The Transformation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development

As Prepared for Delivery
Three years ago, the conclusion of the Johannesburg Summit ushered in a new era for sustainable development. After years of negotiating a thorough blueprint of objectives and plans, we turned our attention to the challenge of translating those words into action.

One of the hallmarks of this new "Era of Implementation" has been the transformation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) into an innovative, action-catalyzing forum. The reformed CSD is an essential tool for delivering on the internationally agreed development goals that we adopted in the Millennium Declaration and in Johannesburg. Indeed, this new CSD is a leading example of what the United States is looking for in a reformed and increasingly relevant United Nations.

I appreciate the opportunity that Stakeholder Forum has provided for all of us to be here today to discuss the progress of the "new CSD" and to consider what we can do to advance implementation during the 2-year CSD Energy Cycle. Looking at the calendar, we are already about one-fifth of the way through this new cycle. As you’ll soon hear, I think we have our work cut out for us in the coming weeks and months if we want to deliver results.

Priority-Setting: CSD’s Unique Role in Fostering Implementation

One of the most important contributions the CSD can make in the Implementation Era is to shine its spotlight on one critical sustainable development issue at a time. With this simple act of priority-setting, the CSD sends a powerful signal to the international community. This signal can galvanize action from a wide range of public and private stakeholders and foster increased coordination and new alliances.

We know the CSD can play this role because we saw it happen over the past two years. During the CSD Water Cycle, other UN bodies like UNEP and UN-HABITAT focused on the CSD’s thematic cluster during their annual meetings. UNDP, WHO, and UNICEF launched new water and sanitation initiatives. The World Bank and Regional Development Banks convened "Water Weeks" that complemented the CSD discussions. On the non-governmental side, Rotary International responded to the CSD’s focus on water by asking its members to carry out at least one water project in each of its 31,000 clubs located in 167 countries.

Using the One Hundred Weeks Outside of New York

Why does all of this matter? It matters because the mechanisms that will deliver results are handled by specialists and project implementers in capitals and organizations around the world, not by negotiators in New York. These implementation actors have their own internal schedules and procedures that do not necessarily coincide with the timing of a particular UN meeting. Further, it takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to develop and maintain implementation mechanisms. This suggests that all of us view our work during the CSD cycle not as five weeks of meetings in New York but as two years of concerted effort. In fact, the one hundred weeks we spend outside of the UN basement during the Energy Cycle will likely be far more important than the time we spend at the CSD.

Again, these are lessons we learned during the Water Cycle. For example, it took several months of ongoing consultations for UNDP to develop the Shared River Basin Management Initiative, which brings together Sweden, the World Bank, the Netherlands, the United States, and others to support dialogue among developing country decision-makers on shared rivers. In another case, we worked for almost the entire two-year cycle to develop and begin implementing an arrangement with the Global Water Partnership through which we and several other donors are now supporting the development of integrated water resource management strategies in 18 countries. In addition, WHO, UNICEF, and others used a series of meetings over many months, including the Morocco Partnerships Forum, to pull together the Partnership to Health Through Water, a new alliance aimed at reducing water-related diseases worldwide.

These initiatives would likely not have emerged had the CSD not taken the critical first step of highlighting water-related issues as a priority on the international calendar for a two-year period. It was CSD’s spotlight that encouraged governments and others to identify gaps and to fill those gaps with mechanisms that will deliver results. It was the two-year cycle that enabled stakeholders to devote the necessary time and energy to bring these initiatives to fruition.

These and other initiatives are now a part of our implementation landscape. Just last month, representatives from these programs participated in Stockholm Water Week. We have recently heard from Mexico that there will be an opportunity for these initiatives to participate in the Fourth World Water Forum as well.

These activities and the nearly seventy other partnerships that were registered during the CSD Water Cycle represent a fundamental shift that is taking place during the Implementation Era. Stakeholders are adopting an action-oriented emphasis on "what do I bring to" CSD.

This change is the defining element of the CSD’s role in the Implementation Era. Sustainable development actors are not thinking about what they must do to prepare for a few weeks of meetings but rather what they must do over two years to deliver results. The full realization of this change will determine whether the reformed CSD will be a key player in the post-Johannesburg era.

