News

Prioritising CSO capacity development for Agenda 2030 implementation

By Deirdre de Burca, Advocacy Coordinator Forus

The High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) has established a process of voluntary national reviews (VNRs), which have become a tool for the review and implementation of the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs. Between the years 2016 and 2018, 111 VNRs were submitted by national governments to the HLPF and 48 more were submitted in 2019 . Since its inception, the HLPF peer review system has been used by governments as a means of monitoring their country’s progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda and its sustainable development goals, and of learning from the experiences and best practices shared by other governments.

In 2019 my organisation, Forus, did an analysis of the 111 VNRs submitted to the HLPF by governments in the years 2017 & 2018. Its objective was to determine how the Agenda 2030’s commitments on capacity development have been implemented by governments to date.

Our results showed that the capacity development of national stakeholders linked to the 2030 Agenda, and in particular civil society, is fragmented, irregular and in many cases does not appear to be taking place at all. Where it does, it is largely targeted at government officials and public sector servants, often as part of programmes provided by high income countries to developing and low-income countries.

The apparent failure of governments to live up to the clear commitments of Goal 17 of the agenda to provide for the capacity building of civil society and other stakeholders is difficult to comprehend. Properly designed and planned capacity development could greatly enhance the ability of different stakeholder groups to monitor and contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Based on its findings, Forus has developed a number of key policy recommendations targeted at the UN and its member states.

  1. The capacity development of different stakeholder groups linked the 2030 Agenda should be subject to a global, multi- level coordination system, involving civil society and other stakeholders.
  2. A systematic and objective identification of the 2030 Agenda capacity development needs of different stakeholder groups, including civil society, is required as a matter of urgency. Each stakeholder group should have the responsibility to objectively determine its own capacity development needs.
  3. A Global Fund should be created as part of the operationalization of Goal 17 to promote the capacity building and development of different stakeholder groups, including civil society, and these stakeholder groups should also be involved in the governance of the Fund
  4. Indicators should be developed which measure the extent to which the capacity development of civil society and other stakeholder groups has been enabled each year at national, regional and global levels and the financial resources that have been dedicated to these activities annually.

In conclusion, we invite SDG Watch Europe members to join us in advocating for these important policy changes to ensure the effective capacity development of civil society globally for Agenda 2030 implementation!

(For further information please see www.forus-internaitonal.org. To read its analysis of the 2017 & 2018 VNRs please click on the following link: the capacity development of CSOs linked to SDG implementation.)

HLPF 2019 Side Events by SDGWE, GCAP and Partners

Join us for these events organized by SDG Watch Europe, GCAP and our partners!

We also will have two coordination and exchange meetings of SDG Watch Europe:
1) Thursday, 11.7., 14:00-15:00 in the Qatar Lounge in the UN
2) Tuesday, 16.7., 9:00-10:00 in the Qatar Lounge in the UN

Wednesday, 10 July

Leave No One Behind: the 2030 GDP Target
13:15 – 14:45 – UN Millenium – One UN Plaza
Organised by EEB and others
Contact: Alejandra Peña

Education to End Inequality and Promote Peace
13:30 – 16:00 – Episcopal Church Center – Chapel of Christ the Lord, 815 2nd Ave. at 43rd St.
Organized by ASPBAE-GCAP-CoNGO and others
Contact: Cecilia Soriano

Addressing Inclusion, Inequality & Institutions: Grassroots Views On Sustainable Development Goals 4, 8, 10, 16 & 17 And The Links Between Them
14:00–15:45 – Church Centre – 10th Floor, 777 United Nations Plaza (opposite UN)
Organized by Misean Cara & hosted by The Salesians of Don Bosco

Thursday, 11 July

Intersectionalities of Gender and Caste: Inclusion and Participation of the Marginalized in SDGs
9:00 – 10.30 – Church Center – 2nd floor, 777 United Nations Plaza (opposite UN building)
Organized by Asia Dalit Rights Forum (ADRF), GCAP and others
Contact: Deepak Nikarthil

