In 2015, world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a roadmap for improving lives and wellbeing of people around the world. At their core, the SDGs seek to expand economic opportunity, advance social justice, care for our planet, promote good governance, and ensure no one is left behind.
This week, the United States and leaders came together once again at the SDG Summit in New York to recommit to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs. They met at a time of both challenge and tremendous opportunity around the world. They met with years of evidence that when countries come together under a common development vision – the SDGs and Millennium Development Goals before them – they have the capacity to deliver for both people and planet. For two decades, countries around the world delivered steady and extraordinary progress for millions of people to improve the quality of life and health outcomes of millions of people, while lowering poverty rates and slashing hunger from around the world.
Yet in recent years, the compounding effects of multiple crises – the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and conflict and migration, exacerbated by the spillovers of Russia’s war in Ukraine – have begun to erode development gains, including the first global decline in life expectancy since the 1950s.
At the halfway point to 2030, the world is not where it needs to be. Globally, we are only on track to achieve 15 percent of the SDG targets. Yet, if all countries act with urgency and redouble action and investments across the SDGs, while deepening and expanding partnerships across goal areas, we can achieve these ambitious goals.
The United States is committed to the full implementation of 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, at home and abroad. As a long-standing leader on global development, the United States is committed to reinvigorating action on this agenda alongside our partners around the world. The United States remains the single largest bilateral donor – investing over $100 billion in Official Development Assistance over the last two years alone. This includes over $43 billion to help end poverty (SDG 1); over $20 billion to drive inclusive economic growth and decent work (SDG 8); and over $16 billion to promote peace, justice, and good governance (SDG 16). The United States is also the largest provider of humanitarian aid at a time of unprecedented need – investing more than $42 billion more since the Biden Administration began.
Yet the scale of what is needed cannot be achieved by any government acting alone. At the SDG Summit, the United States called on all nations, the private sector, civil society, and local partners to leverage their respective capacities to do more to fuel the dramatic progress needed to reach these goals. Since the adoption of the SDGs, the United States has leveraged its investments to crowd in many billions of dollars more in additional private investment.
Together we can mobilize considerable additional financing for development from all sources, including official development assistance, domestic resources, and private investment. Ultimately, achieving our goals will also require leveraging knowledge and data and creating robust policy and regulatory environments.
The United States recognizes the integrated and universal nature of all of the SDGs, and is responding to the calls of our partner countries to address the issues most important to them, including:
- Inclusive Economic Growth and Infrastructure Investment: The Biden Administration has prioritized building a more sustainable and inclusive global economy with the capacity to lift up the fortunes of the many – including by mobilizing private finance, reforming and scaling up the multilateral development banks (MDBs) to better address today’s challenges, helping countries tackle unsustainable debt levels, and scaling investment towards quality infrastructure.
- The United States is leading an effort to fundamentally reshape the multilateral development banks to be better, bigger, and more effective in meeting 21st century challenges – including tackling global challenges like climate change and fragility alongside their core mission to alleviate poverty and promote shared prosperity. President Biden asked Congress for funds to unlock more than $25 billion in new World Bank Group concessional financing, and two weeks ago, secured G20 Leaders’ support to boost the World Bank’s concessional lending capacity for global challenges and for crisis response in the poorest countries.
- The United States is also calling on bilateral and private creditors to provide meaningful debt relief to low- and middle-income countries in crisis. We are also taking action to develop new solutions to help translate unsustainable debt into transformative investments, including through debt-for-nature swaps.
- Recognizing that reliable infrastructure is often the very foundation of economic growth, business development, and social empowerment, the United States committed – alongside G7 partners – to mobilize $600 billion by 2027 through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI) to help close the infrastructure gap in low- and middle-income countries. As demonstrated at the G20 Leaders’ Summit, the United States continues to strategically leverage public capital to mobilize private sector investments around the world to develop transformative economic corridors, expand regional markets, diversify supply chains, and support more resilient energy, food, digital, and health systems.
- This includes the landmark Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) between Indonesia and a group co-led by the United States that will mobilize an initial $20 billion in financing—half of which will come from the private sector—to support ambitious new targets in Indonesia’s clean energy transition.
