Working Through Partnership to Achieve Sustainable Development

Thank you Professor Turekian. I’m pleased to be here at Yale to discuss sustainable development and our efforts to create domestic and foreign public-private partnerships. I also would like to thank the Yale faculty for choosing me as a Zucker Fellow. Past fellows make up an impressive list of scientists, authors and policy makers. It is an honor for me to be the first representative from the U.S. Department of State to speak in this forum. Environmental stewardship and conservation of natural resources are critical elements of our foreign policy. In fact, the topic I am going to address today -- promoting sustainable development -- is one of the key strategic goals for U.S. foreign policy, as articulated in the State Department’s recent strategic plan.

In coming here, I am reminded of a famous Yale graduate who had a major impact on environmental and economic policy, as well as the course of sustainable development in America. He was Gifford Pinchot, who 100 years ago, as Chief Forester of the United States, convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to seek the creation of a professional Forest Service run by foresters out of what was the Forest Bureau, run by bureaucrats. The enthusiasm with which Roosevelt embraced Pinchot’s thinking is clear evidence that even a Harvard graduate can learn much from a Yalie! Their philosophy on conservation and development is worth noting because it strikes a balance between conservation and development that is useful for our discussion.

Speaking at Stanford 101 years ago, President Roosevelt told students “Closely entwined with keeping unmarred the beauty of your scenery, your great natural attractions, is the question of making use of, not for the moment merely, but for future time, of your great natural products… I appeal to you from the standpoint of use. A few big trees, of unusual size and beauty, should be preserved for their own sake; but the forests as a whole should be used for business purposes, only they should be used in a way that will preserve them as a permanent source of national wealth.”

This was the philosophy that had sparked the conservation movement and made it mainstream. Importantly, it reserved a prominent place for the industriousness of the American people -- our capacity for economic growth and prosperity -- while protecting the environment from harmful exploitation.

We are working to share this view with others around the world. Sustainability and sustainable development are terms that are spoken quite frequently, but it is useful for us to consider their meaning. The development part of sustainable development recognizes that there are billions of people around the world faced with circumstances that result in a poor quality of life, and that the only long-term way to alleviate this is through economic growth. While we provide assistance in the short term that seeks to alleviate the worst human suffering, we must always keep our eyes on the long term, and the necessity of encouraging nations to help themselves, and create thriving, prosperous economies in the place of impoverished economies.

The sustainable part of the equation means that growth must take place in a manner that preserves for future generations the environment, but also that successful growth must be predicated upon education, rule of law, good governance, the protection of human freedom and economic reforms. Without these, growth tends not to be sustainable, and primarily benefits the elites of a nation, rather than those who are most in need.

Tomorrow is Earth Day. When you see events commemorating the day around campus, or discuss the environment in your classes, I urge you not to overlook the very basis for why we strive for a clean environment. That basis is improved human welfare. Environmentalism is as much about people as it is about the natural environment. The nexus between environmentalism and sustainable development is the urgent need to improve the quality of life for countless billions of individuals around the world. They have every right to expect the freedom, opportunity, and prosperity we possess in America. This long-term challenge is something we explicitly mention in our U.S. National Security Strategy. It states “A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just nor stable. Including all of the world’s poor in an expanding circle of development -- and opportunity -- is a moral imperative and one of the top priorities of U.S. international policy.”

Our approach to sustainable development was articulated at the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development in March 2002. It was there that President Bush announced the Millennium Challenge Account, which is a novel approach to development assistance. In detailing the initiative, President Bush called for “a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations.” We pledged that the United States would lead by example and increase its core development assistance by 50% over the following 3 years, resulting in an annual increase of $5 billion by FY 2006.

But the new funds will act as an incentive for sustainable development. The Millennium Challenge Account will “reward nations that root out corruption, respect human rights, and adhere to the rule of law... invest in better health care, better schools and broader immunization... [and] have more open markets and sustainable budget policies, nations where people can start and operate a small business without running the gauntlets of bureaucracy and bribery.”

This is truly a revolutionary approach to development assistance. From now on, countries that receive aid from the new Millennium Challenge Corporation, chaired by Secretary of State Colin Powell, will not only benefit in the short term. They will also be planting the seeds of long-term growth and stability.

In addition to smarter and more efficient use of development assistance, there is the question of other tools we use to promote sustainable development around the world. Our approach to this problem, like our approach to other foreign policy matters, is to work closely with others. As Secretary Powell wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, “Partnership is the watchword of U.S. strategy in this Administration. Partnership is not about deferring to others; it is about working with them.”

Cooperation and partnership define our approach to sustainable development. When we went to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, or WSSD, in Johannesburg in the fall of 2002, we built on the momentum and policy decisions from Monterrey. This came in the form of launching partnership initiatives, some 200 of which stemmed from the Summit. In doing this, Summit participants recognized the need of all stakeholders to work together -- governments, civil society, and the private sector. We launched five major partnership initiatives in the areas of water, energy, health, and hunger. We also launched additional public-private initiatives related to forests, housing, oceans and geographic information. Our focus was on achieving tangible results.

Another key element of the WSSD was that we were very much in sync with the nations of the developing world in our approach. The nations assembled were able to see common ground in a plan that was flexible, that utilized the talent and advantages of the private sector and non-governmental organizations, and that focused on creating conditions to enable nations and their citizens to lift themselves out of poverty with their own creativity and industriousness -- in other words, paving the way for sustainable economic growth that benefits a wide swath of society.

