Ladies and gentlemen,
Colleagues,
Excellencies,
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak today on global governance and development issues.
As we are gearing up to implement the 2030 Agenda with its Sustainable Development Goals, this discussion could not be timelier.
The adoption of the ambitious universal 2030 Agenda at the September Summit showed us the continued relevance of multilateralism. It was a major success of the United Nations. It has many implications for global governance.
Indeed, the inclusive post-2015 consultation process brought renewed energy to the UN. It galvanized the international community. Now, the UN can help to keep the focus of the international community on Agenda 2030 and help to drive implementation efforts with its global convening power. Agenda 2030 recognizes the important role of the UN in this regard.
2015 is a seminal year for the international community and its people.
In July, UN Member States met in Addis Ababa to agree on a new financing for development plan: the Addis Ababa Action Agenda; a framework to finance the SDGs.
In September, I was honoured to witness the historic adoption of Agenda 2030 titled “Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. A record number of world leaders assembled in New York to show their ownership and commitment. The private sector, civil society organisations, academics, local authorities and parliaments attended the Summit to ring in this universal agenda.
At the end of the year, governments will meet in Paris. This will be a first occasion to test our commitment to the Agenda. I hope we reach a new far-reaching climate change agreement.
These three processes are an example of the type of Global Governance that can put the world on a sustainable pathway fostering human prosperity while protecting our planet. Agenda 2030 with its 17 SDGs and 169 targets offers us a paradigm shift in the current dominant model of development. It also provides us with new avenues to rethink how we construct the global partnership among countries and with other actors.
What we need now is implementation. This broad, visionary and transformative agenda must be matched with equally ambitious, dedicated, integrated and coherent action in implementation. Otherwise it will be a lost opportunity.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We all must act together. Every actor, every country and every international or regional organisation has a responsibility to translate this Agenda into practice. But doing so will by no means be an easy task. Let me outline some of the interlinked challenges I anticipate which we must all address – preferably jointly and in a concerted manner.
Our traditional mindsets, driven by silo-thinking and sector-based approaches, pose a challenge to the cross-sectoral implementation of sustainable development in all its economic, social and environmental dimensions. This Agenda challenges us to rethink the way we do development. We have to get rid of the silo thinking and learn to think holistically.
We must rethink our administrative and institutional structures to equip them to deal with the cross-cutting challenges of sustainable development.
We have to localise the goals and targets. This is a global agenda. While Member States drew on local experiences in the consultations, the goals are still universally applicable. Countries are expected to adapt the targets to their national and sub-national circumstances.
The MDG experience taught us about the importance of follow-up and review. Agenda 2030 makes clear provisions for reviews at the national level, regional level and thematic reviews. We, the international community, must meet the follow-up challenge by engaging all institutions and sectors of society and strengthening the capacity building of developing countries.
Implementation starts at national level. But international policies and economic trends have a critical impact. This is where global governance comes in.
Effective global governance that takes into account the economic, social and environmental dimensions can help us to achieve Agenda 2030.
Global Governance will be essential to achieving the targets that require concerted international action – for example targets on increasing the voice and participation of developing countries in global decision making.
Global Governance can help facilitate the exchange of resources, technologies and capacities countries need to make progress on the targets that have to be implemented at the national level.
Global Governance can help us to address the issues where we need to foster and implement new and existing international law and treaties – for example when dealing with global public goods such as oceans, the climate or forests or when governing trade.
Global Governance can provide an integrated framework that encourages holistic approaches to sustainable development in which all actors can take action and participate.
I therefore challenge you to think of Global Governance in a broader – a more ambitious and holistic sense – and look beyond the focus on economic and financial global governance. We need a Global Governance that encompasses a much broader range of development facets and provides long-term solutions for them.
The United Nations can become a locus for such Global Governance. It can offer long-term strategic analysis, assess how progress towards the SDGs is impacted by economic, social and environmental trends, provide guidance and bring all actors together.
You rightly say that Global Governance must be governed by the principles of justice, fairness, transparency and equalities. The United Nations is governed by these principles. It is the United Nations where every country has equal representation. No other international body, be it the international financial institutions or the informal country groupings, has such a broad ownership. This will immensely benefit the legitimacy of any kind of Global Governance mechanism.
With its normative power and the related agenda-setting influence, the United Nations can serve as a platform for governments to initiate new areas for Global Governance. Of course, critics may argue that this makes it hard to find joint agreement. I would counter that by saying that Agenda 2030 just showcased what UN member States can achieve with the right determination and political will.
Excellencies,
Let me go into some specifics of how the UN can help to foster Global Governance for sustainable development.
The United Nations can act as a coordination mechanism. As it stands today, we have numerous international regimes that cover almost the entire width of Agenda 2030. An analysis undertaken by the UN-system through the Technical Support Team revealed just that. Most of the target areas are already backed up by international law, declarations, treaties or plans of actions. Agenda 2030 was an opportunity to consolidate them and give them new impetus.
Together, these make up a wide and comprehensive Global Governance system. What we need now is a way to examine it and to address how it can contribute to the achievement of Agenda 2030 or how it might create challenges that will make it harder to work towards the goals and targets.
The United Nations needs to foster integrated solutions as much as all other development actors. The UN can help to provide a more holistic approach to Governance, one that no longer speaks of economic or financial issues only but sees them as one large package that includes social and environmental concerns and their interlinkages, as encapsulated in the SDGs. Let me give you an example in this regard, Goal 12 on sustainable consumption and production alone is connected with other 14 goals through targets.
The United Nations can help to bring in a long-term perspective on global governance. This is not so much addressed by other global bodies and groupings. With its broad expertise, the UN is perfectly placed to track trends over time and assess how they have evolved and why which can help us to define solutions to accelerate progress towards the SDGs and address emerging Global Governance issues.
We have the institutional structures and bodies in place. The newly established High-level Political Forum will review progress towards Agenda 2030. It will serve to address emerging issues, foster the science-policy interface and also provide a long-term focus for eventual course corrections. It is the platform to exercise the broader, holistic kind of global governance I was referring to.
The HLPF can help to review how the SDGs have been taken up and put into action. Through its national reviews it can examine the effects of Global Governance structures on different countries. Through its thematic reviews it can do the same with a focus on specific issues.
The HLPF should not just be about reviews. It should also reflect on current trends, including economic and financial ones that can impact Agenda 2030. The HLPF is about implementation. It should provide guidance and mobilize political will for a coordinated response by all countries, and potentially all actors, to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. It should look to the long term: how will today’s trends and policy choices affect the SDGs 5, 10, 15 or 30 years down the line.
Achieving Agenda 2030 will require revived international cooperation for development where all countries meet as equals to jointly address global challenges and identify the global processes and resources needed for the goals and targets. We will need the contribution from non-state actors. We will need to work towards the long term and keep the international community focused on the goals and objectives our leaders adopted.
Based on its global convening power and its ownership by all countries and people, the United Nations is uniquely placed to facilitate, expand and assess Global Governance. The organisation stands ready to play its part.
Thank you!