracy and the rule of law, with a strong focus on the empowerment and rights of women and girls and gender equality.
- Last, but not least, Bulgaria and Croatia believe that if we want to have a post 2015 development agenda that overcomes the inequalities and cares about people and their needs, we have to make sure that we are living in peaceful societies, based on the good governance and the rule of law, thus making sure that we “leave no one behind”.
To summarize and as Bulgaria and Croatia stated before, we consider the issue of inequality as a crosscutting issue and we see that the current document contains a good number of proposed targets that address it.
Concerning the focus area on Poverty eradication, building shared prosperity and promoting equality our entity would like to make the following comments. We already expressed our position that poverty eradication should appear as a standalone goal in the future agenda. For the all reasons stated above, eradication of poverty should be an inclusive process, should have right based approach and be supportive to the basic living standards and gender equality, including the empowerment of women, ensuring long term social, economic and environmental sustainability, managing and reducing risks and strengthening community resilience.
We also consider the issues of peaceful societies and the rule of law and good governance
as fundamental for achieving poverty eradication and sustainable development.
Having said that we support the targets as they appear in the co-chairs document but we would like to make a change in the target e), namely, it should read “By 2030 eliminate barriers to productive employment for women, young people and people with disabilities”.
On the issue of agriculture and food security. Bulgaria and Croatia support a stand alone goal. We welcome the elaboration of targets, since it is through targets, that we shall be able to develop the framework that will contribute to sustainable agriculture practices, including the efficient use of resources, which places less strain on natural resources and lead to productivity increases and enhanced resilience. In that sense, we need to add a highlight on sustainable fisheries and sustainable aquaculture production that simultaneously contributes to ensuring healthy oceans and seas. These actions must be accompanied by addressing food waste – both post-harvest losses and consumption food waste. This issue is addressed by target d, g and h and we support them.
For 870 million people worldwide, hunger and lack of food security is an everyday problem that affects the health of women and children and the overall security of communities across the world. Food waste is just another side of the coin when we speak of food security since it affects the ability of our Planet to sustainably feed a continuously growing population.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to address the food waste – both post-harvest losses and consumption food waste along food supply chain, since food waste has enormous economic and environmental cost.
In order to tackle the core of the intergenerational transmission of poverty, we need to address persistent food insecurity and under-nutrition, as global health challenges that are simultaneously impediments to economic and human development. The above said issues are addressed by targets a, b and c and we support them.