UN Development Programme’s annual 2013 Human Development Report is stimulating widespread media attention in its conclusions that some 40 developing and emerging economies have done better than expected to reduce poverty in their countries.  Entitled “The Rise of the South:  Human Progress in a Diverse World”, the report is based on the Human Development Index measuring health, wealth and education and not just GDP growth.  The report praises these countries for their progress – Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey, but also Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda and Tunisia.  The report also raises the alarm that inaction on climate change could reverse all of this, with a potential impact on poverty to as many as 3 billion people worldwide by 2050.  See the report here.

A launch event will take place on 27 March at the University of Geneva.  See details here.

From the CMBD News 18 March 2013

Even as the United Nations was gearing back up for its new session of the General Assembly in New York last week, we had the occasion to meet with UN officials in Geneva, where the leadership coming from the Human Rights Council and the UN Conference on Trade and Development has already been noted in the latest CMBD News. We add here the insights on the leadership role emanating from the Geneva office of the UN Development Programme in mobilizing the corporate and philanthropic role in multilateralism and rethinking the Millennium Development Goals.  Our thanks to UNDP’s Deputy Director Najat Rochdi for a briefing on UNDP’s central role in facilitating the rethinking for the Sustainable Development Goals and emphasizing the outreach to business as a real actor in sustainable development.  Ms. Rochdi described the rethinking to entail the same concepts as the MDGs but with some different objectives.  There is no global solution to sustainable development, and the SDGs must address local needs.  There is, to be sure, an open working group at the global level, but the consultative process will include at least 50 national consultations overseen by UNDP, if not more by September 2013.  There will also be some ten thematic groups on issues such as energy, agriculture and education to identify global commitments and then specific issues within each country.  Another emphasis is on peace and security and highlighting democratic governance, including social justice and equity.  These are all ambitious goals, and we appreciate the inclusiveness of the process here in Geneva as well as through the work of the High-Level Task Force on which CMBD member Unilever is represented by its CEO Paul Polman.  We note a few of the events related to the SDGs and other multi-stakeholder initiatives in our Briefly Noted section of the CMBD News.

From the CMBD News 1 October 2012

Last week, we reported on highlights from World Water Week, the annual end-of-August event hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute, and we want to add an item of interest to that report.  This comes from “UN Water”, or, more precisely, from a senior water resources advisor at the UN Development Programme on behalf of UN Water, on the development of a new global monitoring and reporting system for water supply, sanitation and water resources management.  UN Water is a grouping of some 30 UN agencies and programmes, supplemented with NGO and private sector partners like the UN Global Compact, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Global Water Partnership.  Actually, the report mentions the initiative as a joint effort by UNDP with UNEP.  During World Water Week in Stockholm, this senior water resources advisor at UNDP, Joakim Harlin, reported that the project was underway with the goal of preparing a proposed Sustainable Development Goal to replace the current Millennium Development Goal on safe drinking water and sanitation.  The general view among the water experts is that the MDG was too narrowly defined – at least, that its success in reaching the drinking water target by 2010 (early by 5 years) – was perhaps not ambitious enough.  The target for access to sanitation, by the way, has not yet been achieved.  In any case, the UN Water initiative is looking beyond these access issues to linkages with SDGs on energy and food, and even on issues of large land acquisitions motivated by multinationals wanting access to water resources.  The monitoring and reporting system may also address water efficiency, quality, groundwater and transboundary water issues.   See a report of Mr. Harlin’s presentation here.  We went looking for further information on the UN Water website without success.  Check the website here.  We have seen earlier reports of leadership for UN Water coming from the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization, but there is no easily findable documentation of this fact on the UN Water website or the WMO website.  See the WMO website here.

