Politics, / By STA

New York - A high-level forum on the implementation of the UN's Agenda 2030 for sustainable development started in New York on Monday, with former Slovenian President Danilo Türk attending. The Slovenian government and the SunContract electricity-trading platform will hold a presentation on the sidelines of the event on Wednesday.

Running under the theme transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies, the forum will review the progress in the implementation of six out of the 17 development goals of Agenda 2030. A ministerial declaration is expected to be adopted at the end of the event on 18 July.

Danilo Türk, Slovenia's president between 2007 and 2012, who is attending the event as the chair of the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace, said that "we should point to Slovenia's high score in terms of the implementation of sustainable development goals. This ranking shows that we Slovenians are capable of doing many good things."

The former president was referring to Slovenia placing 8th among the 156 surveyed countries in terms of the realisation of Agenda 2030, according to the Global Responsibility report.

Commenting on the forum, Türk told the STA said that it was an attempt to put the development goals in a political context.

"Today we are dealing too little with the global development issues and much more with crises which are consequences of bad policies."

"Many issues which are in the forefront are a consequence of ignorance or incompetence, while many topics important for the humankind are overlooked. If this continues, half of humankind will be without access to drinking water by mid-21st century."

Tadej Slapnik, a state secretary in the prime minister's office, and Gregor Novak of SunContract will meanwhile attend a side event on Wednesday about blockchain technology for a transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies.

The SunContract platform, which directly connects producers and consumers of electricity into an energy pool based on smart contracts, will be presented as an example of good practice in Slovenia by Novak, its co-founder and director.