CSD20
Statement by Japan
We are pleased to see that today we hold the last session of the Commission of Sustainable Development, and that the inaugural meeting of the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development is scheduled to be held next week, as was agreed by world leaders at Rio de Janeiro last June.
20 years ago when CSD was established at the Rio Earth Summit, the phrase “sustainable development” was not yet so commonly used among most people. There is no doubt that CSD has played great role in disseminating the concept of “sustainable development” all over the world. At the same time, as pointed out in a report of the SG, the Commission has a number of shortcomings. For instance, it was not able to attract the participation of representatives from all three dimensions of sustainable development. The Commission became a place where only environmental issues were discussed, and it failed to function as a forum for the integration of the three dimensions in a balanced manner. There was a lack of the flexibility to respond to urgent issues, as future meeting agenda were always decided at prior meetings. Lastly, we spent too much time negotiating outcome documents, and we cannot focus on work on real means of implementation at the field level.
Member states have agreed that the new HLPF on sustainable development, the first meeting of which is to be held next week, should become a place to review the post-2015 development agenda. Of course, there are still many things to be discussed and confirmed regarding the implementation of this agreement, as we have not yet agreed on the post-2015 development agenda. We hope that the HLPF can become a powerful engine to promote and achieve sustainable development all over the world based on the lessons learned from CSD with involvement of a broad range of stakeholders.
From ancient times, Japan has attached great importance to co-existence with nature, and we are now promoting the development of an energy and resource-efficient society using our state-of-the-art technologies. Furthermore, we believe that Japan will be able to play a special role in realizing sustainable development after having realized the importance of building of a resilient society after the Great East Japan earthquake two and a half years ago. In this regard, we also believe that we will be able to contribute actively to the HLPF as it replaced CSD based on our experience.
I thank you.
