Csaba Kőrösi, President of the 77th session of the General Assembly
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Opening remarks to 2nd Informal Briefing of the General Assembly on Science-based Evidence in Support of Sustainable Solutions
(As delivered)
Good morning Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I very much welcome back to the Chamber and I call to order the informal meeting, the second informal meeting actually, of the plenary to hear a briefing from eminent scientist and academics on some gamechanging sustainable solutions.
Today’s event will support your negotiations, negotiating processes currently underway in the General Assembly. Be it the SDG preparation for the SDG Summit, preparations for the financing of sustainable development, preparations for the summit of the future
And certainly preparations for the high-level political forum.
Today’s meeting will have three panel discussions and one surprise development, surprise announcement.
You may excuse me that I will say a few words about the three panel discussions but would not disclose the surprise announcement for the time being because when you open a book on a detective story, you don’t tell the solution on the first page.
So the panel discussion 1, Beyond GDP, how we measure measures.
It will be moderated by the Director of the Statistics Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in the United Nations, Mr. Stefan Schweinfest.
Please allow me to make some comments on my own on this subject.
We have discussed this issue in different settings, on different occasions.
Let me draw your attention to some aspects of what we expect when addressing this rather complex issue “Beyond GDP”.
Where does it come from?
Is it mandated at all?
What is the use of it?
Yes, it has been mandated. You have mandated it when you adopted the SDGs.
SDG 17 which used to be attributed as the SDG for means of implementation, and if you look at the Target 19 it says, let me quote “build on existing initiatives to develop measurements of progress on sustainable development that complement gross domestic product.”
Actually we are late, we should have started developing it the next day as we adopted the SDG.
Those the time limit for developing it was given in a bit of a flexible manner until 2030.
Let’s be honest, If we really want to follow what we are doing in the terms of sustainable
development, we need the tools to measurement.
So what are the challenges to be addressed here and under the title of Beyond GDP?
As we discussed earlier, all our actions, investments, policies, have a range of consequences.
Some of them are intended ones, that’s usually what we are focused on.
Others are not intended, we call them externalities.
But the important fact that the externalities, the unintended consequences of our actions and investments, do exist even if we don’t measure them.
As Nicholas Stern, the former Chief Economist of the World Bank once said that we may fall into the trap of thinking that what we don’t measure does not exist.
But they do exist.
Let me recall your attention to some of the accumulating externalities, what we didn’t count for a long time.
These externalities are called today climate change, human-induced climate change, human-induced biodiversity loss, human-induced water crisis, soil degradation, certain aspects of the pandemic, the debt crisis.
I think quite serious developments.
We cannot turn a blind eye to these efforts, as well.
We know that sustainable development is a balanced and parallel growth of a basic type of all our assets.
If you wish capitals – some of you may not like the word capital but please forgive me for using this terminology for the time being.
What kind of capitals do we mean?
We have human capital, social capital, natural capital, and economic capital, which you may split into built capital – infrastructure – and financial capital.
As we operate, as we run our economies and societies, there is a constant interchange of these assets.
We convert one type of asset into another one and that is natural.
But we usually are not in the position to tell the overall balance. What is the real outcome of our actions while we convert one type of asset into another type.
But the matter of fact, that sustainability, or sustainable development, is about this balance.
This balance that we don’t measure.
This balance that we do not really know.
It is a huge debt what science has… and a huge debt what we, decision makers, omitted.
So, we have to do this work as soon as possible.
And, decline of any of the four or five assets, has a setback on the overall transformation and the wellbeing.
We have ample examples for that.
So, what can we expect from acquiring the capabilities of measuring sustainability transformation?
Let me give you a couple of points which may resonate with your daily work.
If we have this methodology developed, we would be able to measure flows, material flows and assets, to indicate the changes of overall wealth of our societies.
The second, having this methodology should incorporate the vulnerability index to strengthen the resilience as part of sustainability transformation.
That is where the vulnerability index would make an absolutely good sense, and serving the development of the society.
The third, this methodology should support data-based graduation of the LDCs [least developed countries].
The fourth, it should support the evidence-based access to finances. The finances will have an improved logic as well in this case.
And the fifth, we have to create, through this methodology, a new tool to support planning.
Our economics methodologies, sustainability measurements, indicators, used to be applied retrospectively. We used them to tell what we have done in the past.
But now, our ambition level is to create a methodology that can be applied and be a useful tool when designing future policies, future investments.
