Mr. Lars Bosselmann:

I am happy to take that question. As a rule, the difficult questions come to me. How could I now sit here and say the goals will not be achieved? However, the point is well taken. There are 17 goals and 169 targets and it goes without saying that these numbers tell us it will be difficult to achieve and make equal progress on all targets and goals.

It is important that we look at the progress we make globally and overall towards achieving the targets. Also, every country comes at this from a different starting point in regard to making progress towards the targets. The monitoring must make that differentiation and must understand that Ireland, Germany and others do not come from the same starting point as, for example, Malawi. This is part of the novelty of the SDGs compared to the millennium development goals, and it is because it is global. Of course, this also makes the monitoring pretty complex and complicated, because it can be difficult to make comparisons. It is not really about making comparisons, but about tailoring the goals to the status of each country.

Overall, we are 15 years working in development. This may seem a long time, but it is a short time in development. A key target for me is to sustain the momentum that has been created around the adoption of the SDGs, not only in New York in September, so that we do not waste the next five to eight years. The first half of the implementation phase is critical, because that is often when it becomes a little difficult to implement global frameworks. We are also satisfied now the goals have been adopted, because we have been working already for up to three years on them - not just CBM but all UN agencies and governments. Often after the goals are adopted, we are inclined to relax a little and take time to breathe, but that is not what should happen. The momentum must be sustained because the next years are critical for making progress.