Report launch: SDG 10 in Europe: Inequalities in the EU and Beyond
10:30 – 12:00 – Church Centre – 2nd Floor, 777 United Nations Plaza (opposite UN)
Organized by GCAP, SDG Watch Europe and others
Contact: Ingo Ritz

 

SDG learning workshop: Participatory and Inclusive Tools to Build Capacities in Leaving No  One Behind
10:00 – 13:00 – Conference Room 5, United Nations Headquarters
Organized by: Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (GCAP India), ATD Fourth World, Action4SD, GCAP, CIVICUS, and others
Register here. Contact: Annie Namala

Youth Aspirations & Climate Urgency: “A conversation on the hopes and demands of grassroots activists in a world threatened by climate crisis” 
14.00 – 15.30 – Commonwealth Joint Office, 685 Third Avenue, Suite 1102, New York

Friday, 12 July

Power to the People: Civic space for Climate Justice, Equality and Decent Work for All
13:00 – 15:00 – Ford Foundation – 320 E 43rd St.
Organized in partnership with Action Aid, CIVICUS, GCAP, ICNL and others.
Register here. Contact: Lyndal Rowlands

Civil Society / Solidarity Reception
18:30 – 20:30 – Korean Embassy
Organized by ADA, A4SD, TAP, GCAP and others
Register here. Contact: Anselmo Lee

Saturday, 13 July

Civil Society Weekend Workshop: Standing Together for Transformative Change
9:00 – 15:00 – Church Center – 2nd floor, 777 United Nations Plaza (opposite UN)
Join us to hear from key national coalition partners, to reflect on civil society engagement in the first four years of the HLPF and how we can work together to improve accountability in follow up and review processes. Register here.

Monday, 15 July

Leave No Woman Behind: How to achieve the SDGs for Women with Disabilities and Indigenous Women
14:30 – 16:00 – Church Centre – 10th Floor, 777 United Nations Plaza (opposite UN)
Organized by: GCAP, Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact and others
Contact: Ingo Ritz

Launch: Spotlight Report Sustainability in Europe – Who is paying the Bill ? (Negative) impacts of EU policies and practices in the World
16:30 – 18:00 – Church Centre – 10th Floor, 777 United Nations Plaza (opposite UN)
Organized by SDG Watch Europe, GCAP, Social Watch
Contact: Leida Reijhout

Overcoming barriers to reduce inequalities (SDG 10): Policies to leave no one behind and achieve greater equality
7:00 – 8:30 PM Auditorium of the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations, 871 United Nations Plaza
Organized by German Government, VENRO, ILO
contact Johanna Hauf (registration by 11 July)

Tuesday, 16 July

Checks-and-Balances Wanted – How to Better Engage Parliaments in the 2030 Agenda

20-21.30 Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN 871 United Nations Plaza, New York

Organized by Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany, German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, Brot für die Welt, and Together 2030

Contact: Marie-Luise Abshagen (registration by 12 July)

Thursday, 18 July

Delivering the Sustainable Development goals in Europe and in the world
13.15-14.30 Conference Room 12,United Nations Headquarters
Organized by: EU and the Government of Finland

Leaving no one behind in the transition to more sustainable economies
13.15-14.30 Conference Room 1, United Nations Headquarters
Organized by: EESC and the Government of Slovenia (the SDG 10 report of SDG Watch Europe will be presented)

 

 

HLPF Side Event: Global Launch of EU SDG10 report on Inequalities in the EU and Beyond – 11 July

By Tanja Gohlert, Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)

Join SDG Watch Europe and others for the global launch of EU SDG10 report on inequalities – Falling through the cracks: Exposing inequalities in Europe and beyond – at the HLPF on Thursday, 11 July from 10:30 – 12:00 at the Church Centre (2nd Floor). 

