On the theme, “Transformation towards Sustainable and Resilient Societies”, the meeting would dedicate the last three days for a ministerial conference.

The SDG’s forum that would assembly all the 193 member states of the UN would discuss and review progress made by states on the SDGs including; goals on ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Other goals to be focused on would be; access to affordable reliable, sustainable and modern energy, making cities and human settlements inclusive resilient and sustainable and protect…combat desertification, and halt and reserve land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

Ms Irena Zubcevic, Chief Intergovernmental Policy and Review Branch at the Office of Inter-governmental Support and Co-ordination for Sustainable Development, UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs briefed the media via teleconferencing on Wednesday in Accra.

She noted the meeting would dedicate sometime for member states to present voluntary national reviews (VNRs) of progress at the national and sub-national levels aimed at facilitating the sharing of experiences, including; successes, challenges and lessons learned, with a view to accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Ms Zubcevic stated that VNRs also sought to strengthen policies and institutions of governments and to mobilise multi-stakeholder support and partnerships for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

She said out of the 47 countries that would be presenting their VNRs, 10 of the countries were African countries excluding Ghana.

For the past two years since the section commenced, Ghana had not been able to participate in the VNRs sections.

Touching on challenges that had come up during the VNRs sections, she said most countries had complained about data collection that was crucial for monitoring, evaluation and reporting on the SDGs.

In a bid to help member countries, Ms Zubcevic hinted that the UN had started building capacity of data gathering officers of member countries to be able to collect, process, analyse and use data to facilitate the monitoring and evaluation.

She urged the public to adopt measures to reduce plastic waste by using mugs to drink water instead of single used plastic and make a conscious effort cut back on use of private vehicles and use bike to ensure a sustainable environment.

Mr Philip Acheampong, Senior Development Planning Officer at the Ministry of Planning said government had put in place measures to address the data gathering challenge to be able to help report on SDGs implementation.

He said given the breadth and inter linkages between the goals, Ghana fully supported efforts to utilise data from different sources -from traditional official statistics to big data, using geo-referencing and new information technologies to measure progress on the SDGs.

By Yaw Ansah / Stella Opokuwaa Asare, GNA