- PGI builds on years of infrastructure investment across the U.S Government, including through the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which has delivered debt-free infrastructure investments to support inclusive economic growth in 47 economies around the world since 2004, benefitting over 266 million people. In the coming days, MCC will sign a $500 million Connectivity and Coastal Resilience Compact in Mozambique; a $29 million Threshold Program in Kiribati in support of Sustainable Development Goal 8 on decent work and economic growth; and a $60 million Threshold Program in Kenya to support government’s efforts to supply clean public transportation to Nairobi.
- This includes the landmark Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) between Indonesia and a group co-led by the United States that will mobilize an initial $20 billion in financing—half of which will come from the private sector—to support ambitious new targets in Indonesia’s clean energy transition.
- The United States is leading an effort to fundamentally reshape the multilateral development banks to be better, bigger, and more effective in meeting 21st century challenges – including tackling global challenges like climate change and fragility alongside their core mission to alleviate poverty and promote shared prosperity. President Biden asked Congress for funds to unlock more than $25 billion in new World Bank Group concessional financing, and two weeks ago, secured G20 Leaders’ support to boost the World Bank’s concessional lending capacity for global challenges and for crisis response in the poorest countries.
- Global Health and Health Security: As a longstanding leader in global health, the United States has put money and partnerships to work to secure life-saving outcomes. Through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the American people have invested over $100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response in the last twenty years, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history, saving 25 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS epidemic in more than 50 countries. Accelerating that work, the Biden Administration led the largest-ever replenishment of the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria, with donors pledging $15.7 billion. We are now investing more than ever to end ongoing epidemics like HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria as public health threats by 2030. Having seen how critical it is to have a strong health workforce in a time of crisis, the United States is investing in health workers through our core health programming supporting the President’s Global Health Worker Initiative, we have expanded our support to 50 countries to strengthen global health security systems in order to prepare, prevent, and respond to the next health emergency, and we continue to address core health needs around the world. The United States has committed $700 million to the Pandemic Fund to catalyze investment and coordination across partners to close country global health security capacity gaps. The United States has also donated, in partnership with COVAX and others, more than 688 million doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine to 117 countries. Beyond vaccines, the United States worked with countries around the world to invest in life-saving measures like COVID testing and treatment, protection of health workers, and developing the infrastructure required to get shots in arms now and in the future.
- Resilient and Sustainable Food Systems and Food Security: With the world facing an ongoing and protracted food crisis – millions of additional people have been pushed into food insecurity and chronic hunger. Building on its longstanding leadership, the United States is leading the charge to accelerate progress towards global food security. Under the Biden Administration, the United States obligated $15.2 billion in emergency food aid and development assistance to respond to the global food security crisis. Through Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s flagship global food security initiative, the United States is scaling up ways to build more sustainable and resilient food systems in 20 target countries around the world by helping farmers get goods to markets faster, safely store food and prevent food loss and waste, use agricultural data to help increase food production, and to provide drought- and heat-resistant seeds to farmers. These investments will create jobs at home and abroad. Additionally, the United States is investing $455 million through the McGovern-Dole Program and the Food for Progress Program to strengthen global food security and international capacity-building efforts. The investment also includes more than 375,000 metric tons of donated U.S. commodities which will help strengthen short- and long-term food security through climate-smart agriculture projects and be used to provide nutritious school meals for children. Complementing these bilateral efforts, the United States is also mobilizing resources and expertise from partners around the world to address food insecurity through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), an innovative $2 billion multi-donor trust fund hosted at the World Bank. GAFSP has mobilized $476 million to support private sector development to help boost agricultural productivity and support smallholder farmers in low-income countries, while providing direct support to more than 16 million rural people, including 7 million women.
