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Climate Change, Inequality Derailing Global Goals, Scientists Tell UN

Reuters

   NEW YORK - Growinginequality and climate change will not only derail
   progresstoward global sustainability goals butalso willthreaten
   humanexistence, leading scientists saidWednesdayat the United Nations.

   The world is falling off track on ambitious globaldevelopment goals
   adopted by U.N. members, a panel of scientistssaid in an independent
   assessment report released at U.N.headquarters.

   Member nations unanimously adopted 17 sustainabledevelopment goals
   known as SDGs in 2015, setting out awide-ranging "to-do" list tackling
   conflict, hunger, landdegradation, gender equality and climate change
   by 2030.

   The bleak assessment report was released ahead of a
   sustainable-goals summit scheduled at the United Nations this month.

   "Overall, the picture is a sobering one," said ShantanuMukherjee,
   policy chief at the U.N. Department of Economic andSocial Affairs."One
   element of this is increasing inequality. '¦Anotheris the pace at which
   nature is being degraded by human activity,whether it is climate change
   or biodiversity loss."

   The independent panel of scientists investigated the ways
   and systems in which humans and the environment are linked and
   interact, said Peter Messerli of the University of Bern,
   Switzerland, the co-chair of the group of scientists.

   "These systems are on a very worrying trajectory,
   threatening the very existence of humanity," he told reporters.
   "We have not realized the urgency to act now."

   'This has to be corrected'

   Countries must put into practice ways to address vast gaps
   in wealth distribution and access to economic opportunities and
   technological advances that undermine innovation and economic
   growth, the report said.

   "Each country has to decide," Jean-PaulMoatti, chief
   executive of the French Research Institute for Development and
   one of the scientists who compiled the report.

   "This has to be corrected," he told the Thomson Reuters
   Foundation.

   The report called on nations to focus on food and energy
   production and distribution, consumption and urban growth to
   find ways of building sustainable development.

   The cost of implementing the global goals has been estimated
   at $3 trillion a year.

   These are not the first grim predictions made for the fate
   of the goals.Earlier reports have said they were threatened by
   thepersistence of violence, conflict and destabilizing climate
   change.

   Outside assessments have cited nationalism, protectionism
   and a need to obtain more funding, ease national debts, boost
   wages and expand trade.

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