people throughout America are using the Sustainable development targets (SDGs) as a highway map to assemble again larger by turning these worldwide ambitions into native movement.
as a consequence of the official headquarters of the United Nations, and a frontrunner in sustainability, NY metropolis exemplifies the phrase, “assume globally, act domestically.” Driving the metropolis’s SDG progress is a dynamic group of women inside the Mayor’s office for worldwide Affairs. We spoke with three of them to be taught extra about what evokes them to do this work.
Three years in the past, the ny made headlines when it grew to become one in every of many first cities on the planet to formally report on its native progress on the Sustainable development targets (SDGs) to the United Nations by submitting a Voluntary native overview (VLR). The SDGs are a pure language for the metropolis, which is dwelling to various communities — collectively with the world’s largest diplomatic corps — and which launched its personal sustainable development plan, “OneNYC 2050,” centered on development, equity, sustainability, and resiliency, a quantity of months earlier than the SDGs had been adopted in 2015. NY metropolis helped to adapt the nationwide devices for reporting SDG progress for cities and states and spurred a world movement, with better than 20 cities throughout over 15 international places signing a VLR declaration in 2019 to report on their very personal progress.
The VLR declaration was born all by the Mayor’s office for worldwide Affairs, which cultivates channels of collaboration and connection between New Yorkers and their worldwide friends. The office additionally administers the NYC Junior Ambassadors program, serving to seventh graders be taught extra with regard to the UN, the SDGs, and the strategy their communities’ native challenges hook up with the world. by its worldwide imaginative and prescient|metropolis movement initiative, the office makes use of the SDGs to share its modern sustainability work and alternate best practices with utterly different cities and international places.
The significance of attaining the SDGs grew even clearer for NY metropolis when it grew to become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic inside the U.S. in March 2020. The haunting photographs of empty streets, current shortages, and makeshift morgues in a single in every of many world’s liveliest cities had been simply one a part of the story. As in so many utterly different places throughout the globe, what the ny’s pandemic expertise illustrated in stark phrases was that regardless of some progress, there are nonetheless alarming ranges of inequality and disparities. on the identical time, it strengthened the significance of native management as metropolis governments are deeply related to their communities’ wants and are typically the principal responders to crises.
As NYC works to recuperate from the pandemic, it is taking these classes to coronary heart and placing the SDG beliefs of equity and justice on the center of its strategy.
Driving these efforts is a dynamic group of women inside the Mayor’s office for worldwide Affairs. From advocating for women’ and women’s rights to supporting underserved communities, they’ve arrived to their roles from various experiences the place they’ve internalized the SDGs as an apparent blueprint in direction of a better future.
Get to know three of these women right here, and be taught extra about why the SDGs matter to them:
1. PENNY ABEYWARDENA, Commissioner
Penny Abeywardena’s personal private journey is a testament to the power of the SDGs and their promise for dignity and justice for all. After she and her household arrived inside the U.S. from Sri Lanka, she spent a lot of her youth undocumented and acutely felt the vulnerability that comes with such a standing. which have customary Penny’s lifelong dedication to factors with social justice and sustainability, collectively with programmatic work at Human Rights Watch, and later, the Clinton worldwide Initiative, the place she championed women’ and women’s rights.
When she was appointed commissioner on the Mayor’s office for worldwide Affairs in 2014, Penny shortly noticed a probability to enhance collaboration between her native agency colleagues and the worldwide and diplomatic group inside the metropolis. as a consequence of the UN made headway on establishing the SDG framework, it grew to become clear that the targets might very effectively be the proper entry level to convey the two teams collectively round tackling poverty, inequality, local climate change, and utterly different widespread challenges.
“We’ve labored intently with our colleagues all by metropolis companies so as that they understand how the SDGs are related to their work,” says Penny. “It’s this skill to join past borders on best practices, using the SDGs as a commonplace language and framework that’s been on the center of our worldwide imaginative and prescient|metropolis movement platform.”
With a shared common set of targets and imaginative and prescient for the prolonged time period, the ny stakeholders might alternate their experiences, challenges, and options with counterparts in cities throughout the globe. Alongside the launch of the principal VLR, for event, members of the UN diplomatic group had been invited to see firsthand a pair of of the native influence of NYC’s SDG work, collectively with a go to to the most important recycling facility inside the U.S. to understand how the metropolis is tackling accountable consumption and manufacturing (SDG12), boarding a sludge vessel to be taught extra with regard to the metropolis’s clear water and sanitation efforts (SDG6), and taking a tour of a space people backyard to discover life on land (SDG15).
In her seven years as commissioner, Penny has been in a place to see the extremely effective influence that cities can have on the entrance strains of propelling the SDGs forward, collectively with by reporting on progress made in direction of the targets.
“there are strategies to be creative and use our partnerships and networks, and that’s what now we should create with this voluntary native overview: to have native governments really feel extremely effective on this work,” she says.
When the U.S. withdrew from the Paris local climate settlement, for event, the ny Mayor invoice de Blasio signed an govt order to commit the metropolis to the settlement’s targets. His office later launched a Paris settlement-compliant plan — the principal metropolis on the planet to take movement — outlining precisely the best strategy it goes to diminish greenhouse gasoline emissions and reduce again its carbon footprint. extra just recently, when the ny was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, Penny and her group reached out to their community of overseas ambassadors and the UN for assist and had been in a place to safe tens of millions of private defending devices and ventilators. The UN alone donated 250,000 face masks to assist well being workers throughout the metropolis.
