Oliver Dowden – 2023 Statement at the UN Sustainable Development Goals Summit

The statement made by Oliver Dowden, the Deputy Prime Minister, on 19 September 2023.

Your Excellencies. It is half time on the SDGs, and our collective promise is in peril.

The UK was instrumental in developing Agenda 2030 and its SDGs.

Today we recommit to them – and to reforming the international financial system that will play such a big role in helping us deliver them.

We are driving reforms of the Multilateral Development Banks including stretching their balance sheets to release over $200bn of additional finance over the next ten years.

To support this, the UK is announcing two innovative guarantees to scale up MDB lending one to unlock $1 billion in education financing and one to unlock up to $1.8 billion of climate finance for Asia-Pacific countries.

I also reiterate our support for a bigger and better World Bank, which increases voice and

representation of the poorest and most vulnerable.

We support reforms to make the MDBs more agile, more shock responsive and better able to mobilise more private investment.

We encourage MDBs and all other creditors to offer Climate Resilient Debt Clauses – pioneered by the UK – to pause debt repayments when disaster strikes.

We will continue to mobilise billions through British Investment Partnerships for energy transitions and infrastructure –$40 billion by 2027 and we will support countries to collect taxes owed to them to invest in their development, with a new £17 million package of support.

We must of course meet our global climate finance goals which is why at the G20, the Prime Minister announced $2 billion for the Green Climate Fund the biggest single commitment the UK has made to help the world tackle climate change.

We must maintain the spirit of partnership that created the SDGs as we ensure the financing and investment to deliver them.

We will do that through UK-hosted Summits on Food Security, AI, and Investment in Africa keeping up momentum through the autumn, into 2024, and all the way to 2030.

Thank you.