Ensuring coherence and synergy between the upcoming 2023 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit and next year’s Summit of the Future was the focus of the Baha’i International Community’s most recent “Road to the Summit” discussion series event. 

“Urgent action is needed to rescue the SDGs,” said Ambassador Brian Christopher Manley Wallace, of Jamaica, in opening remarks, noting that only 12% of United Nations’ sustainable development goals are currently on track to be achieved by 2030. 

“It is our hope that, through heightened commitments and added impetus toward advancement at the political level, we can improve people’s lives and restore a sense of hope and optimism,” Wallace said. 

Titled “A Tale of Two Summits,” the event drew over 180 attendees from diplomatic Missions, UN agencies, and civil society organizations. It was the 10th session of the current series. 

Enhancing patterns of trust, collaboration, and common cause between nations was highlighted by several speakers as a critical outcome of the upcoming Summits. 

“The recipe for solving issues is more cooperation and more trust, and having ways of making decisions that are faster and more effective,” stated Ambassador Antje Leendertse, of Germany, one of the event’s opening speakers. 

A similar theme was struck by Maria Fernanda Espinosa, co-chair of the Coalition for the UN We Need, which co-sponsors the discussion series with the BIC. 

“Diplomacy is the art of processing dissent and difference in a respectful way, based on trust,” Ms. Espinosa observed. “The space for dialogue, diplomacy, and trust-building will be one of the greatest opportunities of this series of summits.” 

Comments from featured speakers as well as attendees offered a range of suggestions, many centered on means to reinforce complementarity between the two summits. A two-page summary captured observations and proposals from the discussion. 

Running throughout the event was a conviction that significant reform of the multilateral system must be a central outcome of the summits, laying foundations for much more coordinated and collaborative global responses to contemporary challenges. 

“Every one of us, alone, can make a modest contribution to the goals before us,” declared Ambassador Gerardo Peñalver Portal, of Cuba, in closing remarks. “But all of us, together, will make a great contribution.”