UN Economic and Social Development
Division for Sustainable Development

CSD-12

"No Time to Lose"
Message from H.E. Børge Brende
Minister of the Environment
Norway

The international community has set itself ambitious goals for sustainable development. The CSD must help ensure that these commitments are delivered upon. We have no time to lose when it comes to transforming global commitments into action at the local and regional levels.

As newly elected chair of the CSD, I will make it a priority to uphold the political momentum from Johannesburg in the areas of water, sanitation and human settlements, to which the Commission has decided to devote most of its attention over the next two years. Progress in these areas will help reach goals in other important areas such as health, education, gender equality and biodiversity as well as poverty eradication.

It is significant that the Johannesburg Summit reconfirmed the global goal of substantially improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. This commitment is strongly interrelated with the Johannesburg and Millennium Development Goals to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015 and the Johannesburg target to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by the same date. Clearly, there are win-win opportunities by integrating the issues of human settlements, water and sanitation like we are now able to do in the CSD. Water-borne diseases kill a child every eight seconds. A majority of these victims lives in urban areas. Statistics in a new UN Habitat report show that 83 per cent of the population in 43 African cities live without connection to a sewerage system.

We must take a step- by- step approach. The global goals on water require that safe drinking water be delivered to another 270,000 people every day for the next 12 years. The sanitation goal means that basic sanitation must be made available to another 370,000 people every day for the next 12 years. Although a daunting task, I believe this can be done. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to strive towards these key goals. The Water Decade 1981-1991 gave approximately 350,000 people access to clean drinking water and 200,000 access to sanitation services every day during its duration. We did it then. We can do it again.

Much of what was achieved on water in the 1980s was, however, unfortunately lost due to mismanagement. We have to make sure that lessons are learned and that more comprehensive plans for Integrated Water Resource Management are drawn up. Public participation, transparency and ecosystems-oriented approach are essential elements of such plans.

Through the new CSD Programme of Work, we have an opportunity to strengthen our efforts to follow-up and achieve sustainable development at the global and the regional levels. We have a thorough process before us with a series of inter-sessional and expert meetings in all regions. In less than a year, the Secretary General will present a detailed review of progress. The Review Session will pave the way for an effective policy discussion in the second year when we want to see policy decisions expediting implementation.

To succeed we should draw on the strengths of the CSD, addressing the crosscutting dimensions of sustainability and mobilising active participation of all relevant stakeholders. We have to make sure that ministers who are responsible for water, sanitation and housing participate and that we join forces with implementing agencies and financial institutions at the international and regional levels

We must mobilise the political will to provide additional resources and we must encourage alliances and partnerships to drive the process forward. It was the alliance between business, NGOs and decision-makers that made the Johannesburg results on sanitation a reality.

It is important to look back before we look forward. To succeed in our efforts we must monitor results to know where we are, and where we want to be. We must use tools such as benchmarking to promote the implementation that we have all committed to globally. We have to look to the good work that is being done and find an effective and comprehensive system of tracking progress. We need to be on the same track.

Last but not least, to succeed we need a strong and dynamic UN system to collaborate with national and international partners for sustainable development. The Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 was the culmination of a political momentum that had been building up over several years. As chair of the CSD, I will do my best to ensure that last year's World Summit in Johannesburg will come to be seen as the beginning of a process, rather than the end of one, to benefit the daily lives of people all over the world.