Thursday, June 21, 2012

Rio+20 Daily Blog - Day 09


Red Line demonstration by Major Group of Children and Youth (MGCY)

June 20, 130 + Heads of states and World leaders poured into Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, 20 years after the landmark Earth Summit, to commit themselves to a new road map for sustainable development -- with that road map already under fire for failing to set firm goals. The three-day Rio+20 Summit opened with words of warning from the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "Let us match words with actions," he told reporters. "Our scarcest resource is time, and it is running out."

 Speech by HE President Mahinda Rajapakse

Attended a side event on “Going beyond GDP, UNDP proposes human development measure of sustainability”, In a high-level forum at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development today the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) presented the conceptual groundwork for a  future “Sustainable Human Development Index,” which would recognize the cost of human development to future generations.  The UNDP forum  was prompted by the call made by many in  Rio for a UN-led examination of alternatives to purely economic measurements of national and global progress, said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, who moderated today’s panel discussion.

Among other featured speakers at today’s forum – titled “Beyond GDP: Measuring the Future We Want”  – were President Michael Chilufya Sata  of Zambia  and  Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt of Denmark, holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency.

“Equity, dignity, happiness, sustainability – these are all fundamental to our lives but absent in the GDP,” Helen Clark said today. “Progress needs to be defined and measured in a way which accounts for the broader picture of human development and its context.”

The sustainability measurement project by UNDP’s Human Development Report Office represents a continuation of its work over two decades, beginning with its Human Development Index (HDI), a composite measure of health, education and income that has become a widely accepted alternative to GDP for assessing countries’ progress.   

The UN Statistical Office’s System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, the World Bank’s partnership for Wealth Accounting for Valuation of Ecosystem Services, and the Inclusive Wealth Index,   newly-released by the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations University are among other recent multilateral initiatives incorporating environmental factors into economic assessments of national and global progress.

Negotiations prior to the Rio +20 conference echoed that view, with the final conference declaration submitted for adoption by UN members stating: “We recognize the need for broader measures of progress to complement GDP in order to better inform policy decisions, and in this regard, we request the UN Statistical Commission, in consultation with relevant UN System entities and other relevant organizations, to launch a programme of work in this area building on existing initiatives.”

In a presentation to the Rio forum today, Khalid Malik, the director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, reviewed the advantages as well as the challenges in measuring sustainability from a people-based, human development perspective. The conceptual framework for an HDI-based assessment of sustainability reflects the human development concept of intergenerational equity, based on principles of global justice and rooted in the premise that choices made today should not limit choices available to people in the future. The people-centred, HDI-based approach to assessing sustainability also incorporates the idea of planetary thresholds, showing how climate change in particular is already posing severe long-term human development risks, most acutely in poor nations and poor communities. “From a policy perspective, this implies that the right to current development is fundamental but it must be achieved without reducing the choices available to future generations,” Malik said. 

  
Submitting the "Youth Statement for Rio+20" to UNDP Head of Administrator/Former Prime Minister of New Zealand  - Ms. Helen Clark 



“UNDP believes that the Human Development Index could be a starting point for a more comprehensive measure of sustainable development,” Helen Clark said today, emphasizing the need for further research and consultations with governments, civil society and academic experts in the field, in collaboration with other UN agencies and multilateral institutions. At the end of the program I was able to hand over the “Youth Position for Rio+20” to Helan Clark, who is the former prime minister of the New Zealand.

Having a discussion with Mr. Steward Stevenson, Minister for Environment and Climate Change of Scotland


       Having a Conversation with Mr. Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister of United Kingdom


It was a great pleasure to meet Mr. Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime minister of the United Kingdom and I raised him a question on "What's his opinion on including a official Youth delegates into their National Delegation list"? He said with energy "Yes", it’s necessary that the youth also should go with the government  and get engage with the decision making process, he said "most of the government has included youth into their National delegation" meanwhile I was able to meet the Ministers of Environment of Scotland, India, Germany.







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