From the CMBD News 10 September 2012

CMBD has prepared a matrix of annual flagship publications of interest to the business community from the many international organizations that we cover, available to our members.  We mention a few of them here to give readers an idea of how comprehensive and useful these in-depth reports can be.  The World Bank comes out with its annual World Development Report in September every year.   UNCTAD will be publishing its annual Trade and Development Report on 12 September.  World economic outlooks are published both by OECD and IMF somewhat later in the fall, but there will be an interim OECD report on 6 September for its November publication, while the IMF will be issuing its World Economic Outlookand its Global Financial Stability Report at the annual meetings of the Bank and Fund, on 9 and 10 October in Tokyo, Japan.   And the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the UNCTAD jointly publish theWorld Economic Situation and Prospects in late November.   Of course, each of these flagship publications is subject to interim pre-publication or post-publication updates if the economic projections change significantly.   These are all useful publications for assessing the state of the global economy.

Other publications are more specific but also useful.  UNCTAD has flagship publications on technology and innovation, technology and the environment, and on the information economy in October and November.  The FAO has a State of Food Insecurity in the World report coming out in October, and the ILO has a Global Wage Report coming out in November.  The biannual World Health Report will also be coming out this October, with a focus on research for better health.  And the International Energy Agency issues its annual World Energy Outlook in November.  UNDP usually brings out its annual Human Development Report in November, too.  We will, of course, be highlighting key messages from many of these reports as they come out, but it is useful to look forward to the variety of reports that are usually well researched with up-to-date global, regional and national data and analysis.

From the CMBD News 20 August 2012

The preparations for the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development (to be held on 20 to 22 June 2012) have some disparate messages about the social and economic pillars to complement the environmental pillar.  We hear a lot of talk, of course, that sustainable development needs to balance these three pillars, but we are aware that the main preparations for the Rio+20 Summit are nonetheless in the hands of the environmental decision-makers who don’t necessarily have the networks or mandates to integrate the economic and social perspectives.  The UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report Office sought to correct this with a special Global Human Development Forum last week, with the UNDP Bureau of Development Policy and the Turkish Ministry of Development and an “Istanbul Declaration” that asserts the linkages between global social inequities and environmental deterioration.  See the Declaration here. The 200 or so invited experts to this Forum were in agreement that social inclusion, social protection and equity need to be priorities at the Rio+20 Summit, “in recognition of the fact that economic development has too often gone hand in hand with environmental degradation and increasing inequalities”.  The implication is that both social and economic inequalities within and among nations are aggravating environmental risks and degradation, and vice versa.  This also seems to be the thrust of the message coming from various NGOs organizing side events in New York during the preparatory process for a parallel “People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice” during the Rio+20 Summit.

Somehow this doesn’t quite get at the economic pillar other than to condemn economic development as something that has contributed to both environmental degradation and social inequalities.  While there are understandable global concerns about the phenomenon of growing social inequalities and also about the need to develop sustainable environmental policies to combat climate change, declining biodiversity, water scarcity, etc., the absence of any separate attention in these deliberations to a sustainable economic pillar as such is rather disconcerting.   We do know, of course, that the business community is being encouraged to participate in its own “Corporate Sustainability Forum” on 15 to 18 June in Rio, but even the UN Secretary-General has acknowledged that the “principles of sustainability” have yet to penetrate business strategy and those that are engaged in practicing corporate sustainability are a small percentage of the world’s enterprises.  See his remarks here.  It is encouraging that governments are proposing in the “zero draft” for the Summit that both public and private sources are needed for financing sustainable development and that there needs to be a central role for the private sector.  See excellent reporting by the IISD Reporting Services on these negotiations and related side events here.  And the Business Action for Sustainable Development is co-hosting with four diplomatic missions (Benin, Barbados, Netherlands and Vietnam) a lunchtime discussion on 26 March at the UN in New York to promote a dialogue between business and governments.    But more seems to be needed on putting some meaning to the economic pillar – and finding ways for all of these groups to interact with each other rather than having their own separate forums.

