UN: Global Goals for Sustainable Development Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateEarl of Sandwich
Main Page: Earl of Sandwich (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Earl of Sandwich's debates with the Department for International Development
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe noble Lord has raised this before. He is absolutely right that if the SDGs are to be met, they will not be met by Governments alone; they have to be met by civil society. That means business getting involved, as well as church groups, trade unions and charities. It is impossible to assess our progress towards the SDGs by looking simply at government entities in this country. Therefore, the trade unions will be a very important element in that. Individual departments will be reaching out to trade unions to ensure that their voices are heard. Proactively, however, there is also the opportunity through the website launched yesterday for trade unions and other parts of civil society to make sure that their contribution to meeting those goals is recognised in our voluntary national review.
My Lords, in view of all the bad news about climate change that we have been reading, are the Government making more effort and looking harder at sustainable development goal 13, which is about climate change? What action will they take?
We have taken a number of pieces of action. Some of the action required of us is under the Climate Change Act, which was introduced in 2008 under the previous Labour Government. Of course, a major step forward was the Paris agreement. There will be a follow-up to that agreement. We have introduced international climate finance as a way of scaling up the amount of investment available for that very important area. The IPCC made those announcements in Seoul, South Korea, just a couple of days ago, which grabbed the headlines. They will be followed up at a special meeting in Katowice in Poland in December and we will play a full and leading part in that.