Despite the European Union’s commitment to leave no one behind, millions of people in Europe are falling victim to widening inequalities. This new EU-wide report shines a light on the impact of rising inequalities on people and planet.

It consists of 15 national reports and 11 thematic chapters exploring key dimensions of inequality, including gender, age, disability, ethnicity and homelessness.

The report was created through GCAP’s Faces of Inequality campaign and as part of the pan-European project Make Europe Sustainable for All and the #FightInequalities campaign, in close collaboration with SDG Watch Europe, and with the contributions of 58 organizations.

 

 

Read more here: https://gcap.global/news/hlpf-join-us-on-11-july-for-the-launch-of-our-report-on-inequalities-in-the-eu-and-beyond/

Opinion/Analysis: When Green Growth Is Not Enough

By Nick Meynen, EEB

In recent years, the concept of green economic growth, i.e. the expansion of the economy without an accompanying increase in environmental harm, has gained political acceptance. However, the idea that this policy alone is enough to deal with the environmental challenges we face appears to be founded on little to no scientific basis.

The empirical data and theoretical literature is both overwhelmingly clear and sobering: there is no evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown. This is the conclusion of the new report ‘Decoupling debunked: Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability’.

The authors also explain that there are at least seven reasons to be sceptical about the occurrence of sufficient decoupling in the future: rising energy expenditures, rebound effects, problem shifting, the underestimated impact of services, limited recycling potential, insufficient and inappropriate technological change, and cost shifting.

To be clear: the fact that decoupling on its own, i.e. without addressing the issue of economic growth, has not been and will not be sufficient to reduce environmental pressures to the required extent is not a reason to oppose decoupling (in the literal sense of separating the environmental pressures curve from the GDP curve) or the measures that achieve decoupling. Quite the contrary, without many such measures the situation would be far worse. In other words, decoupling shifts us from racing down the fast lane to cruising along the slow lane, which is an improvement. But to get off the highway, we need to do more.

The true cause for concern is the predominant focus among policy-makers on green growth as a panacea, with this focus being based on the flawed assumption that sufficient decoupling can be achieved through increased efficiency without limiting economic production and consumption.

Sustained growth is not sustainable

This scientific finding is strongly at odds with the eighth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG8), which aims to “promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth”. While almost all SDGs have very important goals and targets that humanity desperately needs to achieve, SDG8’s pursuit of the economic growth is undermining the possibly of achieving the others.

The question now is whether governments will be willing to act upon the best available scientific evidence when they review SDG8 on 10 July in New York. Countries such as Finland have already reacted to this contradiction within the SDGs by downgrading the importance of GDP growth in their plan to achieve the SDGs, but the EU as a bloc has yet to admit that there is a problem with target 1 in SDG8.

Researchers have some ideas about the truly sustainable way forward. The main conclusion of ‘Decoupling debunked’ is that increasing efficiency only makes sense if it is part of a wider pursuit of sufficiency, which is the direct downscaling of economic production and consumption in those sectors where it is needed most. In the view of the authors and based on the best available scientific evidence, only sufficiency strategies respect the EU’s ‘precautionary principle’.

The report ‘Decoupling Debunked. Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability’ was produced by the EEB, with the support of the German Alliance for Nature Conservation (Deutscher Naturschutzring), in the context of the EEB’s work on economic transition in the context of the Make Europe Sustainable for All (MESA) project. It was released on 9 July and can be downloaded at https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/

Originally published on 09.07.19 – https://meta.eeb.org/2019/07/09/when-green-growth-is-not-enough/

A Morning To Stamp Out Inequalities

By Marie-Amélie Brun, EEB

Inequalities are everywhere and they are growing. Activists organised a guerrilla action at the European Development Days to ask for political actions! META followed them around and here’s what happened. 

On 18 June 2019, activists fighting for equality in the EU and around the world gathered at the European Development Days to distribute a newly published report.

