The High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development meets annually in July, under the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), where countries present their Voluntary National Reviews (VRNs) of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The HLPF also carries out thematic reviews of progress on the SDGs including cross-cutting issues. To facilitate an in-depth review of progress, the HLPF annually discusses a particular set of SDGs and their interlinkages. In 2018, the in-depth review will be carried out over SDGs 6, 7, 11, 12 and 15, as well as 17, which is reviewed annually.
As a Major Group Consultative Member for the ECOSOC Civil Society Network, my cooperative efforts are particularly focused on the private-public dialogue over policy briefs contained within the new publication “Accelerating SDG 7 achievement: Policy briefs in support of the first SDG 7 review at the UN High-Level Political Forum 2018”. The document was launched by the SDG7 Technical Advisory Group, in partnership with UN DESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and includes 27 policy briefs relating to accelerating SDG 7 achievement.
Policy Brief #6 Energy Technology Innovation: Digitalization of Grid Services. Increasing the speed of digitalized technology development could lead to a first-mover advantage for pioneering countries or companies.
- The need for resilient infrastructure, increasing stress on resources, and decentralized supply) and enabled by the interaction of various disciplines such as data and information networks. As the rate of interlinkages increases and improvements in data and information networks accelerate, we can expect rapid advances in the innovations that exploit the interactions of these technologies.
- Technology such as sensors, robotics and advanced analytics, which together form advanced interconnected systems capable of quickly analyzing large amounts of data, are developing potentially transformative solutions, across various sectors, for improving energy efficiency and managing more variable renewable energy. This development is driven by continuous improvements, and the cost-performance curve of core digital technology building blocks: computing power, data storage, and bandwidth utilization.
Policy Brief #14 Interlinkages Between Energy and Sustainable Cities: Smart Grid and Smart Buildings. Cities are adopting more energy efficient policies and practices in the transport, buildings, industry, and commercial sectors.
- The number of energy efficient building codes adopted by countries, and by-law at city levels, has increased in the last five years.
- Smart grids are enabling major energy efficiency and resilience gains. Using ICTs, the grid is able to manage energy demand and use most efficient energy source on the system.
The formal session to review SDG7 will take place on 10 July from 11:00 to 13:00, during the HLPF 2018 and Side Events sponsored by Member States, UN system and other intergovernmental organizations, Major Groups and other accredited stakeholders will be held in the margins of the event. More information on the HLPF 2018 can be found here.
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