High Level Politician Forum on Sustainable Development Leaders Dialogue: Global partnership for development to create jobs and improve sustainable lifestyles

Sustainable Development

If I have to sum up my intervention today I would say that it’s moving from an encouragement initiative to move from quantitative indicators to qualitative indicators of development. An example – very often, for instance, people when look at how many girls go to school, and they look at the first graders and they forget to at the fourth graders for instance. And you have a quantitative leap of the number of girls that go to school and enroll into the first grade and then you don’t realize that by the fourth grade they are all gone or a number of them are gone. And I think we should to a large extend reflect that, not only in our development goals, but in evaluation of what has been done so far but also in thinking about the goals post 2015. 

We had rich and dynamic discussion on the achievements of the Millennium development goals and I think maybe the most profitable result of that is the fact that we have identified things that needs to be done in the years ahead.

Dominating many of our discussions has been a focus on some emerging areas: a call for peace, security, equality, dignity, justice. There is a clear demand for tackling injustice and insecurity in all its manifestations.

Some of you all the ones among you might remember a book that come out in I think 1989. by Frances Fukuyama that was called ‘The End of History’. It was written in the enthusiasm with the changes in Eastern Europe where the end of history meant that from now on it seems that everybody is going to live in democracy in participatory societies in societies with good governance.

As we know now that actually not only was very Eurocentric but it was also not true. History came back with the vengeance even in Eastern Europe and certainly in my own country and in my own region.

So, through this experience we understood that in the foundation of all development of all sustainable development there is good governance and so if I may I would just very briefly present three points that I think would be relevant when we plan our development goals for post 2015.

First, I think we have to find ways to incorporate peace and stability as a prerequisite for sustainable development. Secondly, responsive and more accountable institutions and thirdly, we have to be aware of the fact that somehow human rights and good policy and good governance have been marginalized in our discussions so far or let say in our development goal so far and we feel that they should be incorporated in the years ahead of us as something that’s essential prerequisite for good governance.

I would say again if I have to sum it up in one sentence - eliminating the politics of fear is probably the first step in sustainable development.

Thank you very much.