First Session of the Post-2015 Intergovernmental Negotiations (Stocktaking)

On Tuesday, 20 January 2015, delegates at the Stocktaking Session for the intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda offered statements on the integration of the SDGs and targets into the post-2015 agenda and the declaration. Delegates also heard presentations from four speakers.

Debapriya Bhattacharya, Chair of the Southern Voice on Post-MDGs and Distinguished Fellow at Centre for Policy Dialogue, provided a possible outline of the Declaration of the post-2015 development agenda. He suggested that the “big idea,” which he said every successful Declaration must have, could be “universal, transformative, inclusive and integrated agenda.”

Homi Kharas, Brookings Institute, provided an overview of the interconnected aspects of the means of implementation, including issues discussed in the Monterrey Consensus. He stressed the need to reallocate more official development assistance for least developed countries, and to expand domestic resource mobilization, especially for lower middle income countries. On infrastructure investment and financial flows, Kharas stressed the need to better orient resources towards sustainable development.

George Talbot, Permanent Representative of Guyana and Co-Facilitator for the Financing for Development Conference (FfD3), said the common objective of the two processes is to deliver on the agenda, and that FfD3 will take place before the post-2015 summit to ensure the positive contribution of Addis to the agenda, give confidence in commitment to the agenda, and begin to show the way toward the agenda’s implementation. He said the template provided by the Monterrey Consensus is relevant but needs to be adapted to present realities. He added that the Co-Facilitators are currently preparing a “preliminary elements paper” on which Member States will have the opportunity to reflect, to ensure the FfD process is contributing as it should to the post-2015 development agenda.

Geir Pedersen, Permanent Representative of Norway and FfD Co-Facilitator, noted the overlap among the individual delegates involved in the FfD and post-2015 processes, suggesting it is not necessary to discuss the same issues in both, and he recalled the agreement to promote coherence and minimize duplication of effort between the two. Pedersen noted that the Monterrey agenda did not include climate change, and that economic growth, which was delivered through the agenda of the Millennium Declaration, does not deliver sustainable development by itself.