Economic and Social Council

Market solutions alone were not enough to handle the problems caused by excessive sovereign debt, a Nobel Prize-winning economist told delegates at a special meeting of the Economic and Social Council today.

Harnessing the rapidly evolving opportunities presented by migration must be a key component of the post-2015 development agenda, speakers emphasized today as the Commission on Population and Development opened its forty-sixth annual session.

On 23 and 24 April, at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, a forum on partnerships and a special dialogue highlighting the role for philanthropy in the post-2015 agenda will be held. Keynote speakers will include United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim.

ISTANBUL, 20 April — The 197 country members of the United Nations Forum on Forests concluded their two-week session in Istanbul, Turkey, with agreement on a series of measures aimed at improving sustainable management of forests and ensuring that forest issues will continue to have priority in the process to define the United Nations development agenda after 2015.

Amid sluggish global growth and declining aid flows, financing sustainable development would require significant funding from various sources, and the Economic and Social Council could play a crucial role in promoting a “forward-looking” development agenda to foster transformative change beyond 2015, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said today, as the 54-member body convened its annual high-level meeting with international finance and trade institutions.

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson’s remarks at a meeting of the Economic and Social Council with the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the World Trade Organization, in New York, 22 April:

Calling on Governments to recognize that forests and the socioeconomic benefits they provide were essential to human development, the United Nations forum working to build global consensus on implementation of forest-related agreements concluded its tenth session late this evening, also deciding to consider setting up a voluntary global fund to support sustainable management of all types of forests and trees.

New trends in global migration show considerable changes in the size, direction and complexity of migration, both within and between countries over the past 20 years, and the reasons behind that shift will be the main focus of discussion during the forty-sixth session of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, to be held at Headquarters from 22 to 26 April.

ISTANBUL, 19 April — With crucial negotiations on global forestry issues headed into the final stretch, the chief of the United Nations Forum on Forests told reporters today that the intergovernmental body would wrap up its work in Istanbul having “broken new ground” on a range of measures to improve sustainable forest management.

With facilitators appealing for more time to wrap up the work of the tenth session of the United Nations Forum on Forests, Chairperson Mario Ruales Carranza (Ecuador) urged delegations to redouble their efforts and show flexibility so that expected late-night negotiations would yield concrete, consensus-based decisions by tomorrow.