Recently, I discovered an exemplary model of Micronesian government working with the United Nations in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to make Micronesia and the world more sustainable. The government has been putting endless efforts into making the islands a sustainable place. 

Since 2016, the government has developed the Working Group (WG). According to the United Nations, this is correlated to the government departments, and with that, they can work cooperatively together as a whole, and make essential decisions. One of the key advantages of the Working Group is the establishment of State Focal Points (SFPs) for effective implementation and reporting of the issues. Therefore, these SFPs can easily identify the problems around the islands and use the SDG models to improvise the issues. The SDG Working Group also advocates for localizing and implementing the SDG targets within the Federal State of Micronesia’s plans. This has been started by the National Statistics Office in 2017. Additionally, they have been especially focusing on the education and health factors. They installed multiple workshops to successfully execute the changes. 

However, there were also difficulties, according to the United Nations There are difficulties in sustaining citizen engagement, and the quality of information is still insufficient. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has stagnated the FSM and the president declared a public health emergency across the islands. Not only the health issues were significant, but the economy generally was accumulated, whereas the government had to support the people’s lives. The government established a task force to provide full support to the businesses and support the tourism, retail, and fisheries sectors. Although this difficulty was hard to overcome, it significantly highlighted the importance of the government and displayed the significance of unity among the people in Micronesia.

Overall, Micronesia has gone through several difficulties and are still struggling. However, their strengths and additional help from the outer source will boost the country’s status and will make those archipelagic islands magnificent again. 

Source: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/26668VNR_2020_Micronesia_Report.pdf