Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres makes a special talk on sustainable development and climate change in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Feb. 16, 2020. The climate change is the gravest and most urgent obstacle to the global stability and prosperity, and greater joint efforts made by every country and every community in the world are necessary to deal with the crisis, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said here on Sunday. (Xinhua/Liu Tian)

 
A Chinese envoy on Monday urged the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to put development issues on top of its agenda, while noting that the inter-governmental nature of the UNGA should not be weakened.

"The global implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has entered a critical decade of action. But the progress of implementation is not satisfactory. Therefore, the UNGA should place development issues on top of its agenda, and urge the international community, especially developed countries, to assist developing countries in implementing Agenda 2030," Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said at the general debate of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly.

"We should never cut back on our attention or investment devoted to developing issues on the pretext of optimizing the agenda of the General Assembly," said the envoy.