H.E. Mr. Milŏs Koterec
1
Statement by H.E. Mr. Milos Koterec
President of ECOSOC
At the UN Conference on Sustainable Development
Rio+20 Summit
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
20 June 2012
Mr/Madame Chair
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It’s a privilege to be here today — and a pleasure to speak to
you in this delightful city.
To Her Excellency the President of this esteemed country, her
government and people, I convey deepest thanks for hosting
this meeting. Much effort has gone into the preparations, with
already visible, excellent results.
Much has been said and written, too, about the first Rio Earth
Summit — and rightly so, for its achievements were many.
It crafted 3 new conventions designed to safeguard the global
environment. No less decisively, Rio 1992 helped articulate the
core principles of the sustainable development agenda:
2
1. That environmental protection must be part of the
promotion of development, rather than a check on it.
2. That poverty eradication is central to the process.
3. That while all countries have a responsibility to protect
the environment rich nations should shoulder a greater
burden.
How then, in 2012, can Rio+20 exert similar lasting influence?
We must, at the very least, dispel any unrealistic hopes. In some
areas, of course, there will always be easy “wins” — like
improving access to cleaner energy or to safe drinking water,
two cases where the interests of human health and the
environment overlap.
Yet in still many more areas, however, tradeoffs between
promoting development and protecting environment are simply
unavoidable. To pretend otherwise is to believe in a silver bullet.
Success in the real world thus depends on making these
tradeoffs explicit in policymaking: factoring economic costbenefit
into environmental laws; integrating environmental
tradeoffs into economic development; ensuring, above all, that
3
we leave future generations with the capacity to live as well as
we do today.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There is another lesson to be drawn from past conferences:
such occasions offer tremendous impulse to the lingering urge
to create ever-more international structures, treaties, and
institutions.
This time around, let’s resist that urge. Instead, we need
institutions which encourage policymakers to come together,
to acknowledge the tradeoffs, to make hard decisions and to
better guide development actions.
Happily, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Many of these
institutions already exist. Let’s strengthen them, accentuating
their positives, eliminating their negatives.
The United Nations Economic and Social Council, for its part,
has made tremendous strides in recent years on the road to
greater efficiency and effectiveness. The “3 pillars” of
sustainable development — economic, social and
environmental — have become firmly entrenched in ECOSOC’s
work with each passing day.
4
Long recognized for its unmatched inclusiveness, the Council is
also putting its abundant store of good-will to better use:
• We’re forging closer ties with the trade and financial
institutions, intensifying our dialogue throughout the year.
• We’re becoming more innovative and promoting broader
engagement. At last month’s Youth ECOSOC event, for
instance, hundreds of young people gathered to discuss
employment challenges. Their priorities, it turns out, are
much the same as ours: quality education, green growth,
and jobs aplenty.
• ECOSOC is also scaling up outreach to the private sector
— through initiatives like our recent Civil Society dialogues
or Partnership Event, both of which do splendid work
promoting public-private development efforts.
Indeed, the Council’s inter-disciplinary expertise and intersectoral
approach — honed over 60+ years — positions it well
to coordinate both international sustainable development
responses and the post-2015 development framework.
5
Likewise, ECOSOC’s Annual Ministerial Review and
Development Cooperation Forum have emerged as hubs for
global sustainable development policymaking — on everything
from jobs, to aid, to science and technology.
In the years ahead, I expect their clout to only continue to rise.
Still, progress should not be mistaken for complacency. On the
cause of sustainable development in particular, ECOSOC must
do far more. Here’s my own plan:
1. Sustainable development merits its very own ministeriallevel
meeting. This September’s ECOSOC Ministerial
meeting will hopefully be a watershed.
2. The proposed high level political forum should be created
within ECOSOC system. This would give a major boom to
the integration efforts.
3. Let’s reimagine that the Annual Session, revitalizing it with
a series of powerfully compact sessions — neither shorter,
nor longer in aggregate, but spread out instead over the
course of a full year.
6
The net result? More focused, productive meetings. Improved
monitoring and review of progress in outcome implementation.
And, most importantly, the elevation of sustainable
development to its rightful place in multilateral dialogue.
Like it or not, the die is cast: we live in a new phase in the
Earth’s history, one where human influence on the planet now
dominates all others.
In such a world, avoiding impact on the environment is no
longer an option. Rather, the issue at hand is how to manage
that impact: choosing which parts to minimize, which to
tolerate, even which to embrace.
In short, better planetary management.
To get there, we’ll need more effective institutions, including a
stronger Economic and Social Council. A brighter, more
prosperous, more sustainable future demands nothing less.
