Troika (Italy, Spain and Turkey)
1
SECOND SESSION OF THE OPEN WORKING GROUP ON
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
New York, 17-19 April 2013
Statement of Mr Paolo Soprano
Director for Sustainable Development
Ministry for the Environment Land and Sea of Italy
Interactive exchange of views on conceptualizing SDGs and the SDG process
Excellencies,
Distinguished co-Chairs,
Ladies and gentlemen,
We have the honour to make this intervention also on behalf of Spain and Turkey, with which we
are pleased to share the membership in this Open Working Group.
We thank the Technical Support Team for preparing the Issues Brief which we consider very useful
in guiding the preparation for this second meeting of the OWG. In view of the upcoming scheduled
meetings and to allow Member States to organise effective consultations both at national level and
with our team partners, we stress the need and importance to receive any background information
and documents in a timely fashion.
In moving towards the SDGs, the international community is not starting from scratch. It can build
on decades of policy making experience in the field of development cooperation and in more than
twenty years of evolution in sustainable development strategies. Analysing successes and
addressing the main gaps is therefore crucial in order to better define our work for the years to
come.
The implementation of the Millennium Development Goals is still undergoing, as recently stressed
by the UN Secretariat General in the 1000 days campaign to Keep the Millennium Promise, and we
should spare no efforts in continuing to pursue our objectives by 2015. In this regard we underline
the significant role of the UN special event on MDG, which should emphasize the importance of the
achievement of the MDGs and its connection with the development of a post 2015 agenda. The
MDG framework proved to be successful in catalysing attention, at the global, regional and national
levels, on a concrete set of common human development goals and targets, creating priorities for
national and international development cooperation policies and initiatives.
In defining the MDGs the general objective of the Secretary General was to make development
cooperation more communicable, transparent, efficient and accountable. It is generally recognized
2
that these objectives have been met. The global community has gained from the establishment of
these goals and the UN development cooperation system has built upon them vigorously. On the
other hand, not all the MDGs have been attained and progresses have been unevenly distributed not
only between countries, but also within countries. The UN 2012 MDGs Report highlights several
milestones, together with numerous projections on the challenges the world will be facing beyond
2015, including in crucial areas such as poverty eradication, hunger, child and maternal mortality,
health, nutrition, biodiversity loss and gender equality.
We thank the co-chairs for this opportunity to exchange views on conceptualizing the SDGs and the
SDG process.
Being cognizant of the increasingly interrelated social, economic and environmental challenges, the
international community as a whole needs to thoroughly address these challenges through a
coherent, integrated and comprehensive approach.
Distinguished Co-Chairs,
In preparing for this meeting, we have asked ourselves, also through national inter-ministerial
consultations, three main questions.
· What is the added value in moving towards SDGs?
· What can we bring with us from the past experience and what do we need to define in order
to make this exercise successful?
· What elements should we consider in order to facilitate a coherent integration in the post
2015 framework?
The initial answers that we could find are the following.
The process leading to the definition of Sustainable Development Goals represents an extraordinary
opportunity to define a unified policy framework. It is widely recognized that one of the main flaws
of the MDGs has been the inability to fully capture the inter-linkages among the goals, as each
MDG has been dealt with on the basis of a “silos approach”. An overarching framework is instead
needed in order to tackle poverty and to advance sustainable development in its three dimensions,
by promoting prosperity, wellbeing and progress within the existing planetary boundaries.
The major focus of MDGs is on basic human needs. The SDGs should go beyond basic human
needs and aim at improving living standards through inclusive growth, increased employment, in
particular through new green jobs, and decent jobs, improved income distribution, sustainable
consumption and production and productive life expectancy.
Consistently, the Sustainable Development Goals should address key inter-linkages and
crosscutting issues in order for them to represent a natural next step in the evolution of the
development agenda. As the challenges are highly interdependent, the SDGs - through a new, more
integrated and holistic approach - should provide for policy coherence and for the capacity to fully
integrate the social, economic and environmental dimensions into the post-2015 development
agenda.
3
Another important point is that the transition to the Sustainable Development Goals, and therefore
also the work of this Working Group, should be based on appropriate scientific data and findings
and supported by a strong science-policy interface.
The Sustainable Development Goals should also be measurable and linked to possible concrete
targets and indicators. In this respect we should build upon the valuable work that is being carried
out at different levels and take into account the various international experiences and initiatives,
including in the context of the UN Statistical Commission, on the measurement of wellbeing and
sustainable development. To this end, we should include some key words in our debate - such as
consumption and income, food security and nutrition, health, labour, education, equality, housing,
physical safety, land and ecosystems, water, air quality, institutions - that can provide us with the
opportunity to translate general concepts into measurable sustainable development goals.
Our aim should be the development of a single overarching post 2015 framework, with a single set
of goals. For this, the activities of the SDGs working group should be coordinated with the post
2015 discussions and every effort should be made to integrate, as soon as possible, the MDG review
and the work for the elaboration of the SDGs in an inclusive and universal process. In this respect, it
is important to ensure opportunities for the timely interaction of the two processes, as to ensure a
smooth integration.
Distinguished Co-Chairs,
Allow me to conclude by highlighting that the MDGs did not include any goal related to innovation
and technological developments, aspects which have instead a very critical role in sustainable use of
natural resources especially in developing countries. Hence, the future SDGs should give
importance to the continuous improvement and effective use of technology and promotion of
universal access to ICT, considering externalities by production and utilization of knowledge.
In this respect, experiences such as the Green Growth Knowledge Platform and the International
Centre for Science and High Technology might constitute useful references.
