Wednesday, 18 December 2024
Jia Yaw attended the National SDG Council Meeting representing the Malaysian CSO-SDG Alliance.
This morning, Lavanya and Jia Yaw as Co-Chairs of the Malaysian CSO-SDG Alliance attended the National SDG Council meeting (mesyuarat Majlis SDG Negara) at the Prime Minister’s office. The Council is the apex decision-making organ for Malaysia’s implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, chaired by the Prime Minister.
Like previous years, this was the only meeting the Council has convened in 2024. However, this year, it was much better attended. Both Deputy Prime Ministers, various ministers, deputy ministers and chief ministers of several states were present.
At the meeting, the Prime Minister emphasised the importance of sustainable development in Malaysia and is looking to implement the SDGs with more intensity, echoing his statements from the Malaysia SDG Summit held at the KL Convention Centre on 17 and 18 September 2024. He stated he intends to give the implementation of the SDGs “more teeth”.
The Council was appraised of our country’s SDG progress by the director of the National SDG Centre (Pusat SDG Negara) Asfaazam Kasbani, and UN Resident Coordinator for Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam H.E. Karima El Korri.
At the meeting, the National ESG Strategic Plan was presented and approved.
Regarding ESG, the Prime Minister highlighted that local capacity should be developed instead of being overly reliant on consultants, and that SMEs should be appropriately supported in their sustainability journey. Lavanya took the floor to emphasise that civil society has an important role to play.
It is observed that in this year’s Council meeting, the ministers and ministry representatives had some prepared interventions to make, especially on SDG indicators that were not making enough progress. For instance, health minister Dr. Zulkefly Ahmad shared about national strategies to address stunting in children; a representative from the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development spoke briefly about efforts on gender equality. It appears the Prime Minister had requested for the ministries to go through the SDG progress reports beforehand and give their responses at today’s Council meeting.
In this regard, the quality of discussions at the Council’s meeting has improved. Of course, much work remains to be done in the mainstreaming of the sustainable development framework across Malaysia’s governance systems.
