The sustainable development mission should aim for poverty eradication, environmental sustainability, sustainable consumption and production. The dimensions focused by sustainable development include social foundation, low carbon economy, environmental sustainability and gender equality. Some of the key challenges in sustainable development include climate change, energy security, increase in natural and man-made disasters and rising unemployment.

The United Nations environment agency has recently warned that the world “continues to speed down” an unsustainable path in spite of hundreds of internationally agreed goals to protect the planet, and stressed that drastic actions and big-scale measures are needed to reverse this pattern. Global environment outlook of UN assessed 90 of the most important environmental goals and objectives and found that significant progress had only been made in four. The four goals entail eliminating the production and use of substances that deplete the ozone layer, the removal of lead from fuel, increasing access to improved water supplies, and boosting research to reduce pollution of the marine environment.

The State of Qatar supports the efforts of the United Nations Millennium goals, the ongoing negotiations under the United Nations Frameworks Convention on Climate Change. The 18^th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 18) to the UNFCCC will be held in Doha, Qatar this year.

With the Rio+20 summit getting over recently we need to see what are the areas which require focus and how the challenges arising from the UN Millenium goals need to be addressed. We can expect various Global players to come up with more intiatives in the upcoming COP 18 Conference in Doha in relation to sustainable development.

The writer is Group CEO at Doha Bank. Views expressed by the author are his own and do not reflect the newspaper’s policy