With a momentum for looking at financing and FDI in the world of development policy, we are including a thematic discussion on the role of business in development in our CMBD meetings this year.  At our first Council Dialogue on 23 February, we met with UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi as well as senior officials from UNDP, WTO, World Bank, ILO, FAO, USAID, and the diplomatic missions of Sweden, Germany and Nigeria.  We reported on this two weeks ago (27 February 2012 CMBD News), and we bring it up again here to note that we have a number of action items to consider that are pertinent to the preparations for UNCTAD XIII.  We will also be continuing with this thematic focus on a visit to the OECD in April.  The February discussions included recommendations for defining and establishing an inclusive platform for dialogue with the private sector as a partner in assessing and implementing development priorities.  Improving linkages between big business and small and medium enterprises in global supply chains, engaging in the preparation of a set of Sustainable Development Goals at the UN, developing a financial framework for development funding that includes private sector investment, developing a set of principles for all stakeholders in the development process and a monitoring framework for compliance with these principles were all mentioned.  We will continue to highlight these recommendations for action as we review policy debates and events here in our weekly commentary for CMBD News.

We had our first CMBD dialogue of the year on “Business in Development: Changing Concepts of Development and Linkages to the Private Sector” on Thursday, 23 February, marking the 5th Anniversary of the CMBD. We were honored to welcome a return visit with Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, who was our inaugural keynote speaker at the first CMBD event in February 2007, and has graciously shared his insights with us on frequent special occasions. We also benefited from a full programme of outstanding guests – Swedish Ambassador to the WTO Joakim Reiter, Director of the UNDP Geneva Office Cécile Molinier, WTO Deputy Director-General Valentine Rugwabiza, Director of the World Bank Group’s Geneva Office Selina Jackson and others from USAID, the German Mission, the Nigerian Mission, ITC, FAO and ILO. We were aided as well by a background briefing note on the Busan Partnership for Effective Development, business-inclusive initiatives at UNDP, the World Bank, and the WTO and in bilateral aid programmes. Participants discussed the challenges of bringing trade and development communities together, concentrating on the development-effectiveness of aid, multiple approaches to partnering with the private sector, the challenges of new donors, balancing markets with regulation, finding the right platform for business engagement in development, linking multinational enterprises with small and medium enterprises and smallholders, the role of government in facilitating distributive models, business as a key source of innovation, the success of ad hoc coalitions and learning how to shift from capacity-building to actual partnerships. We will pick up on these themes in future CMBD dialogues, including our planned visit to the OECD in April.

The FAO joined together with a host of organizations to produce a comprehensive report on a marine and coastal ecosystems approach to the green economy, entitled The Green Economy in a Blue World.  Others involved were UN agencies including UNDP, UNEP, IMO and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, along with Swiss-based IUCN and research entities such as the World Fish Center and GRID-Arendal. This kind of collaboration among numerous organizations is characteristic of the cross-fertilization that is needed for informed global policy debates. See the report here. The report points out the crisis in fish stocks, with 30 percent of all fish stocks being overexploited and another 50 percent being fully exploited, a situation that has been recognized in the negotiations on WTO disciplines involving fisheries subsidies. There is a “Friends of Fish” cluster of Argentina, Australia, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland, Pakistan, Peru and the United States at the WTO that has asserted that certain fisheries subsidies are contributing to this overcapacity and overfishing, Many developing countries, as well as Japan, Korea and Chinese Taipei have disagreed with this perspective but have also argued for flexibilities in granting subsidies. The new report strengthens the arguments in favor of sustainable fishing strategies and also includes an in-depth analysis of the growing aquaculture industry. We think this is an area where new negotiating approaches at the WTO may benefit from the discussions on the role of the “green economy” in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication at the Rio+20 Summit, to be held on 20 to 22 June 2012.

The report also describes the potential for a “tide of economic and social benefits” from green investments in other aspects of the marine and coastal ecosystems. For one, it is still the case that the overwhelming proportion (90 percent) of transport in world commerce is maritime shipping, and this remains the most efficient way of transporting bulk goods. The report describes how the shipping industry is introducing improvements in its environmental impact, including reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Many other maritime or coastal developments are also promising avenues for deriving economic and social benefits from green investments, including coastal tourism, renewable energy in wind, wave or tidal developments and even deep sea mineral exploitation. And finally, there is also a link between the nutrient pollution of nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff and untreated sewage, on the one hand, and opportunities for better management of nutrient management in agriculture and stricter regulation of wastewater and manure, on the other, that can also increase jobs and sustainable economic growth.