H.E. Mr. Lok Bahadur Thapa, President of ECOSOC,

Under-Secretary-General Melissa Fleming,

Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you, President Thapa, for bringing us together this morning to discuss the final years of the 2030 Agenda and its future trajectory.

The 2030 Agenda remains the most comprehensive, universally agreed roadmap the world has ever given itself.

The SDGs have been transformational.

At the same time, with fewer than five years left, progress is off track, as highlighted in discussions throughout HLPF.

The first decade of the Goals taught us profound lessons about how change happens when we invest right, and that learning is a critical element on which sustainable development beyond 2030 must be built.

We have learned that transformation is not a switch one flicks to see instant change.

Where I come from, we say: sannu ba ta hana zuwa — ‘going slowly does not stop the arriving’.

And that’s true for the Goals.

We have set foundations, and foundations take time to firm up before we can build on them. I believe the first eleven years of the SDGs have served exactly that purpose.

I would like to speak about those lessons now.

First, our assumptions about what progress would look like were quickly undone.

This begins with the assumption that the concept of sustainable development would be embraced by all as the new development paradigm.

It hasn’t. It is still a work in progress for many.

Back in 2015 we also expected that progress towards 2030 would be linear.

In eleven years that has rarely been the case.

Progress has come the hard way — dynamics pushing against one another, shocks breaking our momentum, forcing us to adjust, to innovate, to course-correct again and again.

This decade has thrown a pandemic at us.

A climate crisis is moving much faster than we feared. When the Goals were gaveled, no one imagined we would speak of overshoot a decade later.

The rights of women and girls have been rolled back in many countries.

There are more than sixty active conflicts worldwide today, and humanitarian needs are outpacing resources.

Global military spending has hit record highs, amid a growing shift toward national self-interest.

Universality has taken a hit; so has confidence in multilateralism.

SDG16 has faced one of the hardest tests. Democracy is under pressure, civic space has narrowed in many countries, and people's trust in their institutions has weakened.

But as we pushed back against every one of these challenges, we have been building resilience — and resilience is itself a development outcome.

It can be hard to perceive, but it is there. The ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz has generated global ripple effects.

Fertiliser affordability has plummeted to a multi-year low, forcing farmers to scale back production, some missing entire planting seasons. Families are losing out on remittances that have fallen dramatically. That said, this crisis would have been far more devastating ten years ago had the resilience not been built.

And it was built because systems became the focus.

When COVID struck, we set about strengthening health systems. We also learned hard lessons about production. People in the Global South were left waiting for vaccines.

Now countries are building the capacity to make their own, adding value and diversifying supply chains in the process.

Transforming education has become a whole-system effort, including students, families, teachers, technology.

Food systems too — not an issue about agriculture and food security alone, but the recognition of the importance of social protection for small farmers, attention to women and girls, climate, and water.

Crisis by crisis, sustainable development demanded that policymakers think outside their silos and in a more integrated way — across sectors, across borders and across the UN system itself. This is exactly what the Goals asked of us on the day they were gaveled: that we see them as mutually reinforcing pathways.

We have learned that centralised governmental governance alone cannot deliver the SDGs — science, academia, young people, civil society, local leaders and communities and the media are all necessary for the 2030 Agenda.

We have also learned that transformation, once it takes hold, is unstoppable. We see it in the social norms that have shifted.

The principle of “Leave no one behind” was once a slogan, now it’s echoed everywhere, and intrinsically linked to having strong, disaggregated data.

Consumer behaviour is also shifting, plastic-free and circularity now carry an appeal for many, which fossil fuels cannot match.

Every single one of these learnings and shifts is a success of the SDGs, and must be put to work in the final push to 2030.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The conversation about beyond 2030 must begin with taking this learning seriously — planning for a future that, we now know, will inevitably have uncertainty and headwinds.

Some crises will be sudden and unexpected, some will be years in the making, but either way we know they will occur.

We have to accelerate progress, yes — but we also need progress that can withstand shocks and protect hard-won gains.

Accelerating takes implementation: delivery at scale, accountability, partnerships that let us move, new players such as the private sector that we have only begun to draw in.

It takes financing — and that begins with reforming a global financial architecture that is outdated and inadequate for today's realities.

As ODA is falling, debt vulnerabilities are deepening, and the handshake that has long underpinned financing for development is failing.

Reform will help us create fiscal space, build financing for when shocks hit and mobilise resources closer to the scale the Goals demand.

The Pact for the Future gives us the blueprint, and the Sevilla Commitment gives the impetus to mobilise public, private, domestic and international resources.

We need to lean into emerging technologies which are rewriting the development equation. The debate is no longer whether technology will transform development, but how it will serve inclusion, sustainability and equality. The Pact for the Future and the Global Digital Compact are guiding this work.

Underpinning everything we do — towards 2030 and beyond — is a multilateralism built on solidarity and universality.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We cannot forget that the 2030 Agenda was a promise made to people — to the 1.9 billion young people who will have turned fifteen across the lifespan of these Goals, and to every person still waiting to be counted.

Looking ahead to the SDG Summit in 2027, the conversations on both the final years to 2030 and the road beyond are parallel and intertwined.

It will require all of us, and particularly young people.

We are not seeking a replacement for the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, but continuing this journey with ambition, resolve and responsibility.

The foundations of this past decade were hard-won. The next five years are for delivering on the promise of the SDGs and building the foundations of the future.

Thank you.