Daily Times

NEW YORK – JubilantUN member states put finishing touches to a hugely ambitious roadmap aimed at wiping out poverty worldwide by 2030 and taking on climate change.

After a week of heated negotiations at UN headquarters in New York, experts and diplomats from the 193 member states adopted a draft about 30 pages long entitled – TransformingOur World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the hard-fought agreement.

The agreement encompasses a universal, transformative and integrated agenda that heralds an historic turning point for our world, Ban said. To cheers, Kenyan Ambassador MachariaKamau called it really a historic moment. Kenya chaired the negotiations along with Ireland.

– Sustainable Development Summit–

World leaderswill attend a Sustainable Development Summit at the UN September 25-27 to adopt a sustainable agenda document, firing the starting gun on efforts to improve the lives of one billion people living on less than $1.25 a day, mainly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

– People’s agenda to endpoverty–

Negotiators set out 17 new sustainable development goals seeking to end poverty, promote wellbeing and safeguard the environment — all by 2030. “This is the People’s Agenda, a plan of action for ending poverty in all its dimensions, irreversibly, everywhere, and leaving no one behind,” proclaimed Ban of the multitrillion-dollar initiative.

The UN chief vowed that the September summit, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, will chart a new era of sustainable development in which poverty will be eradicated, prosperity shared and the core drivers of climate change tackled.