The Future of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to share the views of the United States on the future of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.  Thanks, also, to you, Mr. Chair, for your leadership in organizing this session of the CSD.

The CSD is an important international body that now rededicating itself to the implementation of the Johannesburg Plan of Action.  To become a vital catalyst for implementation, the CSD will need to take a more tightly focused, streamlined, and pragmatic approach to its work. 

Last September’s World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg was the latest in a series of recent meetings that advanced significantly the international community’s commitment to promoting sustainable development.  From putting development at the center of the Doha round of world trade talks, and striking a new compact on Financing for Development at Monterrey, we went on to commit ourselves at Johannesburg to a challenging plan of implementation for achieving sustainable development.

To achieve the promise of Johannesburg and deliver concrete and practical results, the CSD will require an agenda that nurtures and promotes action.  Mr. Chair, prolonged debates and long negotiations do not dig wells, irrigate land, build schools, or bring energy to the countryside.  This is why the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation specifically calls for the CSD to emphasize action and calls for the CSD to lead others to take action at the regional and local level. 

Mr. Chair, the means of implementation for sustainable development is a central concern to everyone.  For the United States, we have long committed substantial national resources and expertise to the cause of development worldwide.  Governments cannot do it alone.  One vital example of a "means of implementation" is the partnership. The CSD should promote and facilitate new partnerships and new initiatives that involve national governments, international organizations, and all other relevant stakeholders.   

Mr. Chair, as Secretary of State Colin Powell said at Johannesburg, “Plans are good. But only actions can put clean water in the mouths of thirsty girls and boys, prevent the transmission of a deadly virus from mother to child, and preserve the biodiversity of a fragile African ecosystem.” 

Mr. Chair, we members of the CSD must rise to these many challenges on behalf of the entire UN family that elected us to this Commission.  How do we measure success of our efforts here in New York?  Successful outcomes must be those that promote real action to implement Agenda 21, the Millennium Declaration, and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.  Successful outcomes require bringing together experienced practitioners and decision-makers, from governments, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector.  We should expect them to identify what is, or is not, working in our efforts to achieve internationally agreed development goals.  We should look for projects and programs the do something to advance sustainable development.  Successful outcomes will have measurable and positive effects on the lives of millions of people around the world.

Mr. Chair, in setting themes for future CSDs, the CSD should identify priorities based on how the CSD might make the biggest difference in the shortest time for those most in need.  For example, over one billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water.  Millions are dying each year from water-related diseases, many of them children.  Therefore, we believe “Water and Sustainable Development” should be the single over-arching theme for the 2004-05 CSD cycle.  As noted at Johannesburg, without progress on water, reaching other internationally agreed development goals will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.  "Water" could serve as the prism through which we address a range of cross-cutting issues, such as “water and poverty eradication,” “water and agriculture”, “water and health,” “water and energy,” and “water and ecosystem management.”

Likewise, about two billion people in the world, mostly in rural areas, have no access to electricity, with another two billion people severely undersupplied.  Access to energy services is critical to meeting basic human needs and alleviating poverty.  Therefore, we believe “Energy and Sustainable Development” should be the single over-arching theme for the 2006-07 CSD cycle.  Again, this could be the prism through which we address the nexus between energy and the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable development.

Mr. Chair, we should avoid diffusing our energies by trying to address multiple themes, as we know each would also entail several sub-themes.  Sustainable development is too important and too complex for us not to give each theme and its cross-sectoral aspects our full attention. 

In focusing on one over-arching theme, the CSD should conduct its work in clearly defined two-year work cycles.  We must ensure that that every citizen can understand what the CSD is, what it hopes to do, and where he or she fits in.  Traditional CSD participants, all of us, understand UN lingo, documents and structures.  We need for the CSD to reach out to a much larger public, including new business partners and other development stakeholders who might not even know about the CSD and the promise it holds.

Mr. Chair, we envision a CSD that that encourages every stakeholder, old and new, public and private, to share “lessons learned”, to identify “best practices” in sustainable development, and to nurture creative approaches to address the challenges we face.  Moreover, CSD should enable us to identify barriers to implementation and to explore ways to overcome them. 

We envision a CSD that actively promotes capacity building. The CSD we see provides a fertile environment for existing partnerships and initiatives to flourish and for new ones to emerge.  We hope to see a CSD where “Learning Centers” and “Partnership Fairs” and other innovative processes become a normal part of UN activities. 

Mr. Chair, regarding partnerships, we support the “Bali Principles” as guidelines for partnership activities within the CSD context.  We believe the CSD should have transparent, flexible, and credible reporting mechanisms where partnerships may voluntarily measure progress in achieving their goals.  Such mechanisms must not, be so onerous that they effectively discourage organizations from engaging in partnership activities. 

Mr. Chair, it is clear that the United States is committed to real action in real time.  For example, the U.S. and our partners are carrying out nearly 100 activities around the world to implement the 970 million dollar "Water for the Poor" initiative we helped launched at Johannesburg last September.  We are working with a host of domestic and international partners to implement the Congo Basin Forest Partnership and the White Water to Blue Water Partnership, which we also launched at Johannesburg.  Over the coming days, members from several of our partnerships will participate in the "Partnerships Fair" to discuss what they have done since Johannesburg to implement their initiatives.

We are committed to mobilizing resources for sustainable development.  Last year, President Bush announced the biggest increase in U.S. foreign assistance in 40 years, proposing creation of the $5 billion Millennium Challenge Account, or MCA.  Breaking the mold of traditional relationships between donors and recipients, we are working with our Congress to create an MCA based on genuine partnerships between the United States and those developing countries that practice good governance, invest in their people, and promote economic freedom. 

It is a fact that private capital now represents about 80 percent of U.S. capital flows to developing countries. Our new "Global Development Alliance" is working to join public sector funding with private capital flows to the developing world. 

Mr. Chair, the United States looks forward to working closely with other delegations and major groups to ensure that CSD 11 marks the beginning of a "new CSD" that focuses intensely on promoting concrete results to achieve the visions set forth in Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.  Thank you.