PHM-Exch> Global Human Development Forum opens in Istanbul today

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: HDR Bulletin <announcements at hdrdistribution.org>





<http://social.e2ma.net/next/e/36353/6715c6e0aeb81331bc6101fdc590454f/7492765578/?mrid=a62003339b429a24f34a51fb6c0c64ee>

Urgent international action needed to combat social inequalities and
environmental risks, UN Secretary General tells Global Human Development
Forum  Istanbul, March 22 - Social justice and environmental protection are
equally urgent and intrinsically linked universal goals, with coordinated
global action needed on both fronts at the UN’s ‘Rio+20’ Conference on
Sustainable Development in June, Secretary-General *Ban Ki-moon* said in a
message to an audience of development experts, civil society leaders and
government officials at the first Global Human Development
Forum<http://e2ma.net/go/7492765578/208861422/232501581/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev/forum2012/>here
today.

“The world stands at a crossroads,” the Secretary-General said in his
message to the Istanbul Forum, convened by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Turkey. “We need everyone government
ministers and policymakers, business and civil society leaders, and young
people to work together to transform our economies, to place our societies
on a more just and equitable footing, and to protect the resources and
ecosystems on which our shared future depends.”

UNDP’s 2011 Human Development Report “Sustainability and Equity: A Better
Future for All,”<http://e2ma.net/go/7492765578/208861422/232501582/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2011/>which
argued that social inequalities and environmental hazards must be
combated together for the sake of future generations provided the framework
for the two-day Istanbul dialogue. The Global Human Development Forum was
organized to examine the critical social, economic and environmental
challenges facing the world today, including better approaches to assessing
national and global progress.

“The concept of human development originated in well-founded
dissatisfaction with using only gross domestic product as a measure of
human progress,” the Secretary-General noted in his statement today.
“Though this understanding has become something of a benchmark in our
thinking about development, there remains a need to dramatically change the
way we value and measure progress.”

UNDP Associate Administrator *Rebeca Grynspan* and Deputy Prime Minister *Ali
Babacan* of Turkey opened the Forum today by stressing the importance of
collective global action at the “Rio + 20” conference three months from
now. “This Forum is particularly timely and important,” Grynspan said. “It
provides a unique opportunity to debate the messages we want to take to
Brazil, reflecting on what we have learned since the Stockholm Conference
in 1972 and the Earth Summit in 1992.”

More than a hundred heads of state will be leading their national
delegations to the June Conference on Sustainable Development, making it
one of the largest such high-level gatherings in recent times.

Added Grynspan: “We must recognize that high-carbon; unequal growth will
undermine itself by breeding social unrest and violence, and by destroying
natural habitats critical for livelihoods. We need a new paradigm of growth
and a new approach to the political economy of sustainable development.”

The Global Human Development
Forum<http://e2ma.net/go/7492765578/208861422/232501583/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev/forum2012/>will
culminate Friday with an “Istanbul Declaration” articulating the
participants’ jointly proposed goals and priorities for the “Rio+20”
summit.

“Sustainable development recognizes that our economic, social and
environmental objectives are not competing goals that must be traded off
against each other, but are interconnected objectives that are most
effectively pursued together in a holistic manner,” the Secretary-General
said in his message today. “We need an outcome from Rio+20 that reflect
this understanding and that relates to the concerns of all.”

Deputy Prime Minister Babacan, a member of the Secretary-General’s
High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, urged the adoption of new
‘Sustainable Development Goals’ to guide global priorities following the
2015 conclusion of the UN’s 15-year Millennium Development Goals campaign.
Cevdet Yilmaz, Turkey’s Minister of Development, who moderated the Forum
discussion on the “Social Contract: Building Equity and Sustainability”,
said: “The Forum provides a solid platform to share different viewpoints on
the universal goal of having resilient people and a resilient planet.”

*Tarja Halonen*, the former president of Finland and co-chair of the High-Level
Panel on Global
Sustainability<http://e2ma.net/go/7492765578/208861422/232501584/36353/goto:http://www.un.org/gsp/>,
will speak today in a special Forum session devoted to the Panel’s
recommendations.

Forum discussion topics today and Friday also include: “A New Deal on
Sustainable Development”; “Innovative Financing for Sustainable Future”;
“Assessing Human Progress”; and “Building Coalitions for Change”. The Forum
will feature the launch Friday of a major new report by the U.N. Economic
Commission for Europe: “From Transition to Transformation: Sustainable and
Inclusive Development in Europe and Central Asia”.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20120322/cd2f8de5/attachment.html>