Inequalities in the EU are growing to the point that we might not deliver on the commitments it took with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Marie-Amelie followed around the team to learn more about the challenges we are facing and about the recommendations from the NGOs.

Originally published on 20.06.19 – https://meta.eeb.org/2019/06/20/a-morning-to-stamp-out-inequalities/ 

Europe’s Deepening Inequalities Are Leaving Too Many Behind

By Khaled Diab, EEB

Despite the European Union’s commitment to ‘leave no one behind’, millions of people in Europe are falling victim to widening inequalities, a newly released EU-wide report concludes. Meanwhile, European governments are not doing enough to bridge the chasm.

On Tuesday 18 June, ‘Falling through the cracks: Exposing inequalities in the European Union and beyond’, a major new report on inequalities in Europe was released by SDG Watch Europe and Make Europe Sustainable for All (MESA), two Europe-wide civil society platforms which seek to raise awareness of and promote the ambitious implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The SDGs are the world’s crisis plan to end poverty and protect the planet, and tackling inequalities is one of the 17 goals that all EU countries have signed up to deliver in the coming years. Inequalities also cut across and affect many of the other SDGs.

The release was timed to coincide with the European Development Days (EDD), whose theme also related to addressing inequalities and “building a world which leaves no one behind”.

A Fight Inequality campaigner talks about the report with a passerby. Image: Sonia Goicoechea

While visitors and delegates to the event received a wealth of information about inequalities in developing nations and how the EU social model could help tackle these inequalities, missing from the official programme was how the much-vaunted European model was under assault and how many forms of inequalities were widening in a part of the world which prides itself on its egalitarianism.

To raise awareness of this oversight, a team of ‘Fight Inequality’ activists, dressed fetchingly in sandwich boards with eye-catching designs, talked to hundreds of visitors outside the EDD venue in Brussels about inequalities in Europe and about the report.

“Inequality is not only a fact in the Global South, it is also a problem in Europe,” Patrizia Heidegger, director of global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), said during a packed side event at the EDD.

“The EU is one of the wealthiest regions on the planet and prides itself on being a leader in social progress and sustainability,” she explained. “The reality is quite different.”

Fractured lives

‘Falling through the cracks: Exposing inequalities in the European Union and beyond’ finds that the European Union and its member states are failing millions of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in Europe and the wider world, as significant socio-economic and environmental inequalities worsen or persist.

The report maps the reality of various forms of inequality, both nationally and at the European level. It includes national reports from 15 countries that, together, represent nearly three-quarters of the EU’s combined population and 11 thematic reports exploring key dimensions of inequality, including gender, age, disability, ethnicity and homelessness.

“The gap between the richest and poorest in Europe is widening – 20% of the EU population earns less than the poverty threshold in their country,“ explained Ingo Ritz, director of programmes at Global Call to Action against Poverty, one of the organisations involved in the report.

But the story does not end at the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. “Across the EU, 10% of those employed and living in poverty. The gender pay gap in the EU is 16% and much higher in some countries. The gender pension gap stands at 40% in the EU, exceeding 45% in Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands,” Ritz elaborated. “The richest men in France have a life expectancy of 84 years, while the poorest men have a life expectancy of 71 years.”

Inequalities are also sharpening in other European countries too. In Germany, “40% of full-time workers live below the poverty line, which also affects the lives of families and children,” noted Anja Ruhlemann of Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF), which also contributed to the report.

When it comes to age, “young people have become the population group at greatest risk of poverty and social exclusion, with more than one in four young people affected by this risk,” the report observes in its chapter on youth.

In countries where age-related inequalities are at their starkest and where young people lack opportunities, there is enormous pressure to migrate in search of a better life. However, young people are fighting to create opportunities at home. “I don’t want to leave my country because I want to be a part of my country’s future,” Teodora Grau (16), a youth activist from Romania and a member of the World Vision Children Consultative Council, told the audience at the report launch.