Thank you.
Statement by H.E. Mr. Milos Koterec
President of ECOSOC
At the UN Conference on Sustainable Development
Rio+20 Summit
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
20 June 2012
Mr/Madame Chair
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It’s a privilege to be here today — and a pleasure to speak to
you in this delightful city.
To Her Excellency the President of this esteemed country, her
government and people, I convey deepest thanks for hosting
this meeting. Much effort has gone into the preparations, with
already visible, excellent results.
Much has been said and written, too, about the first Rio Earth
Summit — and rightly so, for its achievements were many.
It crafted 3 new conventions designed to safeguard the global
environment. No less decisively, Rio 1992 helped articulate the
core principles of the sustainable development agenda:
2
1. That environmental protection must be part of the
promotion of development, rather than a check on it.
2. That poverty eradication is central to the process.
3. That while all countries have a responsibility to protect
the environment rich nations should shoulder a greater
burden.
How then, in 2012, can Rio+20 exert similar lasting influence?
We must, at the very least, dispel any unrealistic hopes. In some
areas, of course, there will always be easy “wins” — like
improving access to cleaner energy or to safe drinking water,
two cases where the interests of human health and the
environment overlap.
Yet in still many more areas, however, tradeoffs between
promoting development and protecting environment are simply
unavoidable. To pretend otherwise is to believe in a silver bullet.
Success in the real world thus depends on making these
tradeoffs explicit in policymaking: factoring economic costbenefit
into environmental laws; integrating environmental
tradeoffs into economic development; ensuring, above all, that
3
we leave future generations with the capacity to live as well as
we do today.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There is another lesson to be drawn from past conferences:
such occasions offer tremendous impulse to the lingering urge
to create ever-more international structures, treaties, and
institutions.
This time around, let’s resist that urge. Instead, we need
institutions which encourage policymakers to come together,
to acknowledge the tradeoffs, to make hard decisions and to
better guide development actions.
Happily, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Many of these
institutions already exist. Let’s strengthen them, accentuating
their positives, eliminating their negatives.
The United Nations Economic and Social Council, for its part,
has made tremendous strides in recent years on the road to
greater efficiency and effectiveness. The “3 pillars” of
sustainable development — economic, social and
environmental — have become firmly entrenched in ECOSOC’s
work with each passing day.
4
Long recognized for its unmatched inclusiveness, the Council is
also putting its abundant store of good-will to better use:
• We’re forging closer ties with the trade and financial
institutions, intensifying our dialogue throughout the year.
• We’re becoming more innovative and promoting broader
engagement. At last month’s Youth ECOSOC event, for
instance, hundreds of young people gathered to discuss
employment challenges. Their priorities, it turns out, are
much the same as ours: quality education, green growth,
and jobs aplenty.
• ECOSOC is also scaling up outreach to the private sector
— through initiatives like our recent Civil Society dialogues
or Partnership Event, both of which do splendid work
promoting public-private development efforts.
Indeed, the Council’s inter-disciplinary expertise and intersectoral
approach — honed over 60+ years — positions it well
to coordinate both international sustainable development
responses and the post-2015 development framework.
5
Likewise, ECOSOC’s Annual Ministerial Review and
Development Cooperation Forum have emerged as hubs for
global sustainable development policymaking — on everything
from jobs, to aid, to science and technology.
In the years ahead, I expect their clout to only continue to rise.
Still, progress should not be mistaken for complacency. On the
cause of sustainable development in particular, ECOSOC must
do far more. Here’s my own plan:
1. Sustainable development merits its very own ministeriallevel
meeting. This September’s ECOSOC Ministerial
meeting will hopefully be a watershed.
2. The proposed high level political forum should be created
within ECOSOC system. This would give a major boom to
the integration efforts.
3. Let’s reimagine that the Annual Session, revitalizing it with
a series of powerfully compact sessions — neither shorter,
nor longer in aggregate, but spread out instead over the
course of a full year.
6
The net result? More focused, productive meetings. Improved
monitoring and review of progress in outcome implementation.
And, most importantly, the elevation of sustainable
development to its rightful place in multilateral dialogue.
Like it or not, the die is cast: we live in a new phase in the
Earth’s history, one where human influence on the planet now
dominates all others.
In such a world, avoiding impact on the environment is no
longer an option. Rather, the issue at hand is how to manage
that impact: choosing which parts to minimize, which to
tolerate, even which to embrace.
In short, better planetary management.
To get there, we’ll need more effective institutions, including a
stronger Economic and Social Council. A brighter, more
prosperous, more sustainable future demands nothing less.
Thank you.