Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

Twenty years after participants to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro first recognized that unsustainable consumption and production patterns formed the biggest threat to the Earth’s capacity to satisfy human needs, that challenge continued to loom large and finding a framework to control it must be seen as a strategic priority, the Commission on Sustainable Development was told today, as it opened its three-day high-level segment.

The Commission on Sustainable Development had reached a critical moment in its negotiations to develop concrete policy recommendations, delegates were told today as the body discussed progress made by its working groups more than halfway through its annual two-week session.

Meeting briefly at the end of the first week of its annual two-week session, the Commission on Sustainable Development was urged by its Chair to do its utmost — and perhaps go even further — to reach the goal of shaping critical global policies on transport; chemicals; waste management; mining; and a 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns.

Whether measured by greenhouse gas concentrations, deforestation rates or declining fish stocks, current unsustainable consumption and production patterns threatened to exceed the capacity of global ecosystems and the world community must accelerate efforts to pursue environmentally sound economic growth and “meet our commitments to future generations”, a top United Nations official told the Commission on Sustainable Development today, as it opened its nineteenth session.

A shift in global educational priorities — namely, going beyond access to improve the quality of schooling and promote creative policies — should be a key focus during the “signature” meeting of the Economic and Social Council later this year, regional representatives and experts said today.

In a resumed organizational session today, the Economic and Social Council filled vacancies on 16 of its subsidiary bodies, electing most of the new members by acclamation and holding three secret ballots.

In a burst of activity today, the Economic and Social Council unanimously adopted four decisions and one resolution, laying out, among other things, the themes of its annual ministerial reviews over the next three years, as well as those for the humanitarian segment and the agenda item on regional cooperation of its 2011 substantive session, to be held in Geneva in July.

Deeply concerned that an estimated 358,000 women had died in 2008 from largely preventable complications relating to pregnancy and childbirth, the Commission on Population and Development concluded its forty-fourth session today by urging all Governments to redouble efforts for the elimination of preventable maternal morbidity and mortality by ensuring universal access to reproductive health, including family planning, by 2015.

Higher levels of education, particularly among girls, had a strong correlation to declining fertility and better development outcomes, delegates and experts said today as the Commission on Population and Development continued its forty-fourth session.

With more than 50,000 women dying annually from unsafe abortions, especially in Africa and South-Central Asia, Governments everywhere must make greater efforts to ensure that the old-age and widespread practice of abortion was safe, legal and available to all women and girls, today’s keynote speaker told the Commission on Population and Development as it continued its general debate.