Sustained demands for sustainability

‘Falling through the cracks: Exposing inequalities in the European Union and beyond’ makes numerous recommendations designed to tackle, reduce or eliminate the inequalities it highlights.

A group of recommendations revolve around repairing Europe’s frayed social safety net and strengthening it. Examples in this regard include introducing a basic minimum income for all, ensuring equal pay for equal work, and the expansion of social transfer and social protection policies.

On the other side of the balance sheet, the report demands that taxation policies be reformed to help reduce inequalities, protect the environment, to encourage more sustainable lifestyles and to avoid harming countries outside the EU. Several recommendations relate to human rights and policies to overcome discrimination against women, the young and people with disabilities, among others.

Rather than the current fixation on economic growth, the European Union should seek to enhance quality of life and welfare, the document insists. Towards this end, the report proposes that the EU be guided by a Sustainability and Wellbeing Pact.

Campaigners have been calling for the EU to put sustainable development at the heart of its agenda for many years. Civil society even launched a Manifesto for a Sustainable Europe in September last year.

Since the European election last month, demands have become more vocal for the EU to deliver on the SDGs, by making them and sustainable development in general the “golden thread” that runs through all of the EU’s work.

Originally published on 19.06.19 – https://meta.eeb.org/2019/06/19/europes-deepening-inequalities-are-leaving-too-many-behind 

Fossil fuel support is rising again in a threat to climate change efforts

By the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Fossil-fuel subsidies are environmentally harmful, costly, and distortive. After a 3 years downward trend between 2013 and 2016, government support for fossil fuel production and use has risen again, in a threat to efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, and the transition to cleaner and cheaper energy. Support across 76 countries increased by 5% to USD 340 billion in 2017, according to a new OECD-IEA report prepared for the G20.

OECD-IEA Update on Recent Progress in Reform of Inefficient Fossil Fuel Subsidies that Encourage Wasteful Consumption also shows that even in the group of 44 OECD and G20 countries, where fossil fuel support is still declining, the reduction has slowed down. Support in these countries was down 9% in 2017, a slower decline than the 12% recorded in 2016 and 19% in 2015.

The reversal comes as some countries reinstated stronger price controls on fossil fuels, in response to volatility in international oil prices, which made it harder to continue energy pricing and taxation reforms.

Some progress has nonetheless been made: the report finds that many countries, including Argentina, India, Indonesia and several Middle Eastern and Northern African economies, have continued to take steps to reduce support for energy consumption. Western Europe has completed its phasing out of hard-coal subsidies and efforts continue to end state aid to coal-fired power generation in the European Union.

Oil and gas industries in several countries, however, continue to benefit from government incentives, mostly through tax provisions that provide preferential treatment for cost recovery. Such policies go against domestic efforts to reduce emissions.

The report was presented to G20 energy officials ahead of the G20 Ministerial Meeting on Energy Transitions and Global Environment in Karuizawa, Japan, where countries reiterated their commitment to phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies and encouraged countries that have not done so to volunteer for a Peer Review.

“This new OECD-IEA report signals a worrying slowdown in our efforts to phase out fossil fuel subsidies,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “The critical nature of the climate change crisis has never been clearer than it is today. Countries should be accelerating their reforms, not taking their feet off the pedal. We cannot promote inclusive and sustainable growth if we continue subsidising fossil fuels!”

The report combines the IEA’s price-gap approach to capture the transfer to consumers of policies that keep fossil fuels below reference prices and the OECD’s 2019 Inventory of Support Measures for Fossil Fuels, which takes stock of spending programmes and tax breaks used in the 36 OECD countries and eight emerging countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa) to encourage fossil fuel production or use. These include measures that reduce prices for consumers or that lower exploration and exploitation costs for oil and gas companies.

