The objectives of CSD after the Johannesburg Summit

The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD)
Speech by Minister of the Environment, Børge Brende
New York, 29.04.03

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

We are being expected to decide on a work programme that will enable us to deliver on the promises we made in Johannesburg.

We marketed the World Summit as a time-shift from words to action. Now we are being expected to give the CSD and the Secretary General the power needed to follow this up.

The world has the financial resources needed to implement the Johannesburg targets. Now we must mobilise the political will to do so.

We must take this opportunity to make the CSD more productive and politically relevant.

The CSD has the potential to play a crucial role in maintaining the momentum of Johannesburg and giving a strong political impetus to the implementation of the WSSD targets. The CSD is the best institution we have for dealing with both development and environment at the global level. Let us make full use of it.

The CSD should focus on how to reach our common objectives, and it should uphold the political pressure on us to deliver. It should be a scorekeeper, identify obstacles and provide clear and concise recommendations for further action. The CSD must not duplicate the good work that is being done in other international organisations, but it should take advantage of it. It must not add another layer of diplomat-driven meetings and processes, but it should utilise already existing reporting and review processes.

One of the most important conclusions of the Brundtland Commission was that decision makers should take responsibility for sustainable development in their sector and that they should be held responsible through reporting and review processes. The focus of the CSD should be operational and it should hold us responsible for achieving the goals we have agreed on. We need a clear picture of how we are progressing and what needs to be done.

We need to make the CSD more relevant by focusing on issues where we can achieve tangible results for individual people in the follow-up of Johannesburg.

The first issue that comes to mind is water. Here, the UN, supported by governments, should take a leading role. It should act promptly and join forces with the financial institutions to attack the global freshwater crisis. A global programme of action should be launched. The WEHAB paper and the World Water Development Report are good starting points.

At the World Summit we committed ourselves to delivering safe water for another 274 000 people and basic sanitation for another 342 000 people every day for the next 12 years. Yet we have not managed to put in place a system that can tell us how much progress we are making. This should be the role of the CSD. Our achievements ought to be presented and evaluated here.

The second issue that comes to mind is sustainable consumption and production. We must decouple economic growth from environmental degradation in order to protect nature and eradicate poverty. We can use various mechanisms to make globalisation work for sustainable development – the polluter-pays and precautionary principles, the elimination of harmful subsidies, life cycle analysis, the creation of new markets for environmentally sound products, the cleaner production concept, environmental labelling and green procurement.

It is the interests of developing and developed countries alike to employ such mechanisms. And the CSD should make use of the work being done within UNEP in measuring progress and providing clear recommendations. Global co-operation is needed here so that we can avoid new trade barriers and red tape and keep costs down.

Thirdly, the Secretary General has identified energy for development as a priority issue. Adequate energy supplies are needed for poverty alleviation both at household level and in society as a whole. And it is still important to increase energy efficiency and the global share of renewable energy. The CSD can play a role here by supporting the aims of the Coalition on Renewable Energy that was initiated in Johannesburg. The International Conference on Renewable Energy that will be taking place in Germany next year will be a good point of departure for this.

We must make the CSD more relevant by building alliances and encouraging political commitments.

We need to forge alliances that can attack poverty and environmental degradation. And we must bring business, NGOs and other major groups on board to drive the process forward. In Johannesburg it was an alliance of business, NGOs and decision-makers that made it possible to achieve the target on sanitation.

Partnerships and task forces can encourage political leadership and help us to get some concrete results, but they cannot replace political commitment. We must move the sustainable development agenda forward through political will and political direction.

We need the support of a broad range of ministers to ensure a comprehensive follow-up of the WSSD targets. Regardless of how we try to reorganise the CSD, at the end of the day what matters is political interest and participation. Politicians must be willing to put the CSD higher on their agenda.

Norway is prepared to do this. We are committed to implementing the Johannesburg targets at home, and our Ministry of Finance has been made responsible for developing Norway’s National Agenda 21. We are determined to play our part in implementing shared global targets for poverty eradication, environmental protection and social justice. We recognise the strategic importance of the WEHAB areas in reaching our objectives.

Norway is committed to the CSD and we will do our utmost to ensure that it can perform even better in the future.

If we manage to improve the performance of the CSD and ensure that it focuses on some of the most crucial issues, it will attract a broad range of ministers as well as important multilateral organisations and stakeholders.

The CSD will then be able to draw on its own strengths, especially its ability to consider all three dimensions of sustainable development. It will be able to focus on policy coherence and the underlying economic and legal framework so that we can take advantage of the opportunities offered by globalisation and meet the challenges it poses.

I believe that the CSD will be able to fulfil its mandate. That it will be able to keep up the momentum from Johannesburg and monitor whether we are delivering the results that we promised in the Plan of Implementation and the Millennium Declaration.

Our job now is to make the CSD a relevant and effective organisation.