By Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, Senior Vice President at the World Bank for the 2030 Development Agenda and UN Relations

Three billion people, nearly half the world’s population, is under the age of 25. Today’s youth will be the people most affected by the outcomes of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2015. They will also be the ones responsible for implementing this global agenda as well as contributing to the solutions necessary to attain them.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), take a holistic approach to development and present a universal agenda to development. The goals encompass the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of development. In signing up to the goals and targets, the global community has agreed to a more ambitious development compact. Like their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs cover a broad range of interconnected issues, from ending poverty to addressing inequality, sustainable economic growth, to governance, to well-being, to global public goods, like climate change.

The innovative and fresh ideas to tackle the new challenges the world faces will need to come from the youth, in particular.

To realize this vision, a just-as-ambitious plan for financing and implementation is needed. In July 2015, a financing for development conference was held in Addis Ababa, which provided an outcome document outlining the financing for development framework to support the SDGs and the next 15 years of development.