Increasing transparency on the use of scarce public resources can help to keep up momentum for fossil fuel subsidy reform. Building on the evidence brought to the table by the OECD, G20 countries committed in Pittsburgh in 2009 to “rationalise and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption.” Since then G20 countries – China, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico and the United States – have completed voluntary G20 Peer Reviews of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and Argentina and Canada are just starting theirs. The OECD has been asked to play Secretariat role for all the country reviews, to chair and facilitate these processes, which have to date evaluated more than 100 government interventions relating to the production and use of fossil fuels.

“OECD evidence leaves no doubt” says Gabriela Ramos, OECD Chief of Staff and G20 Sherpa – “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies undermine global efforts to tackle climate change, aggravate local pollution, and are a strain on public budgets, draining scarce fiscal resources that could be invested in education, skills, and physical infrastructure. We urge all G20 countries to keep up the effort, and join the voluntary G20 Peer Reviews of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”

Download a PDF of Update on Progress in Reform of Inefficient Fossil Fuel Subsidies  

See the OECD Inventory of Support Measures for Fossil Fuels 2019

See more OECD work on fossil fuel subsidies

For further information journalists are invited to contact the OECD Media Office (+33 1 45 24 97 00.)

Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

Originally published on 17/06/2019 at http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/fossil-fuel-support-is-rising-again-in-a-threat-to-climate-change-efforts.htm

Sustained Pressure For A Sustainable Europe

By Khaled Diab, EEB

Civil society organisations from across Europe are urging European Union leaders to make sustainable development the golden thread running through all EU policies.

European Union leaders are due to hold a summit in Brussels on 20-21 June 2019 where they will hammer out the EU’s strategic agenda for the coming five years. A leaked draft of the five-year plan obtained by Euractiv reveals that the top priority EU leaders wish to pursue between 2019 and 2024, under the misleading heading “protecting citizens and freedoms”, revolves around migration, border controls and counter-terrorism.

While this may appear to be the populist thing to do, it is not the most popular, according to various opinion polls. Protecting the environment and sustainable living are popular amongst European citizens, regardless of their political ideologies. A near universal 94% of EU citizens say that protecting the environment is personally important to them, according to Eurobarometer, the EU’s polling agency.

Moreover, a recent YouGov poll found that the majority of Europeans polled were in favour of introducing greater protections for the environment, even it negatively affected economic growth, and that corruption, housing, health, pensions and unemployment rank above or equal to migration.

These trends were confirmed by what has been dubbed as the ‘green wave’ during the European Parliament elections.

Despite this clear preference for the environment among European citizens, the leaked draft plan relegates green policies to third place, behind migration and “developing our economic base”.

The golden thread of sustainability

Reflecting the clear preferences of millions of citizens to prioritise the environment, housing, health and employment, as well as responding to the urgent environmental and socio-economic crises facing Europe and the world, European civil society decided to join forces to demand the political establishment get its act together.

More than 150 organisations signed an open letter urging EU leaders to render sustainable development “the golden thread running through all EU policies” in the 2019-2024 strategy and beyond.

“Urgent action is needed to address escalating inequalities and tackle the climate crisis, stop the rapid loss of biodiversity, ensure sustainable consumption and production and quality employment for all, and manage a just transition towards an economic system founded on wellbeing and quality of life,” the signatories stated.

The letter was the brainchild of the European Environmental Bureau, the European Confederation of Relief and Development NGOs (CONCORD) and the Platform of European Social NGOs (Social Platform).

“The next five years will be decisive if we are to advance social justice, including by fighting poverty and social exclusion, creating quality employment, and ensuring the health, dignity and well being of all people,” says Kélig Puyet, director of the Social Platform. “To achieve this, our leaders need to do more than pay lip service to social and environmental sustainability.”

“The outgoing European Commission wanted to make us believe in infinite ‘green’ growth while leaving the economic system untouched,” notes Patrizia Heidegger, director of global policies and sustainability at the EEB. “We need the next Commission to focus on an economy for human well-being within ecological limits – and a political leadership that dares to ask: how much is enough to live well?”