Focusing on a New Bottom Line

This shift suggests that we might want to develop a new benchmark to measure success. The CSD will need to demonstrate that in can produce concrete results, that in can assist in providing access to clean water and modern energy services.

In the United States, we realized the implication of this shift as we began to prepare for the last CSD cycle. During the early months of the Water Cycle, we measured our progress in terms of our financial contributions. We announced, for example, that we were on target to spend approximately $350 million in the first year of our Water for the Poor Initiative, roughly one third of the nearly $1 billion dollar commitment we made in Johannesburg. As the cycle progressed and the initiative became more mature, however, we began to shift our emphasis toward reporting on the direct results that were being achieved, such as the numbers of people provided with improved access to water supply and sanitation services. This turned out to be a more appropriate metric for the Implementation Era.

This "number of people served" approach is the type of metric that all of us can use to measure our progress. For example, as a result of the U.S. Water for the Poor Initiative, over 12 million people have received improved access to clean water and more than 12 million people have received improved access to adequate sanitation. In addition, over 2,400 watershed governance groups have been convened and supported to make decisions addressing a diversity of water uses and needs. We intend to adopt similar metrics for the energy cycle, such as the number of people with increased access to modern energy services, and encourage others to do so as well. Dollars spent are important. But at the end of the day, results delivered are what matters.

The "Secretariat of the Future"

The changes brought on by the Implementation Era – focusing on delivering results through a distributed network of actors and mechanisms – suggest that the CSD Secretariat adapt as well.

The complex landscape of multiple actors taking action during a 104-week schedule places a premium on information -- information on lessons learned and best practices, information on initiatives that have been or will be launched, information on where there might be gaps that need filling. The CSD Secretariat is uniquely positioned to play a lead role in providing this information. There are many organizations that can provide specialized technical assistance or expertise, but no organization is in a better position to pull together information about so many activities and provide that information to so many users as the CSD Secretariat.

The CSD Water Cycle took an important step in this direction, introducing new types of non-negotiated outputs and a strengthened focus on web-based data and information dissemination. The non-negotiated "Matrix of Policy Options and Practical Measures" harnessed the CSD’s convening and information-gathering power to produce a practical "how-to" toolkit for all implementation actors. Further, these policy options are backed up by understandable, real-world case studies. We are pleased to hear that the CSD Secretariat is working to refine these tools and to coordinate with the Secretariat of the 4^th World Water Forum so that the 4^th Forum can build on the CSD’s efforts.

We also applaud the Secretariat for getting an earlier start on the Energy Cycle by beginning to post energy case studies on their website earlier this summer. Building on this improvement, we urge the Bureau to work with the Secretariat to develop the Energy Cycle’s matrix of policy options and practical measures far earlier than they did in the Water Cycle. Many of these options and measures will be put on the table during the CSD-14 Review Session next May. The sooner all of us have access to an implementation-oriented "living document," the sooner we can use it as a tool to facilitate further action.

Conclusion

The CSD has achieved remarkable successes since Johannesburg. By setting priorities – first water then energy – it is driving the agenda for post-Johannesburg implementation efforts. The CSD’s two-year cycles provide an organizing principle around which other organizations and stakeholders can focus their efforts. The CSD has also introduced procedural reforms that are now spilling over into other international bodies. For example, the Learning Center – an innovation launched through the CSD process – is now being replicated in a number of other fora. "The Institute@" – a partnership between the Smithsonian Institution and UNDP – has held Learning Center programs during several other meetings, including the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Conference of Parties, the Commission on the Status of Women, the World Summit on the Information Society, and the World Conservation Congress.

To be successful, the 2005-2007 CSD Energy Cycle must build on the progress of the past three years. And each of us can help. We can each push our respective bureaucracies, organizations and networks to identify what they can do to achieve results. We can each measure our success not only by 5 weeks in New York but also by what we have accomplished over the next two years around the world. And finally, we can each hold ourselves accountable – reporting on concrete results achieved. For the U.S. at least, that means how we have increased access to modern, clean, healthy and efficient energy services.