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Russia, China to promote new UN sustainable development goals

Boris Titov considers the pursue of the UN SDGs extremely inefficient: it lacks focus, and finding adequate financial resources for their achievement seems impossible

MOSCOW, September 30. /TASS/. The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are too vague, and the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China in particular, should set an example of well-defined development initiatives, the Russian president’s special envoy for relations with international organizations to achieve sustainable development goals Boris Titov said.

"We pin our hopes on China's Global Development Initiative (GDI), which represents a kind of alternative to the overly vague UN goals. Taking it as a basis, we want to narrow down the SDGs and make a focus on reality. This topic is being raised within the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and we hope that the following year the SCO will create a separate sustainable development council, able to look at the climate agenda in a new way. All SDGs are important, but it's time to prioritize," Titov said in a statement.

The special envoy considers the pursue of the UN SDGs extremely inefficient: it lacks focus, and finding adequate financial resources for their achievement seems impossible. The reason is that the world has completely forgotten about the economy, the balance of income and expenditures. In addition, there is no single carbon market, mentioned in the Paris Agreement.

The climate project would hardly be taken into consideration somewhere in Tajikistan when trading carbon units with Australia, for instance. Furthermore, Europe is about to impose its own special barrier in the form of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

"We are on the one continent - if somewhere Asia emits CO2, Europe feels it. What surprises me is that the latter creates its own isolated energy transition. India emits smoke anyway, and so does China nearby. As a result, Denmark has a tax on cows, and Indonesia has smoky coal-fired power plants. What is it for? When it comes to such an area of activity, there are no borders, and a set of measures will be effective only if it is global, if it encompasses global conditions recognized by everyone," Titov said.

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