Mr. Chairperson;
The delegation of the Republic of Korea would like to take this opportunity
to point out that a National Sustainable Development Strategy is a very
effective tool to manage sustainable development issues in an integrated
way and to realize international commitments for sustainable development.
It is also a vital mechanism to reinforce governance and build partnerships
at all levels.
Recognizing its importance, the Republic of Korea took the lead in
developing its own National Sustainable Development Strategy in Asia and
has been implementing it since 2006.
For the first time in the region, the Presidential Commission on Sustainable
Development of the Republic of Korea organized the Shared Learning and
Review of its Strategy, in cooperation with the UNDSD, in Seoul this
March. 8 countries from the region, including China, India, Japan,
Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, actively
participated in the process and shared experiences and lessons learned in
the Strategy development process, implementation and monitoring, with
about 100 local key stakeholders.
The peer countries could identify good practices from the Korean
experiences that could be applied to other countries, as well as challenges
and explore the ways to overcome them. We will use the valuable
recommendations made by the peer countries to improve our Strategy and
its implementation.
We are convinced that this mutual learning and review process is very
useful to expand the national sustainable development strategies in other
countries. It can also contribute to reinforcing international cooperation and
building involved countries? public sector capacity for integrated planning
and coordination of sustainable development policies.
Therefore, we are strongly committed to expanding the mutual learning and
review process through international cooperation.
As one of the ways to concretize this commitment, we are organizing a side
event on shared learning and review experiences in Asia and Europe with
the Belgian government on May 7.
Together with this, I would like to propose to the UNCSD to expand this
shared learning and review exercise in Asia and the Pacific and we would
be very happy to join the efforts of the UNCSD in this regard.
Thank you.
