PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIR OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION

Press conference by chair of sustainable development commission

The world was not where it should be when it came to meeting the globally agreed goals and targets for sustainable development, Børge Brende, Norwegian Minister of the Environment and Chairman of the twelfth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development said today at a Headquarters press conference.

Reminding correspondents that yesterday was the opening of the twelfth session, due to conclude on 30 April, Mr. Brende said that in Johannesburg the Commission had been given a new role to assess progress in implementation in the follow-up of time-bound goals and targets, meaning it would act as a watchdog, in a “scoreboard” manner.  The Rio Summit in 1992 had been too much the end of a process, rather than the start of a practical, follow-up process.  That mistake “must not be repeated”, he stressed.

The Commission was gathered to take a hard, honest look at how things were going in terms of meeting the targets, he said.  Obstacles and successes would be assessed and the ground would be prepared for policy discussions next year.  This time, the focus would not be on all issues in an “à la carte” manner, but on a few selected themes, namely water, sanitation and human settlements.

He said that meeting the targets within the Commission’s 12 thematic areas was a prerequisite for reaching the targets in other crucial areas, such as health and education.  More than half of the hospital beds in the world were filled with people with water-related diseases.  That clearly demonstrated the link between the water target and the health target.

Attendance at the session would include more than 80 ministers, as well as heads of key United Nations agencies and civil society representatives.  The Secretary-General would open the high-level segment on Monday.  The crown prince of the Netherlands, who was strongly committed to water issues, would also attend the opening session.

He reminded correspondents that the first three days of the session this week were devoted to preparations for the International Meeting to Review the Implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of the Small Island Developing States, taking place from 30 August to 3 September in Mauritius.

Estimates on water suggested that 50 per cent of developing countries were not on track to meeting the target of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015, he said.  Meeting that target meant providing access to safe water to an additional 1.6 billion people by 2015.

Meanwhile, 3 million to 4 million people died each year from waterborne diseases, he said.  The social costs were severe, representing an economic loss of $16 billion a year globally.

Globally, 70 per cent of water was used for agriculture, he said.  In developing countries, that share was approximately 90 per cent on average, with irrigation using almost all of it, but paying only a fraction of the cost.  There must be “more crop per drop”.  It also must be ensured that high-quality water was used for drinking.

Total investments in water and sanitation in the developing world today amounted to $15 billion annually, with $5 billion from official development assistance (ODA).  The remaining $10 billion came from national sources, he said.  Those figures clearly illustrated the need to look into how resources were allocated at the national level.  Poor people paid dearly for drinking water.  Something was definitely wrong when the poor in the slums wound up paying more for water bottles than for gasoline.

He noted that, in the 1990s, the amount of ODA declined.  The challenges today were “daunting, but doable”.  Countries like China, India and South Africa had made significant progress.  In South Africa, for example, more than 9 million people had been given access to safe drinking water after 1994.

While the water target had been established in the Millennium Declaration, the Johannesburg Summit recognized that the water target could not be reached without doing something about sanitation, he said.  Two billion people needed to gain access to improved sanitation between now and 2015 if the international target of halving the number of people without access to basic sanitation was to be reached.  The challenges were greatest in the rapidly growing slum areas, often located on the outskirts of the developing world’s cities.

He said that the total economic benefits of reaching the sanitation target might be approximately $63 billion annually.  With the cost of $11 billion, that implied that investments in sanitation yielded six-fold benefits.  Meanwhile, estimates indicated that only about one third of all developing countries were on track to meeting the target.

In terms of human settlements, he said the challenge was improving the living conditions of the estimated 900 million people currently living in slums, while at the same time anticipating the need to shelter adequately the million more low-income households that would be formed in, or moved to, urban areas over the next few decades.

The human settlements target called for improving the living conditions of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, he continued.  Progress was difficult to measure in that regard, but there were predictions that, unless the current trend was steered in a different direction, the number of slum dwellers was likely to double to 2 billion by 2030.  A more detailed picture of that situation would likely emerge by 30 April.

Asked what was included in the term “plastic waste”, he said that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had found that, since 1990, the amount of plastic waste on small islands had increased five-fold.  The limited space was contributing to that dramatic waste situation, which must be addressed.  The review process under way had to find ways out of that, including possibly recirculation and producing less waste.

The climate change situation was also very dramatic, he added.  The small island States contributed the least greenhouse gas emissions, but they were the ones being hit the hardest by the climate change.  A lot of other products, not petrol-based, could be used as alternatives.  The focus should also be to concentrate more ODA on the environmental problems facing those nations.

A crucial look at alternative technologies for clean water had been considered, he replied to another question.  Those were aimed at introducing sustainable alternatives in many countries, which were also low-cost and cost-effective.  It was not only about fixing pipes, but about fixing institutions.  He had learned from the water decade of the 1980s that it was possible to get clean water to people.  In most regions, there was enough water around, if that was done in a sensible way.

During the 1990s, however, ODA in the fields of water and sanitation declined, and the poverty reduction strategies of developing countries had not sufficiently reflected those concerns, he said.  Too little funding from the State budgets reached the poor.  Compliance with environmental standards was also critical.  There was no alternative to safe water and sanitation –- the price was just too high.

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