Ending poverty, ensuring healthy lifestyle and better infrastructure, fostering innovation, striving for sustainable industrialisation and taking urgent action to combat climate change are the areas from among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which should be the national priorities.
This was decided by the participants from 18 countries who attended the international workshop on ‘Leadership Development Programme for Enhanced Public Service Delivery’ organised at the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) in association with the German Development Institute in the last three days.
The SDGs were adopted by the United Nations on September 25, 2015, to drive global efforts to end poverty and put the planet on a sustainable course by 2030. An official communication put out as resolutions after the meeting made the following recommendations: providing a social security number after identifying the poor through proper data collection; increased access to basic resources and support to communities affected by conflict and climate-related disasters; adopting technological advances and innovation in economic growth via transfers from high-income countries to low income countries; and implementation of sound governance systems for sustainable development.
It called for reviewing the exiting public service structures for an effective public service delivery, increasing health budget with more R&D activities, developing one-window health services through a mobile app and increasing the efforts in teaching preventive measures via public education at schools and households across the countries. It also includes creating a regional innovation exchange centre for infrastructure in energy, industry, information technology, agriculture and other areas to promote development, and supporting startups or small businesses by creating an enabling environment, ensuring tax cuts and providing financial support for them to thrive.
Establishing eco-friendly infrastructure for smart industries and cities, heavy government investment in public private partnerships, a policy to support innovations in this arena, increasing green cover, shift in urban public transport to electric transport were other suggestions. Participants also resolved to make the governments implement this salient framework through legislation.