As the world contemplates a post-2015 development agenda, one important objective should be to counteract the tendency among policy makers to consider the main issues facing humanity – poverty, climate change, women’s advancement, and so on – as separate problems.

Instead, said Francois Gave, global problems must be seen as interrelated – and so must the overall approach in any development agenda.

“Problems tend to be more and more complex,” said Mr. Gave, Counselor of the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations, so “we must try to break down the silos” that confine each issue. For example, he said, “climate change cannot be addressed in isolation” of other issues such as poverty, access to water, desertification and, even, violence.

Mr. Gave spoke at the 18^th in a series of breakfast meetings held in the offices of the Baha’i International Community (BIC) that have brought together diplomats, UN officials, and representatives of civil society in the lead-up to negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda.

Held 25 April 2014, the topic was “Post-2015 and climate: Highlighting appropriate environmental targets for the SDGs,” and Mr. Gave was joined in the discussion by Abigail Jones, a managing director at Climate Advisors, a Washington, DC-based consultancy focusing on strategies to address climate change.

Ms. Jones noted that the latest scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says global warming and other coming climate impacts are likely to affect the world’s poor disproportionately.

At the same time, she said, while climate change has global relevance, “countries have different priorities and different capacities to address it.”

She agreed there is a growing consensus that any future goals in relation to climate change or sustainable development should be interlinked with cross-cutting effects related to food, water, poverty and disaster risk, among other issues.

Ms. Jones also said that some issue areas under consideration in the setting of goals lend themselves, especially, to explicit targets. These include food security, energy production, land use, and health. The use of specific targets has long been seen as a key feature in the success of the Millennium Development Goals, which the post-2015 development agenda will replace.

Daniel Perell, who moderated the session, said one goal for this breakfast meeting was to begin to shift from a general discussion of issues to a “problem-solving” approach.

“As we get closer to the actual negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda, which are expected to take place in 2015, we see the need to begin focusing on these issues in a more practical and direct way,” said Mr. Perell, who is a representative of the BIC to the UN.

“And in the discussion today, there was a frank and genuine interchange between representatives from governments, from civil society, and UN agencies about how the issues of climate change intertwine with other development concerns, such as those which focus mainly on poverty or on issues facing women,” he said.

Notes from the meeting, which was co-sponsored by the BIC and International Movement ATD Fourth World, can be read here.