I thank you.
SECOND SESSION OF THE OPEN WORKING GROUP ON
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
New York, 17-19 April 2013
Statement of Mr Paolo Soprano
Director for Sustainable Development
Ministry for the Environment Land and Sea of Italy
Interactive exchange of views on conceptualizing SDGs and the SDG process
Excellencies,
Distinguished co-Chairs,
Ladies and gentlemen,
We have the honour to make this intervention also on behalf of Spain and Turkey, with which we
are pleased to share the membership in this Open Working Group.
We thank the Technical Support Team for preparing the Issues Brief which we consider very useful
in guiding the preparation for this second meeting of the OWG. In view of the upcoming scheduled
meetings and to allow Member States to organise effective consultations both at national level and
with our team partners, we stress the need and importance to receive any background information
and documents in a timely fashion.
In moving towards the SDGs, the international community is not starting from scratch. It can build
on decades of policy making experience in the field of development cooperation and in more than
twenty years of evolution in sustainable development strategies. Analysing successes and
addressing the main gaps is therefore crucial in order to better define our work for the years to
come.
The implementation of the Millennium Development Goals is still undergoing, as recently stressed
by the UN Secretariat General in the 1000 days campaign to Keep the Millennium Promise, and we
should spare no efforts in continuing to pursue our objectives by 2015. In this regard we underline
the significant role of the UN special event on MDG, which should emphasize the importance of the
achievement of the MDGs and its connection with the development of a post 2015 agenda. The
MDG framework proved to be successful in catalysing attention, at the global, regional and national
levels, on a concrete set of common human development goals and targets, creating priorities for
national and international development cooperation policies and initiatives.
In defining the MDGs the general objective of the Secretary General was to make development
cooperation more communicable, transparent, efficient and accountable. It is generally recognized
2
that these objectives have been met. The global community has gained from the establishment of
these goals and the UN development cooperation system has built upon them vigorously. On the
other hand, not all the MDGs have been attained and progresses have been unevenly distributed not
only between countries, but also within countries. The UN 2012 MDGs Report highlights several
milestones, together with numerous projections on the challenges the world will be facing beyond
2015, including in crucial areas such as poverty eradication, hunger, child and maternal mortality,
health, nutrition, biodiversity loss and gender equality.
We thank the co-chairs for this opportunity to exchange views on conceptualizing the SDGs and the
SDG process.
Being cognizant of the increasingly interrelated social, economic and environmental challenges, the
international community as a whole needs to thoroughly address these challenges through a
coherent, integrated and comprehensive approach.
Distinguished Co-Chairs,
In preparing for this meeting, we have asked ourselves, also through national inter-ministerial
consultations, three main questions.
· What is the added value in moving towards SDGs?
· What can we bring with us from the past experience and what do we need to define in order
to make this exercise successful?
· What elements should we consider in order to facilitate a coherent integration in the post
2015 framework?
The initial answers that we could find are the following.
The process leading to the definition of Sustainable Development Goals represents an extraordinary
opportunity to define a unified policy framework. It is widely recognized that one of the main flaws
of the MDGs has been the inability to fully capture the inter-linkages among the goals, as each
MDG has been dealt with on the basis of a “silos approach”. An overarching framework is instead
needed in order to tackle poverty and to advance sustainable development in its three dimensions,
by promoting prosperity, wellbeing and progress within the existing planetary boundaries.
The major focus of MDGs is on basic human needs. The SDGs should go beyond basic human
needs and aim at improving living standards through inclusive growth, increased employment, in
particular through new green jobs, and decent jobs, improved income distribution, sustainable
consumption and production and productive life expectancy.
Consistently, the Sustainable Development Goals should address key inter-linkages and
crosscutting issues in order for them to represent a natural next step in the evolution of the
development agenda. As the challenges are highly interdependent, the SDGs - through a new, more
integrated and holistic approach - should provide for policy coherence and for the capacity to fully
integrate the social, economic and environmental dimensions into the post-2015 development
agenda.
3
Another important point is that the transition to the Sustainable Development Goals, and therefore
also the work of this Working Group, should be based on appropriate scientific data and findings
and supported by a strong science-policy interface.
The Sustainable Development Goals should also be measurable and linked to possible concrete
targets and indicators. In this respect we should build upon the valuable work that is being carried
out at different levels and take into account the various international experiences and initiatives,
including in the context of the UN Statistical Commission, on the measurement of wellbeing and
sustainable development. To this end, we should include some key words in our debate - such as
consumption and income, food security and nutrition, health, labour, education, equality, housing,
physical safety, land and ecosystems, water, air quality, institutions - that can provide us with the
opportunity to translate general concepts into measurable sustainable development goals.
Our aim should be the development of a single overarching post 2015 framework, with a single set
of goals. For this, the activities of the SDGs working group should be coordinated with the post
2015 discussions and every effort should be made to integrate, as soon as possible, the MDG review
and the work for the elaboration of the SDGs in an inclusive and universal process. In this respect, it
is important to ensure opportunities for the timely interaction of the two processes, as to ensure a
smooth integration.
Distinguished Co-Chairs,
Allow me to conclude by highlighting that the MDGs did not include any goal related to innovation
and technological developments, aspects which have instead a very critical role in sustainable use of
natural resources especially in developing countries. Hence, the future SDGs should give
importance to the continuous improvement and effective use of technology and promotion of
universal access to ICT, considering externalities by production and utilization of knowledge.
In this respect, experiences such as the Green Growth Knowledge Platform and the International
Centre for Science and High Technology might constitute useful references.
I thank you.