31 August 2013: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for intensified efforts to shape a global agenda beyond 2015 “focused on ending poverty and with sustainable development at its core.” He delivered this message to the European Forum Alpbach.

Ban highlighted the “global journey towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” as one way the UN is striving to build deeper foundations of peace, and called for increased action on the MDGs’ unfinished business in the areas of child deaths from preventable disease, lack of access to sanitation, primary school enrollment, inequality, environmental threats and gender discrimination.

Ban noted another reason the year 2015 will be significant, as it represents the deadline for countries to reach a legally binding agreement on climate change. Ban called climate change “a threat that looms over all of this work” on development and sustainability, especially through the impacts of emissions and temperature rise.

Ban concluded that despite the current time of austerity, governments cannot short-change investment to lift the world’s most vulnerable people, especially when US$1 trillion is spent annually on weapons.

Participants at the annual Forum, which closed in Alpbach, Austria, on 31 August 2013, seek to generate new ideas and solutions to European and global problems. [UN Press Release] [Statement of UN Secretary-General]