So, what will be the overall impact if we do this investment? If we go for these policies?
It doesn’t exist now, but it is needed now more than ever. Particularly in crisis time.
So, what is the ambition level we may put in front of ourselves?
There might be different levels.
And it takes time to develop the whole concept, and discuss it, and embrace it.
The ambition level, therefore, by the SDG Summit, could be different from the one we can achieve by September 2024, for the Summit of the Future.
Ideally, we should have this whole methodology fully developed before the SDG Summit, but I am afraid we are too late.
The time remaining to the SDG Summit is five months, it may not be enough to complete the work. But it should be enough to complete the work by September 2024.
And it is not enough for the scientists to develop it.
We, Member States, need time to embrace it, to discuss it, and to make it our own, because we are going to use it in our own countries.
What might be the result of developing this methodology?
If we do the work right, there will be a better, impact-based accountability of our actions.
Impact-based.
The second result could be a strengthened credibility of determination and actions of SDG implementation.
For the time being, our reports on the SDGs are showing one type of picture, which is mostly positive.
We are bringing success stories in our reports.
At the same time, if we look at the global data, it’s a very, very different picture.
So, in order to strengthen credibility of measuring, reporting and comparing, we need a more science-based system.
And the Beyond GDP will be a very important component of that.
The third result, what we may expect from this exercise, is a strengthened capability of financial planning.
For the time being, we are investing a lot, and in many, many occasions, we do not get the result we expect, or some external results thar are reducing the outcome of our efforts.
Let me just give you one, very simple example.
Ten days ago, almost two weeks ago, we had the Water Summit.
For infrastructure, we are investing more than two-trillion-dollars per year, and that’s very good.
We expect these investments to work for us, and they do, but we omit to say that while doing these investments for more than two-trillion-dollars per year, we eliminate natural services equal to one-trillion-dollars.
So, it means that we count what we want, the value of the infrastructure, and we forget to count the value of what we eliminated.
But that balance exists.
We expect these investments to work for us. And they do.
But we omit to say that while doing these investments for more than two-trillion-dollars per year, we eliminate natural services equal to one-trillion-dollars.
So, it means that we count what we want, the value of the infrastructure.
And we forget to count the value of what we eliminated.
But that balance exists.
Even if we don’t take into consideration.
What if with a better methodology, we can halve the eliminated value. Halve of one-trillion-dollars per year.
It is more than what we need per year to address all access to water and sanitation issues all over the world.
The product – what we are going to develop – should be relatively simple to use, flexible and adaptable to conditions of countries in various levels of development and support the decision making.
How to achieve it?
The way is, let me just come back to Target 19 in SDG 17.
We should pool together the knowledge that exists already in the world.
There are excellent platforms, excellent workshops, excellent organizations who made huge work in this field.
Now our task would be in the forthcoming one and half years to pool together this knowledge, synthesize and share and discuss it.
We need to integrate the existing components and maybe add the missing ones.
The second panel discussion is entitled “Food Security and Sustainable Transformation”.
It will take place from roughly 11:30 to 1:00PM and be moderated by the Chair of the UN Committee on World Food Security Gabriel Ferrero de Loma Osorio.
Let me just make one short remark here.
Let’s remind ourselves that between 2019 and 2022, the number of people grappling with acute food insecurity – meaning their access to food was restricted, that it threatened their lives and livelihoods shot up from 135 million to 345 million.
Within three years, 200 million plus stunting people.
But we have ability to feed 10 billion and still doing it in a sustainable manner.
Today, we’re going to listen to our good experts on how to do it.
The panel discussion three, entitled “Scientific support system at the United Nations: A New science based normal – it will take place from 3:00 to 4:30PM and will be moderated by my Chief Scientific Advisor, Johannes Cullmann.
Thank you much, Johannes.
As we discussed earlier, in times of complex crises, our solutions must also be comprehensive and based on very solid scientific evidence.
However, our decision-shaping processes, and even more our validation of the results of the implementation, still need a much stronger scientific backup.
It is a debt, if you wish, in the United Nations but it is a debt that we can replenish, we can correct.
Because we need more efficient and resilient solutions, and a better cost-impact ratio for our actions.
So, as I mentioned after the three panel discussions, there will be a surprise announcement, please be prepared.
It will be for you.
Now I invite the moderator for panel discussion one to take their seats at the podium and take over the meeting.
I will stay with you throughout the day.
This opening segment is now concluded.
