Ambassador John K. Menzies, Dean of the Whitehead School,

My good friend John Whitehead,Your Excellency Most Reverend Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, Apostolic Nuncio to the United Nations,Excellencies,

Distinguished Ambassadors and Guests, faculty, students, ladies and gentlemen,

Let me begin with a simple thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here with so many good friends of the United Nations.

The honor you do me is an honor for the Organization I am privileged to lead.

Together, we honor its noble ideals,

Its achievements and its staff,

Its work for peace and progress in every corner of the globe.

I also see this honorary degree as a testament.

A testament to the close ties between the United Nations and Seton Hall University, and with the Whitehead School in particular.

Your students come from faraway places.

Your graduates go out into the world, in its broadest sense.

They fill our negotiating rooms at our headquarters in New York. They staff our field operations and bring uncommon intellect and professionalism to their work.

We are natural partners, Seton Hall and the UN.

You, with your commitment to global education,and we, the United Nations,the pre-eminent global institution for our global era.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The United Nations today leads what seems at times like a double life.

On the one hand, pundits criticize the United Nations for not solving all the world's ills.

On the other hand, UN Member States and people around the world are asking the Organization to do more, in more places than ever before.

We have only to read the newspapers, turn on the television, to appreciate the sheer scale of the need.

Conflicts rage in too many places, and the UN goes where others dare not.

Natural disasters are striking with greater fury, and in greater numbers, than ever before. Our humanitarian assistance, in other words, is a growth industry.

Political repression and a rising tide of intolerance throw an ever-brighter spotlight on human rights.

And on top of all this, we face a whole new generation of threats,threats unlike any that have come before.

They spill across borders.

They have global reach.

No single country or group, however powerful, can deal with them alone.

I have seen in my own life, in my own country,what the United Nations can do.

The United Nations helped my country to rebuild from a devastating war, a war that destroyed my own village and sent us fleeing into the hills.

Today, the UN continues to be the voice of the voiceless, the defenders of the defenseless.

We help the helpless to help themselves, just as the UN did for Korea many decades ago.

You are familiar with many of the challenges before us

Today, I will focus on what I see as the Big Three:

Climate change, a greener, more sustainable world for all;

The fight against poverty, a more prosperous world for all;

And human beings in crisis, the emergencies that claim the headlines, a safer world for all.

And today I ask, publicly, what I ask myself every day: “Can the United Nations deliver what the world needs?”

Let me begin with climate change, the defining challenge of our times.

Climate change is not science fiction; it is science fact.

We see its effects every day, all around us.

Four years ago, when we came to office, only a handful of global leaders knew enough to even talk about the issue.

Today, we have pushed climate change to the top of the global agenda.

But make no mistake: it has been a hard road.

Last December in Copenhagen, world leaders gathered in a small room -- President Obama, President Sarkozy of France, President Zuma of South Africa, President Calderon of Mexico, and many others.

They talked far into the night,and they emerged, if you believe the news reports, with virtually nothing.

It is true that Copenhagen did not meet the very high expectations.

We hoped for a comprehensive, legally binding treaty that would usher in an era of sustainable, low-carbon prosperity.

Nonetheless, despite the conventional wisdom that Copenhagen was somehow a “failure”, much in fact was achieved.

For the first time ever, developed and developing countries acknowledged their responsibility to curb emissions of greenhouse gasses.

For the first time ever, all countries agreed on the goal of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

For the first time ever, countries made large pledges to finance mitigation and adaptation efforts: $30 billion over the next three years for fast-start financing; and the goal of providing $100 billion per year by 2020.

For people on the front-lines of climate change, these were important steps.

The bottom line: we made progress.

There is a lesson here.

Let us not dream of big overnight breakthroughs.

Let us not think, in the absence of immediate progress, that we are failing.

Let us not misunderstand what it takes to bring about change in the world today.

I emphasize this because it is fundamental.

Gone are the days when one country or bloc could take big steps, almost by fiat.

Truly global action on global problems requires patience and determination.

It means bringing the world along, step by gradual step.

It means mobilizing support, creating broad alliances,building coalitions and taking into account a web of moving parts and complex issues.

Collective action has never been easy, but today, it has never been more necessary.

In two weeks. I will be heading to Mexico to try to spur further progress in the climate negotiations.

We do not expect a comprehensive agreement. But many issues are ripe for agreement, from deforestation and adaptation to technology, capacity-building and the future of the Kyoto protocol.

The more we delay, the more we all will pay.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me turn to the poverty agenda.

The Millennium Development Goals are the world's blueprint for ending extreme poverty.

The Goals call on all of us to work to reduce poverty and hunger, to improve the health of mothers and children, to combat HIV/AIDS, increase access to education and protect the environment, and to forge a global partnership for development.

The Conventional Wisdom will tell you that these goals are simply unattainable.

While we can never move fast enough for the world's “bottom billion”,the one billion people who survive on a dollar a day –the real truth is that remarkable progress is being made.

We are controlling disease better than ever before, polio, malaria, AIDS.

We are making big new investments in women's and children's health, which is key to progress in many other spheres.

We have learned an important lesson:

With the right policies, with the right leadership and resources, targeted at the right people, we can achieve the goals.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our third great imperative is the humanitarian imperative.

When disaster strikes, the United Nations is there.

We are the world's first responder.