Per-Kristian Foss
Norwegian Minister of Finance
Introductory remarks at the Conference on Sustainable Development, Vettre Hotel, 22. June 2004

Sustainable Development: Introductory Remarks

It is a pleasure for me to welcome all of you to this Conference on sustainable development hosted by The Ministry of Finance on behalf of The Norwegian Government.

The Conference has an international part where we will hear from representatives from the OECD, the EU, the World Business Council of Sustainable Development and the European Environmental Agency on what they are doing in this area.

The national part will concentrate on how to measure sustainable development, notably as a dialogue between the Government experts group established to advice the Ministry of Finance on this topic, and stakeholders.

The Norwegian government established an Action Plan for Sustainable Development in the Fall of 2003. It was presented to the Parliament as a separate chapter in our major economic policy document: The National Budget. An English version, with a foreword by Prime Minister Bondevik, is available to you here today.

In preparing this action plan, the Government has drawn on international experience of drawing up policy strategies for sustainable development:

It is important to ensure that the objectives, division of responsibility and follow-up mechanisms set out in the plan are as concrete as possible, to avoid large-scale and lengthy administrative/political process that do not actually achieve much in practice.

It is important to focus attention on a few selected policy priority issues within the field of sustainable development – which is long term in nature – so that it leads to concrete and targeted policy action. Analyzing important policy trends – notably long term interactions between economic and environmental developments – can make significant contributions in this regard.

It is a clear advantage to link policies to promote long term sustainable economic, social and environmental development to central economic policy process, decisions and documents. This is to avoid a policy setting where economic and environmental sustainability issues are pursued separately. A key strength of the concept of sustainable development is to use it to look at key interactions, synergies and conflicts in the longer term. If issues are separated, or if “everything important” is defined as relevant to sustainable development – a common error in my view – the concept loses much of its policy relevance.

Norway`s national strategy for sustainable development, presented to the Johannesburg Summit in 2002, states that:

“The overriding objective for Norway and the international community is to make development ecologically, economically and socially sustainable. The basis for continued utilisation of nature and natural resources must be maintained. Within these constraints, we will promote a stable and healthy economic development, and a society with a high quality of life. And we will play a part in helping the poor people of the world to achieve material welfare and a higher quality of life.”

The Governments action plan, or National Agenda 21 of 2003, is a follow up intended to advance this process as an aid to achieve our longer term goals.

The action plan focuses much more precicely than the strategy on certain key policy areas. In all, the following seven priority areas have been selected:

• International cooperation to promote sustainable development and combat poverty.
• Climate change, the ozone layer and long-range air pollution.
• Biological diversity and cultural heritage.
• Natural resources.
• Hazardous substances.
• Sustainable economic developments.
• Sami perspectives on environmental and natural resource management.

In the National Budget 2004, we presented preliminary indicators for progress in these policy areas, and I have asked a group of experts to advise the Norwegian Ministry of Finance on possible adjustments and refinements.

The point of departure for measuring sustainable development will be estimates and projections of national wealth. Some supplementary indicators to this key indicator of sustainable development are needed because estimates of national wealth, as of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in actual practice are crude.

Let me also mention that the political follow up of our National Agenda 21 is delegated to a group of State Secretaries, of which one of my State Secretaries is chair. Ultimately, of course, it is the responsibility of the entire Government to see to it that Agenda 21 is carried out in actual practice.

It remains for me to wish you a successful Conference. Politically it is a very important topic, and on behalf of the Norwegian Government I hope it will contribute to broad engagement from other Ministries, the business sector, Local Government, NGOs and independent experts to the overriding objective of achieving sustainable development.