- Clean and Climate Resilient Economies: Recognizing that the transition to a net-zero emissions economy has the potential to boost economic growth, produce jobs, create entirely new industries, and protect vital natural ecosystems and biodiversity, the United States is working on the frontlines of the climate crisis with countries around the world. Through the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), the United States is bringing together its diplomatic, development, and technical expertise to help more than half a billion people in developing countries adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change. The Biden Administration is also helping partner countries transition to affordable and secure energy, which both reduces emissions and spurs economic growth. At the G20 two weeks ago, President Biden and G20 leaders committed to pursue efforts to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030. Over the past decade, the Power Africa Initiative has helped build clean and sustainable energy infrastructure across the African continent–avoiding millions of tons of CO2 emissions while delivering new or improved electricity to over 172 million people. Bilaterally, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has supported renewable energy auctions that facilitated $24.6 billion of investment in large-scale wind and solar plants – equivalent to taking six million cars off the road. The United States is also conserving forests and other landscapes. Last year alone, USAID helped protect more than 60 million hectares globally – an area larger than the state of California.
- Education: The United States is also leading efforts to improve learning outcomes and to get all learners access to quality schooling, from pre-primary to higher education. This year, the United States is investing over $1 billion across nearly 100 partner countries to help build literacy, math, and social-emotional skills, so that young people gain the skills they need to lead productive lives, gain employment, and positively contribute to society. The United States is also a leading donor to the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait, multilateral partnerships that coordinate stakeholders and leverage resources to improve the quality of education around the world, particularly in areas affected by crisis, conflict, and forced displacement.
- Gender Equality and Women’s’ Empowerment: This year United States is investing over $2.8 billion in foreign assistance programs that promote gender equality–doubling our investment from last year. Aligned with the U.S. National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality and the U.S. Strategy on Global Women’s Economic Security, the United States is investing in initiatives like the Gender Equity and Equality Action (GEEA) Fund to advance economic security for women and girls by addressing the barriers that limit their ability to participate fully in the economy. The United States is also investing in the Women in the Digital Economy Fund, a pooled partnership that identifies, directly funds, and accelerates evidence-based, proven solutions to close the gender digital divide, thereby improving women’s livelihoods, economic security, and resilience, and the Climate Gender Equity Fund (CGEF), a public-private partnership that expands financial inclusion for women-led organizations and businesses focused on advancing sustainable economic growth, by increasing access to climate finance for investment vehicles, intermediaries, businesses, and community-based organizations in developing countries.
- Democracy and Human Rights, Addressing Fragility and Drivers of Conflict: Recognizing, as SDG 16 states, that “there can be no sustainable development without peace and security and no peace and security without sustainable development,” the United States is investing in a range of efforts to promote democracy and human rights, and address fragility. At the first Summit for Democracy, the United States launched the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal (P.I.D.R.), a landmark set of policy and foreign assistance initiatives building upon the U.S. Government’s significant, ongoing work to bolster democracy and defend human rights globally. At the second Summit for Democracy, the United States announced up to $690 million in new funding for the P.I.D.R. working with Congress and subject to the availability of appropriations. Through the Democracy Delivers Initiative, the United States is surging attention and resources in countries experiencing democratic openings—where elected representatives, civil society leaders, and everyday people are empowered and committed to pursuing reforms. Under the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability, the U.S. government is integrating diplomatic, development, and defense efforts and tackling the root causes of conflict, fostering locally-led solutions that address local priorities and build the foundations for long-term stability and progress. Recognizing the integral role women play in negotiating durable peace, through the U.S. Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security, the United States government is creating opportunities for women to be represented in peace processes throughout the world and hold positions of power in countries recovering from conflict. Through the U.S. Strategy to Anticipate, Prevent, and Respond to Atrocities, the U.S. government is working with local and international partners on atrocity prevention and response.
- Digitalization and New Technologies: The United States is helping countries accelerate economic growth, connect citizens to vital services, and provide solutions to key societal challenges in health, education, sustainability, and governance through open, inclusive, and secure digital technology. For example, Digital Invest, a blended finance program under PGI, is mobilizing $245 million in investment capital – with $200 million more expected –to accelerate investment in last-mile connectivity and financial technologies that benefit women and other traditionally excluded populations. Digital Invest partnerships have already connected 11 million consumers across 28 countries to digital tools and innovations such as pay-as-you-go solar; sustainable financing for internet connections at schools and health clinics; and working capital loans to expand digital infrastructure.
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