Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and other leaders at the G20 Summit, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh recently attended and delivered a speech at the discussion session on sustainable development and energy transition during the G20 Summit 2024, chaired by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the host country for this year's G20.

Vietnam is committed to building a green, clean, and sustainable world

At the discussion session, leaders assessed that the progress of achieving the United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDGs) is slowing down, emphasizing the difficulties that developing countries face in ensuring a just energy transition.

Leaders also shared solutions to reduce economic inequality, improve social welfare and protect the environment. Green finance policies and international resources mobilized to support developing countries were significantly supported.

The meeting affirmed the need to increase financial resources for global energy transition, stressing the urgency of diversifying investment capital for technology and infrastructure and strengthening public-private partnership to speed up energy transition, especially in developing countries.

In his speech, Prime Minister Chinh reaffirmed Vietnam's consistent policy on sustainable development and its commitment that it never sacrifices social welfare, progress, social equality, and the environment for pure economic growth.

Quoting the famous saying "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children", he emphasized that every action we take today will determine the fate of future generations.

With that viewpoint, Vietnam pledged to make every effort together with other countries, partners and the international community to achieve net zero goals by 2050 and contribute to the development of a green, clean, beautiful, and sustainable world for the future generations.

Three proposals from Vietnam on SDGs

To accelerate progress toward the SDGs and ensure their timely achievement, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh presented three proposals at the G20 Summit.

The first is to focus on promoting three key transformations: digital transformation, green transformation and energy transformation.

The head of the Vietnamese Government stressed that science, technology, and innovation play a core and breakthrough role, serving as the key to these transformation processes for sustainable development.

Therefore, he proposed the G20 take the lead in connecting resources, sharing experiences, transferring technology, providing financial support, enhancing capacity, and creating an open ecosystem for science, technology, and innovation for developing countries, based on the principle of not politicizing science, technology, and innovation.

The second proposal is to focus on promoting investment in human development. At the same time, we focus on progress, equity, social security and environmental protection.

In that spirit, Prime Minister Chinh commended Brazil's efforts to reduce inequality, especially for women and children, and ensure social justice and inclusive development during its G20 Presidency year. He emphasized that these are important conditions for sustainable development and energy transition for the sake of the people with "no one being left behind."

Finally, he called for promoting innovative financial cooperation models and effective investment, especially public-private partnerships to unblock, mobilize and effectively use all resources for sustainable development and energy transition.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh took the occasion to announce that Vietnam will host the Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals (P4G) Summit in April 2025. He emphasized that this event reflects Vietnam's commitment to advancing the implementation of the SDGs and driving the energy transition.