We and others made specific commitments, including commitments to assess our actions promptly, to ensure that words were followed by action. We collectively decided to focus first on water, which covers some 71% of the Earth’s surface. Unfortunately, only 0.65% of this is really useful for human consumption, and less than 1% of that is found in easily accessible groundwater. Our ability to shepherd these water resources wisely is critical to the long-term development of the world.

Thus, six months after the Johannesburg meeting, we went to the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, where participants produced a comprehensive database on the many complex partnerships dealing with water issues. This will be invaluable for coordinating initiatives among the numerous stakeholders. Down the road, it may function as a means to compare best practices.

Last month, I accompanied a delegation to Rome to participate in a conference on innovative sustainable development partnerships and then also traveled to Miami as a leader of the U.S. delegation in the White Water to Blue Water Partnership Conference, a project aimed at stimulating partnerships that will promote integrated watershed and marine ecosystem-based management in the Caribbean region. Both of these meetings provided a venue for governments and civil society groups to highlight successful sustainable development partnerships and build on them to implement our broader goals. I was struck by the fact that in the 18 months since WSSD, the delegates in Rome and Miami had fully embraced the central role of public-private partnerships to achieve concrete results in sustainable development. This is an important milestone. Next week, I will be leading the U.S. delegation to New York for the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development meetings – an international gathering of countries committed to the sustainable development goals that we laid out in Johannesburg.

The net result of all of this is that we have backed up our words and promises at Johannesburg with real action, and we are encouraging others to do so. Here are some of the specific steps that we have taken:

At Johannesburg, the United States pledged $970 million over 3 years as part of our “Water for the Poor” initiative. In the last fiscal year, we obligated more than $440 million of those funds. During that time, more than 16 million people gained access to improved water and sanitation services due to our activities. Imagine taking a population twice the size of New York City and giving them access to clean water and sanitation in just one year. That is a major improvement in public health, and it allows those people to turn their attention to other development issues. Water for the Poor is consistent with our overall approach in that we seek to ensure that assistance leads to improvements that are long term and sustainable, rather than a one-time handout. Five hundred forty-three water user groups were established; and in 22 regions new plans, policies, or regulations were developed or adopted to improve sustainable water management.

In Guatemala, a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Procter & Gamble proved through clinical studies that in-home purification of drinking water could reduce diarrhea in children by more than 40%. The work in Guatemala has now led to a new partnership, the Safe Water Alliance, where the U.S. government has partnered with Johns Hopkins University, two non-governmental organizations (PSI and CARE) and Procter & Gamble for work in Haiti and Pakistan on how to devise a market-based approach to advocate in-home purification of drinking water.

At WSSD, we also announced the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, comprised of 13 governments, three international organizations, and 10 civil society organizations. This partnership’s goal is to protect the world’s second largest tropical forest. We are supporting initiatives -- from large international efforts to modest community development projects -- to develop alternatives to destructive logging. Among them are low-impact logging and sustainable use of other forest products. Last September’s National Geographic highlighted this successful public-private partnership, complete with a series of their famed photographs depicting the beauty of the region.

There are scores of other partnerships comprised of hundreds of organizations and as many countries. Working together and leveraging what each stakeholder does best is the most effective way to solve sustainable development challenges. But it is very difficult in the absence of accurate and comprehensive information. This is the final aspect of our approach to sustainable development which I will discuss today.

Environmental policy is only as good as the science that underlies it. Ecosystems and the global climate are incredibly complex, and we are far from knowing everything about how they work and how they are affected by what we do. Therefore, it is essential to improve our ability to monitor and understand the environment. This was a lesson that was well understood at Yale as far back as 1779. Since that time, I understand that successive Yale presidents, clergymen, and scholars willing to rise at 4:30 am -- yes, there have been some -- have kept a continuous weather record. I have heard that the record would go back even farther if record-keeping had not been interrupted by a Revolutionary War British attack that broke the thermometer. This was perhaps one of the earliest examples of the interface between science and international relations.

In order to improve our collection of scientific data, the first-ever Earth Observation Summit was held last July to generate international support for an initiative to link thousands of individual technological assets into a coordinated and comprehensive global Earth observation system. The purpose of the system is to provide the tools needed to substantially improve our ability to identify and address environmental concerns. More than 30 countries -- both developed and developing -- and 20 international organizations participated in the Summit.

There is one final famous Yale graduate I will mention today. He is not President Bush or Gifford Pinchot -- in fact, he is not actually a real person, although he supposedly graduated from Yale in 1914. I believe he is someone with whom many of you are familiar: the character Mr. Burns from the Simpsons on TV. Once, when pressed by the perpetually do-gooding Lisa on whether or not his plant had a recycling program, Mr. Burns incredulously replied: “So Mother Nature needs a favor? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods… Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing? Well, I say: hard cheese.”

Thankfully, Mr. Burns is only a parody. The truth of the matter is that American policy is animated by sustainable development principles that do not fight nature. Rather, we pursue policies that both protect natural habitats and improve the richness and quality of human life.

As Theodore Roosevelt said in 1910, “Conservation means development as much as it does protection.” We have policies that promote sustainable development -- the improvement of the circumstances of the world’s poor by creating the conditions necessary for them to achieve their potential, while ensuring their longevity, and that of future generations. We have embarked on a path to realize this goal through assistance that promotes good governance and care for people and the environment, and many other initiatives that take advantage of the skills of all stakeholders in sustainable development, as well as the best science needed to make effective environmental policy. Thank you.