The Secretary General of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Dr. Fang Liu, conducted extensive bilateral meetings during the United Nations Summit on the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
A meeting was held with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on ICAO"™s efforts to raise awareness of the importance of aviation development to the 2030 Agenda, as well as to jumpstart the critical cooperation which will now be needed for its realization.
Secretary General Liu commented that "Aviation is fundamental to a wide-range of global goals which are shared by a variety of international communities. This summit represented an exceptional opportunity to network with various Programmes and Departments of the United Nations, specialized agencies and other international organizations, so that we could understand better our common goals and begin to identify how we can work together more effectively to realize these critically Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."
Over the course of the landmark summit held from 25-28 September in New York, Secretary General Liu conducted discussions with the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs; the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs; the United Nations Under-Secretary-General, High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States; the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General on Climate Change; the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); the Executive Director of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) and the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) Chairperson; the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR); the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU); the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), as well as the representative of the World Bank.
In addition to her speech to the UN Summit Secretary General Liu participated in the interactive dialogue on "˜Fostering sustainable economic growth, transformation and promoting sustainable consumption and production"™, where she stressed, amongst other points, "the important role of aviation as a powerful engine for economic and social development throughout the world; ICAO"™s current Strategic Objectives being strongly linked to 13 of the 17 SDGs which comprise the 2030 Agenda, and how it has launched a No Country Left Behind campaign to better identify and coordinate assistance to needful States so that they may foster sustainable, local and regional prosperity by enhancing global air transport and fully benefit from the improvement in connectivity."