Making Europe sustainable can only be achieved through sustained pressure. “The high priority that the large majority of European citizens assign to the environment and their active and constant demands for a better and more sustainable future are making a difference in the corridors of power in national capitals and in Brussels,” says Jeremy Wates, secretary general of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). “But they need to keep up the pressure by making it abundantly clear to politicians that they will not settle for anything less than a sustainable Europe.”

Originally published 13.06.19 on EEB’s META: https://meta.eeb.org/2019/06/13/sustained-pressure-for-a-sustainable-europe/

Newsletter from the SDG Watch Europe network – JUNE 2019

See our full newsletter here. 

EDITORIAL: Towards a sustainable future: Time for bold and courageous political leadership
Statement on the European Elections 2019

Europe’s failure to stamp out inequalities – by EEB & GCAP

The Spring 2019 Climate Alliance South America Tour – Supporting climate justice with indigenous partners – by Climate Alliance

Do you want to learn more about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals? A new game tests your knowledge about the SDGs and takes you on a treasure hunt through downtown Brussels – by EEB

Small Towns facing global challenges of Agenda 2030 & Petition to create European Day of Memory and Welcome – by Snapshots from the Borders 

 

 

Europe’s failure to stamp out inequalities

By Khaled Diab, EEB & Tanja Gohlert, GCAP

Despite the European Union’s commitment to leave no one behind, millions of people in Europe are falling victim to widening inequalities, according to a new major EU-wide report – ‘Falling through the cracks: Exposing inequalities in Europe and beyond’. The report will be launched on 18 June 2019 at the European Development Days (EDDs) in Brussels.

Please join this special EDDs side event on Tuesday 18/06 from 16:00-17:30 in Room L1, which will present the report, highlight the action and inaction at the European level, and feature the perspectives from youth activists, inequalities from a national context, as well as the inequalities experienced by disabled persons.

You will be able to download the report from 18 June at www.sdgwatcheurope.org/SDG10.

Read more: https://www.sdgwatcheurope.org/europes-failure-to-stamp-out-inequalities/

About the report

‘Falling through the cracks: Exposing inequalities in Europe and beyond’ shines a light on the impact of rising inequalities on people and planet. The report makes for sobering reading and maps the reality of various forms of inequality, both nationally and at the European level. It consists of 15 national reports and 11 thematic chapters exploring key dimensions of inequality, including gender, age, disability, ethnicity and homelessness.

Why this matters

The EU, the world’s second largest economy, prides itself on its egalitarianism and progressive social model, while glaring inequalities are seen as a problem afflicting other parts of the world. But this is not the reality – there are many forms of inequalities in Europe and they are widening. If urgent action is not taken to address these gaping disparities, the EU is at risk of not meeting its commitments to the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 10, to narrow inequalities within and between countries.

Civil society has taken the opportunity to provide an analysis of the different dimensions of inequality that exist – and persist – across the European Union. We are using this moment to present concrete policy recommendations to the EU, its new political leadership and its Member States. Our purpose is to provide information and proposals to address inequalities effectively – a first and necessary step towards ensuring a just transition towards human well-being within the planet’s ecological limits, and to leave no one behind.

This report has been produced as part of the pan-European project, Make Europe Sustainable for All, in close collaboration with SDG Watch Europe, and with the contributions of 58 organizations.

The report also contributes to the global Faces of Inequality and European Fight Inequalities campaigns, which gives social exclusion, poverty and discrimination a face. The campaigns are built jointly by members and partners – especially organisations of marginalized and excluded peoples.

About us

SDG Watch Europe is a cross-sectoral civil society alliance made up of over 100 organisations. It advocates for ambitious implementation of the SDGs.  

Make Europe Sustainable for All (MESA) is coordinated by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and implemented in 15 European countries by 25 partners. It aims to raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

For questions and queries, please contact:

Khaled Diab

Senior communications officer, EEB

e-mail: khaled.diab@eeb.eu

Tel: +32 2 289 1369