Implementation of the Second United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (2008–2017) A/RES/72/233 conflict and post-conflict countries, and that there are also serious challenges within many middle-income countries, Deeply concerned that poverty acts as a serious impediment to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and that the feminization of poverty persists, stressing the importance of giving women equal rights with men to economic resources, including access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, credit, inheritance, natural resources and appropriate new technology, reaffirming that women play a critical role in development, contribute to structural transformation and are key co ntributors to the economy and to combating poverty and inequalities and that their full, effective and equal participation in decision-making and the economy is vital in order to achieve sustainable development and significantly enhance economic growth and productivity, recognizing that the economic and social losses due to a lack of progress in achieving gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment are significant and that it is therefore critical that our policies and actions are not just genderresponsive but actively seek to advance the goal of gender equality and women ’s and girls’ empowerment, and reaffirming that gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls will make a crucial contribution to progress in realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and are critical factors in the eradication of poverty, Recognizing that, after the latest global financial crisis, the global economy is still facing difficult macroeconomic conditions, low commodity prices, subdued trade growth and volatile capital flows, that, notwithstanding the impact of the financial crisis, financial flows and developing countries’ share in world trade have continued to increase, that these advances have contributed towards a substantial reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty, and that, despite these gains, many countries, particularly developing countries, still face considerable challenges and some have fallen further behind, Underlining that the Second United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (2008–2017) coincided with the 2007–2008 shocks in food and energy prices and the onset of the global financial and economic crisis that led to the great recession, as well as witnessed major natural disasters and an escalation of conflicts that erased years of development progress in some regions, in which policy lessons from the responses to these crises and disasters will be important for maintaining the momentum generated by the implementation of the Decade towards poverty eradication and ensuring that markets work better for people living in poverty, Reaffirming that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time, that its adverse impacts undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development, that increases in global temperature, sea level rise, ocean acidification and other climate change impacts are seriously affecting coastal areas and low -lying coastal countries, including many least developed countries and small island developing States, and that the survival of many societies and of the biological support systems of the planet is at risk, which further threatens food security and efforts to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development, and thus require s urgent action to maintain, preserve and sustain the development gains achieved in the past decades, Welcoming the United Nations strategic plan for forests 2017–2030, 15 and recognizing that an estimated 1.6 billion people — 25 per cent of the global population — depend on forests for subsistence, livelihood, employment and income generation, __________________ 15 4/15 See resolution 71/285. 17-23311