The 2019 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) was held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA, from 9 to 18 July. The theme of the conference is "Empowering People and Ensuring Inclusiveness and Equality", which aims to provide a platform for countries to share their experiences and achievements in implementing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); more than 2,000 political, business, academic, and civil society leaders, experts, and delegates, including more than 90 ministers, attended the conference to discuss the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Zheng Yi, Head of Office of the Institute of Sustainable Development of Tsinghua University (TUSDG), was invited to attend the HLPF and Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) Forum.

This year's HESI was held in the afternoon of 10 July in the United Nations Trusteeship Council meeting room, and Zheng Yi delivered a speech in the session of "SDG17 Partnerships" with the title of "Partnerships for the Implementation of SDGs". She pointed out that Tsinghua University is not only an important member of HESI, but also focuses on the training of talents, scientific research and policy implementation of SDGs in recent years, and that TUSDG, while actively carrying out the training of talents and international cooperation on SDGs, is exploring innovative solutions for the localization of SDGs with local governments and civil societies, and carrying out research on the assessment system of SDGs and the path of implementation in China. TUSDG also hopes to build a closer global partnership, learn more from other countries' experiences, and share China's story so that all countries can realise the SDGs together.

Speech by Zheng Yi

Discussion and Q&A Session

This year's Forum brought together 130 speakers; 47 countries delivered Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) - 10 from Europe, 17 from Africa, 16 from the Asia-Pacific region, and 4 from Latin America and the Caribbean region; meanwhile, the Sustainable Development Report 2019 was released during the Forum; a series of events including high-level personalities' interviews and the SDG Film Festival were held. The Forum not only assessed the progress made in the four years since the establishment of the SDGs and confirmed the current status of work at the "global, regional, national and local levels", but also provided an important reference for the upcoming SDG Summit to be held in September this year.

HLPF site