India offers to host next meet on global sustainability
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COMMENTS 
India proposes to hold the next meeting of a high-level international panel on global sustainability sometime around April 2011. The panel faces the task of finding a solution to the challenge of lifting people out of poverty whilst promoting sustainable development
India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, in New York to attend the Global Sustainability Panel Meet on Sustainable Development, has proposed to hold the next meeting of the high-level panel in India next year.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has issued a challenge to the panel to find a solution to the challenge of lifting people out of poverty whilst promoting sustainable development. By 2050, the world’s population will have grown by almost 50%, and global greenhouse gas emissions will have to be slashed by half by that year if climate change is to be kept in check, he said after the body’s first meeting in New York.
Calling it the “50-50 challenge,” he stressed that “we will need to provide a dignified life for 9 billion people, while at the same time preserving the resources and ecosystems that sustain us”.
The 21-member high-level panel, formed in August, includes Ramesh, United States Envoy to the UN Susan E Rice, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, and the European Union’s Commissioner for Climate Change Connie Hedegaard. The panel, which is co-chaired by Finland’s President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma, will deliver its final report to Ban Ki-Moon at the end of 2011.
Ban Ki-Moon will use the recommendations of the panel to provide inputs into preparations for the annual climate change conference held every year, and the UN Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in 2012.
Ramesh stressed that the panel could not be viewed as “bypass surgery” for the ongoing climate change negotiations. “We can discuss issues related to climate change, but this is not a negotiating forum,” Ramesh said. “This is not a problem-solving forum… we cannot have another group of 19-20 leaders or economists, social scientists and environmentalists suddenly discussing climate change negotiations.”
Ramesh further asserted that the lion’s share of responsibility for bringing about sustainable development rested with the West, and that it could not “be at the expense of growth in developing nations”. “Sustainable development is not just a matter of livelihoods… it is also a matter of lifestyles. What happens in the US in terms of sustainability affects local livelihoods in different parts of the world,” he said.
Source: Press Trust of India, September 20, 2010
UN News Centre, September 2010