The pandemic “has one hundred laptop pc highlighted the significance of native authorities movement — for fundamental well being supply, and now for vaccines,” Penny said. “final 12 months, we noticed a critical leap in cities and native governments eager to hitch the voluntary native overview declaration as a consequence of COVID made it clear that the SDGs are an needed framework for us to work inside.”
the worldwide nature of the pandemic was a wake-up name for masses of, exhibiting how one draw again in a single nook of the world can shortly unfold to have an effect on all people throughout the globe. And for Penny and her group, that is the motive the SDGs resonate masses — they assist join the native to the worldwide, and convey us collectively as a part of 1 massive group, stopping the identical battle.
2. AISSATA CAMARA, Deputy Commissioner for Operations and Strategic Partnerships
For Aissata Camara, most probably the most pleasurable half about her work inside the Mayor’s office for worldwide Affairs is participating with youthful activists and seeing how they translate the SDGs into their very personal lives. it is a pure extension of her yearslong advocacy on behalf of weak populations, significantly youthful women. by an group she started collectively with her sister, Aissata has helped elevate consciousness round factors similar to feminine genital mutilation, and she or he encourages utterly different youthful people to do the identical.
Aissata’s advocacy work ready her for the principal job on the job inside the Mayor’s office six years in the past: launching the Junior Ambassadors program, a problem centered round discover out how to convey the targets into homes and into discussions round dinner tables throughout NY metropolis.
“i actually like being surprised at how creative these youthful individuals are after they create group actions,” she said. “additionally after they actually start participating with the SDGs, they don’t let it go — they take the SDGs with them to school and be part of golf equipment like mannequin UN.”
One Junior Ambassador group in South Bronx, for event, chosen objective 14: Life under Water to deal with the air pollution they noticed inside the river they walked previous every day — a pair of of the polluted waterways inside the metropolis. For them, this was a pair of of the apparent SDG priorities, they usually labored collectively to wash it up.
In her current position as Deputy Commissioner for Operations and Strategic Partnerships, Aissata helps localize the SDGs, have interplay metropolis authorities consultants’ voices inside the approach, and set up engagement alternatives between metropolis companies and the worldwide group. a part of her job means exhibiting metropolis colleagues who’re unfamiliar with the SDGs that their work — whether or not it is water and sanitation or parks and recreation —already helps advance the targets, however that in using the framework as a language, they will take it one step further and hook up with their worldwide colleagues. Aissata says that when her colleagues noticed this alternative to have the power to have interplay with worldwide friends, they grew extra excited.
“all people desires to have larger well being. all people desires to have the power to have a extreme extreme quality training. all people desires to have the power to not face inequalities or face discrimination,” Aissata says. “The Sustainable development targets give us the language to have the power to place these hopes and goals into phrases.”
three. ONEIKA PRYCE, Strategic Relationships affiliate
Oneika Pryce’s first publicity to the SDGs was in a tutorial setting. It was not till a 2019 internship inside the Mayor’s office for worldwide Affairs that she started to understand how they might very effectively be utilized to exact life.
“all people desires to attain the 17 Sustainable development targets, however if you research them, you ask your self, ‘is that this truly possible?’” says Oneika. “if you’re viewing them from a extra localized perspective, you then might very effectively see that there are steps to get in direction of the objective.”
After her internship and simply a few months earlier than the start of the pandemic, she was employed as a strategic relationships affiliate to assist implement the worldwide imaginative and prescient|metropolis movement (GV|UA) program. a part of Oneika’s work has been exhibiting New Yorkers the applicability of the SDGs of their very personal lives, thereby altering the potential misunderstanding that the framework is strictly for the “growing world.” all by the pandemic, that meant establishing meals hubs to assist native communities overcome meals insecurity or offering entry to tablets and computer systems for school youngsters dealing with technological difficulties.
It additionally meant that Oneika’s dad and mom lastly understood what she did every day at work. “My dad and mom are immigrants from Jamaica, and after I first started, that they had no clue what i used to be doing,” Oneika says. “I wished to convey it to their private expertise, and talked with regard to the worth of the SDG framework in constructing instructional purposes or bettering agricultural practices — that made it extra tangible for them.”
Explaining how the SDGs hook up with the exact world to her dad and mom has given Oneika useful observe to assemble relationships with metropolis representatives. And that has develop to be her favourite a part of the job: cultivating private connections throughout the targets to level out how NYC can educate and be taught from utterly different cities — these with as few as 10,000 people all of the best decision to megacities.
For every of these women, the SDGs are better than merely targets or numbers — they’re private. From working to eradicate poverty in NY metropolis to defending women in opposition to home violence, the SDG framework is a clear recreation plan for the metropolis — and the world — to maneuver in direction of a extra simply, equitable future. These three women inside the Mayor’s office for worldwide Affairs are particularly heartened by the momentum that their metropolis’s VLR has helped obtain.
With better than 200 cities and subnational governments throughout the globe and inside the U.S. now signed on to the Voluntary native overview Declaration, the SDGs are shortly spreading as a consequence of the language of possibility to ship progress. This momentum comes as all international places are concurrently confronted with the monumental problem of mapping out COVID-19 restoration.
fortunately, there’s already a highway map for that.
This dialog is a part of an even larger enterprise launched by the UN basis and the Brookings institution to assemble and assist American management on the SDGs.
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