Your Excellency Deputy Foreign Minister Yildiz, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Colleagues

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to UNDP’s fourth Istanbul Development Dialogues.

As you know, this year the Dialogues are dedicated to “Partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals—the Road to 2030”. Their importance is apparent in the title—the global Agenda 2030 and its accompanying Sustainable Development Goals are the world’s development agenda. They represent a commitment by the world’s governments, and the global development community, to ensuring peace and prosperity, that we live within our planetary boundaries, and that we leave no one behind in doing so.

Of course, many meetings and fora are devoted to these issues. However, many of these occur within inter-governmental frameworks like the ECOSOC High Level Political Forum on sustainable development in New York, or the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development organized by the UN Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva. Other meetings are organized by international financial institutions, who focus on how to move from billions of dollars of official development assistance to the trillions of dollars needed to finance Agenda 2030’s implementation. Other meetings are convened by private companies who are ensuring that their business models are ecologically and social sustainable, as well as commercially profitable. And still other meetings are held by academic and civil society institutions, that ask hard questions about whether, in fact, we are moving towards sustainable development—and not away from it.

This year’s Istanbul Development Dialogues connect these different sustainable development strands and narratives together. Under a broad “partnerships” heading, we are bringing the government practitioners who are making the nuts and bolts of Agenda 2030 work together with representatives of financial institutions who are reorienting development finance in support of their efforts. We are joined in this by representatives of private companies who are designing and commercializing the technologies needed for sustainable production and consumption. Last but not least, leading representatives of civil society and academic institutions are also present. These partners are often placed to ask hard but necessary questions about how the sacrifices, and trade-offs required for sustainable development are being managed. They are also on the cutting edge of efforts to apply innovative, forward-looking platform approaches to development—within the UN system and other development agencies, as well as in governments and the private sector.

At UNDP, we believe that it is only through partnerships and common efforts among these different stakeholders that can we make real progress towards sustainable development, on the Road to 2030. In this lies the importance of this year’s Istanbul Development Dialogues. This is also why we are so pleased that so many of you have accepted our invitation to participate in this year’s event. We look forward to working with you, in our efforts to go beyond “business as usual” approaches to development, to ask hard questions about whether we are “fit for purpose” for implementing Agenda 2030, and to identify new, innovative solutions to the challenges we are facing.

As you may know, Agenda 2030 is often described in terms of the “five Ps”, of which “partnerships” is only one. In addition to dedicated sessions on the role of partnerships between governments, IFIs, the private sector, and civil society in supporting Agenda 2030 implementation, our programme also features sessions devoted to the other “four Ps”—“peace”, “people”, “planet”, and “prosperity”. We hope this programme will accommodate the breadth of perspectives needed for the multi-sectoral partnerships that must underpin truly integrated development approaches. Moreover, as in past years, the IDD also features a “Partners Forum”/“open mike” session, in which representatives of institutions that can not be accommodated in other parts of the programme may take the floor and briefly share their perspectives on these issues.

As we move through the Dialogues during the next two days, I would like to encourage all of us to keep three sets of questions in mind.

First: How do we “get prices right” for sustainable development? Economics 101 teaches us that activities with negative externalities should be taxed, while those with positive externalities should be subsidized. But in region with some of the world’s lowest employment rates, taxes on labour are a third (or more) of average wages. This tax wedge pushes people out of the labour force, and pushes jobs into the informal sector. Such policies are difficult to reconcile with SDGs 8 and 10, which emphasize the importance of inclusive growth, decent jobs, and reducing inequalities.

Meanwhile, state budgets allocate billions of dollars to fossil fuel subsidies that increase carbon footprints and slow economic diversification. These subsidies are at odds with the national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that have not been undertaken under the Paris Climate Change Accord, as well as with SDG 13 on climate action. What can be done to make “sustainable production and consumption” realities, and not slogans?

Second: How can we get “governance for sustainable development right”? Agenda 2030 and the SDGs are based on the premise that rights-based approaches are preconditions for sustainable development. But the liberal global order on which development cooperation is based is increasingly challenged by populist preferences for group identity over individual rights. Meanwhile, governance for sustainable development debates often narrowly focus on technocratic questions of policy coordination and coherence. How can we ensure that governance for sustainable development leaves no one behind, as well as providing technical support for national SDG implementation?

Third: How do we “get innovation right”? Technology and innovation have obviously made—and continue to make—critical contributions to socio-economic development and good governance. This is apparent in the ways in which governments are embracing digitalization agendas, and in which IT sectors are producing growing numbers of decent jobs across the region. In Kyrgyzstan, the government’s “Taza Koom” digitalization programme is seeking to accelerate progress towards sustainable development. Belarus’s ICT sector now generates twice as much foreign exchange as do pipeline shipments of Russian energy to Europe.

But growing numbers of people view technology and innovation as making traditional forms of employment and social protection obsolete, while potentially creating new threats to privacy and human rights. Meanwhile, businesses and governments are increasingly concerned about preventing hacking, fake news, and cyber-warfare. How can global sustainable development processes help ensure that innovation serves people—rather than the other way around?

These are difficult—sometimes even uncomfortable—questions. But if we are serious about sustainable development, they must be asked—and answers must be found. At UNDP, we are committed to helping all stakeholders to find these answers.

Fortunately, there are many good examples on which to draw, within this region and beyond. The Government of Ukraine has since 2014 dramatically reduced fossil fuel subsidies, as part of its efforts to promote energy security, ecological sustainability, and good governance. It has also significantly cut taxes on labour—and is now benefitting from growing employment rates and wages. Turkey is not only accommodating over 3 million refugees from Syria—it is also granting them access to Turkish labour markets.

Many other such examples can be shared—and no doubt will be shared—during the next two days. Let me stress here that UNDP is committed to supporting these efforts.

UNDP is also working closely with other UN agencies, as well as the World Bank and other international financial institutions, in support of efforts to align national development programming with the SDGs via the so-called “MAPS” platform. By assisting with SDG mainstreaming, acceleration, and policy support, MAPS helps governments put in place the frameworks needed not only to report against the SDGs, but also to find “triple win” solutions to national social, economic, and environmental challenges. The technical meeting (held yesterday) on the initial lessons learned from the MAPS missions that have been undertaken in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan was an important step on the Road to 2030. These lessons can be applied to the MAPS mission to be undertaken this year, in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

It is our hope that this year’s Istanbul Development Dialogues will not only showcase these efforts—but will also help them to become more significant and effective. It is only by working together with our partners—within the UN system, among governments, the international development community, the private sector, and civil society—that we can hope to move firmly and resolutely along the road to 2030.

Thank you very much.