Welcome Statement - 66th Commission Session
Your Excellency, Mr. Chung Un-chan, Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea,
Your Excellency, Madame Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh,
Your Excellency, Mr. Edward Natapei, Prime Minister of Vanuatu,
Your Excellency, Mr. Anote Tong, President of Kiribati,
Your Excellency, Mr. Kim Jong-hoon, Minister of Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea,
Excellencies, Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me great pleasure to extend a very warm welcome to you all to the sixty-sixth session of the Commission.
I would like first to express my deep appreciation to you, Mr. Prime Minister, for your presence here to inaugurate this session.
Mr. Prime Minister,
On behalf of all ESCAP member States, I would like to express our deep gratitude to the Republic of Korea for its commitment to the United Nations, for graciously hosting this Commission Session, and for hosting our sub regional office for North East Asia.
Distinguished Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is my third Commission session as Executive Secretary and it is a significant benchmark in our collective development journey. We are stronger in presence and stronger in voice. We face challenges that are global in scale, and more than ever, require us to build upon our collective strengths as Asia Pacific to lead and respond. ESCAP was created so that the peoples of Asia Pacific can meet together, hold together and advance together to build a more inclusive, sustainable future with regional solutions to development challenges.
More than ever, Asia Pacific needs a strong regional platform. Asia’s rapid economic rebound from the global financial crisis presents immediate opportunities for our collective action in promoting sustained and inclusive economic growth within the Asia Pacific region. Together, we need to identify the problems before us, but also the solutions. We can develop a common understanding of the challenges, and find consensus on the way forward, to make this a sustained economic recovery.
We are indeed at a crossroad. There are multiple threats to our development progress. Despite the apparent economic rebound of today, we cannot take our overall development for granted. The crisis of the past two years underscores the threat that global economic shifts continue to hold for the region. We remain vulnerable to the man-made shocks of global capital flows and food and fuel price increases, and we are vulnerable to natural shocks and disasters and the increasing threat of climate change to alter our ecological balance.
At the crossroad, it is up to us to decide – to shrink from these challenges or to seize the opportunity afforded by them to take a new path for our common development. We can harness our collective economic power, our talents and our resources to close our development gap and reach our potential as a region.
Working together, we can invest our financial capital in regional economic growth through increased intra-regional trade, and improved connectivity between our countries. These are the straight forward steps economists recommend we take in order to sustain the present economic rebound.
But we can go beyond that as well, in moving forward for real recovery and sustainable growth. We can invest in our social capital as well, as we progress to the next level in our shared development journey. It is time to move from individual country strengths to collective regional strengths; to introduce balance back into our economic and social order; to develop common regional positions and solutions to global problems; to address the disparities in our region; to value the gifts of our earth.
The opportunity is now for Asia Pacific to emerge as a leader: in the global economy, in the realm of social progress, and in safeguarding our global environment. Asia Pacific’s development relies on our ability to achieve three balances on our shared development journey.
First, balance between our economic growth, our social needs and the limits of the earth: the three interconnected pillars of development;
Second, balance between the individual and the collective; how to transform the initiative of each into the common good for all; and
Third, balance between the power of the market and the power of the state: the global financial crisis of the past two years underscores the limits of relying solely on the market to correct itself and the dangers of over-regulation by the state.
Distinguished Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,
This year’s Commission session focuses on our ability to harness the enormous economic transformation underway in Asia and the Pacific today, and to seek to sustain, through this transformation, the greatest social and economic advancement ever known by the people of Asia and Pacific.
A concerted effort by governments across the region to adopt green growth and sustainable new technology approaches to development will improve the lives of the people of our region.
A stable and supportive financial system for development and increased access to banking services and inclusive financing will sustain the transformation across the region of people in poverty, now given the opportunity to achieve higher standards of living.
And, a renewed regional focus on joining our business and government efforts together, to use our wealth to address a range of economic, social and environmental challenges. Responsible public private partnerships can benefit all, allowing the power of the marketplace to achieve public good.
These are the innovative tools and policies that ESCAP promotes together with our member States as we journey to close the development gap, achieving the Millennium Development Goals in our region.
We seek to achieve these goals not because we can, but because we must. The long term development challenges before us are too great to ignore. Faced with an unprecedented scale and pace of industrialization and urbanization, the Asia Pacific region is experiencing unprecedented resource stresses and environmental pressures including the threat of climate change. To assist member states in addressing these challenges, ESCAP seeks to foster, through our in-depth analysis, strategic policy options and capacity-building programmes, a paradigm shift towards inclusive and balanced, economic, social and ecological development.
Distinguished Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,
As a region, the time to act is now. The opportunity afforded by an early rebound for Asian economies can not be squandered. More than ever we need a strong regional platform as Asia Pacific is resetting itself and investing in itself on an agreed-upon development pathway. ESCAP as the regional arm of the United Nations is your platform, the Commission your UN regional assembly, and we are here to support you.
Distinguished Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am heartened by the continued extraordinary support and encouragement that member states have given me at the highest political level as I have gone about my task of repositioning this Commission as a key driver of the development process in Asia Pacific. By working together as a region, Asia Pacific is emerging as a leader in the new global economy, the economic powerhouse in a new multipolar world. By working together, we can seize the opportunity for deeper transformation to build more resilient societies and economies for a future based on shared prosperity, social progress and environmental sustainability across Asia Pacific.
I thank you.