Borbely: Romania's objectives of sustainable development must be presented at UN summit in June

The National Strategy for Sustainable Development of Romania must be finalized in the next month so it can be presented at the United Nations summit in June.

“Romania has pledged to have a voluntary report on sustainable development at UN Summit in June”, says Laszlo Borbely, state councilor and coordinator of the Department for Sustainable Development of the General Secretariat of the Government.

“We are at the end of a road and the beginning of another. Last autumn we started public debates on Romania’s sustainable development strategy, because we need to revise the plan that was created in 2008 in the spirit of the 2030 agenda, which was adopted by the UN in 2015,” says Borbely.

The Department for Sustainable Development organized the National Conference “Contribution of Civil Society Institutions for the review if the National Strategy for Sustainable Development”, an event also attended by NGOs and associations that have made a considerable contribution in developing the concept of sustainability in our country.

“We need to bring everyone at the table in order to be able to track the implementation of the 17 objectives and 169 fixed targets found in 2030 agenda,” says Borbely. “There is still much to do. It is not like we didn’t have a strategy in the past, it is more like the institutions involved were not always available with all the divisions needed.”

This is the role of Department for Sustainable Development of the General Secretariat of the Government, according to Borbely, to be the catalyst of all institutions involved, including those from the private sector. “For example: the public procurement law was made in December 2016, but we still don’t have the implementation rules. We have already had two discussions with the Fiscal Authority, the Public Procurement Agency and the Ministry of Environment, and we will have another one next week in order to complete the implementation rules,” says the official.

The 17 Objectives of Sustainable Development are global objectives, applicable to all states, who have the mission to make every effort to eradicate all forms of poverty to combat inequalities and to combat climate change. Romania has assumed the responsibility to establish the national framework needed to reach those 17 Objectives of Sustainable Development (ODD), so that the Project for National Sustainable Development is a concrete approach to adoption a programmatic document that adapts the paradigm shift globally to sustainable development, priorities and national context over the 2030 time horizon.