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Statement by Ms. Dong Zhihua, Counsellor of the Permanent Mission of China at the Informal Dialogue Between the GA and the SG's High Level Panel on Global Sustainability

2011-03-16 04:11
 

(March 16, 2011)

Mr. President,

At the outset, I'd like to welcome this informal dialogue convened by the president of the General Assembly with the Secretary General's High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability. I wish to thank the co-chairs of the panel, President Halonen and President Zuma for their briefings.

Over the twenty years since the Rio Conference, certain progress has been made in the efforts of the international community to advance the agenda of sustainable development. However, there has not been a fundamental change in unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, resulting in increasingly serious ecological degradation and environmental pollution. On top of that, we are faced with new challenges of financial crisis, climate change, food crisis, natural disasters, energy security, and geopolitical problems. To realize the MDGs is an uphill battle.

In this context, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development offers an important opportunity for the international community to rise up to the new challenges and formulate a comprehensive plan for global cooperation for sustainable development. Like other developing countries, China has high hopes for the Conference. We hope that the Conference will reinforce the political will of the international community, set down a concrete forward looking program of action, thus generating new impetus to the global agenda for sustainable development.

We believe that member states should play a leading role in the preparations for the Conference and that the comprehensive and in-depth participation of the developing countries should be ensured. The High-Level Panel should take serving the member states as its principle of work, extensively hear their views and give full consideration to the special needs of the developing countries. We hope that the Panel's work will be closely linked to the theme and goals of the Conference and focus on carrying out study and proposing practicable recommendations on the following questions:

First, the implementation of the agenda of sustainable development. There still exist huge gaps in the current implementation efforts of the international community and new challenges abound. The developing countries in particular lack means of implementation such as capital, technology and capacity. We hope that the Panel will make proposals on how to strengthen the monitoring of the fulfillment of international commitments and that it pays attention to the integrated global development in areas of economy, society and environment instead of limiting its attention to environmental area only.

Second, green economy. We hope that the Panel will focus its efforts on addressing the concern of the developing countries, including preventing the installation of new trade barriers using green economy as the pretext or the attachment of "green conditions" to development assistance. The Panel should also work on increasing the adaptability of strategies for sustainable development so as to provide various options of policy tools for countries with different resource endowment and at different development stages.

Third, the strengthening of the institutional framework for sustainable development. We hope that the Panel will give priority attention to strengthening the coordination between environment institutions and other multilateral development agencies and ensure, from an institutional point of view, the provision to the developing countries of stable, adequate and predictable resources and advanced environment friendly technologies on preferential terms.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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