Webinar on SDGs

Islamabad : Development expert and civil society practitioners while speaking to the participants of a webinar identified lack of authentic data, capacity to deliver, skilled human resource and paucity of funds as the key challenges for achieving the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its required pace. Last five years have shown improvement in some of the SDGs indicators while most of them remained unchanged. Slow pace is alarming for Pakistan, and the country needs to review its mechanisms running the SDG regime.

The experts suggested wider awareness on grassroots level, fiscal devolution, collaboration and coordination among the stakeholders and partners to pace up progress on achieving the targets. Despite five years in practice, a comprehensive integrated system is missing while integration of institutional output also lacks besides meagre participation of industry and civil society. The experts also suggested having a universally accessible database and a digital platform to showcase the accumulated output for a well-deserved outlook for the external world. It would bring much needed development partnerships, and technical and financial resources too.

The webinar war organized by the Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) and DTNTV on the subject “SDG Regime: Where we are five years after” on Tuesday.

The panel of experts included Economic Advisor on SDGs to the Planning Commission of Pakistan Ali Kemal, Senior Technical Advisor to National Assembly Taskforce on SDGs Chaudhary Muhammad Shafiq, Team Lead National Assembly Taskforce on SDGs Hassan Hakeem, WASH and Water Conservation Expert Nadeem Ahmed, Sustainable Industry expert Bilal Mustafa Syed, Dean Strategy and Marketing Hamdard University Prof. Dr. Muhammad Kamran Naqi Khan, and advocacy and outreach expert Zahida Quadri. Devcom-Pakistan and DTNTV Director Munir Ahmed hosted and conducted the webinar.

Speaking on the occasion, Ali Kemal said: Pakistan was the first country to endorse the 2030 Development Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. A unanimous resolution to this effect was passed by the National Assembly and since then the SDGs were incorporated in the national development agenda. The stakeholders for the institutionalization of the SDGs include parliamentarians, provincial and local governments, think tanks, academia, private sector and other development partners. He said as many as 31 focal persons were appointed in different ministries to coordinate the SDGs mainstreaming in the development projects. But unfortunately, every other time they are changed that hamper consistency in the coordination and marred the performance too.