SUSTAINABLE Development Goals (SDGs) must deal with a new wave of imbalances among people and change the world for a better place, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) regional director for Southern Africa Hubert Gijzen has said.
BY OBEY MANAYITI
SDGs are internationally set goals aimed at eradicating poverty, enhancing food security, promoting sustainable energy, managing water and environmental resources, controlling diseases, mitigating natural and man-induced disasters.
Building up on the Millennium Development Goals of 2000, SDGs outlines 17 goals that the world should achieve by 2030.
Gijzen said the level of imbalances between people were worrisome and a threat to achievement of the set 17 goals.
“The defining challenge we are faced with is that the world we are living in today is alarmingly out of balance,” Gijzen said in his remarks at the UNESCO’s 70th anniversary last week.
“This relates to the serious imbalance between people and nature, as reflected in the concept of sustainable development itself. But equally worrisome is the serious imbalance between people.
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Gijzen added: “Therefore, we need to urgently address both imbalances between people and planet earth and between people if we wish to give true meaning to sustainable development and if we wish to create a new world, free of terrorism, a world where people live in harmony between themselves and with nature.”
Zimbabwe is prioritising 10 out of the 17 SDGs.
Higher Education secretary Machivenyika Mapuranga said the country was benefiting a lot from the mutual relationship between UN agencies and the government in implementing the SDGs.
He said the country hoped to improve on areas of education through the proper implementation of the SDGs.
“Every human being needs to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to shape a sustainable future. It is through education that society can be empowered and become creative and innovative in order to meet the future needs,” Mapuranga said. “The world is indeed moving at a very rapid pace, new technologies are creeping in which require us to remain alert and focused, otherwise we will be left behind.”
