Sustainable Development: Introductory
Remarks
It is a pleasure for me to welcome
all of you to this Conference on sustainable development hosted by
The Ministry of Finance on behalf of The Norwegian Government.
The Conference has an international
part where we will hear from representatives from the OECD, the EU,
the World Business Council of Sustainable Development and the
European Environmental Agency on what they are doing in this
area.
The national part will concentrate
on how to measure sustainable development, notably as a dialogue
between the Government experts group established to advice the
Ministry of Finance on this topic, and stakeholders.
The Norwegian government
established an Action Plan for Sustainable Development in the Fall
of 2003. It was presented to the Parliament as a separate chapter
in our major economic policy document: The National Budget. An
English version, with a foreword by Prime Minister Bondevik, is
available to you here today.
In preparing this action plan, the
Government has drawn on international experience of drawing up
policy strategies for sustainable development:
It is important to ensure that the
objectives, division of responsibility and follow-up mechanisms set
out in the plan are as concrete as possible, to avoid large-scale
and lengthy administrative/political process that do not actually
achieve much in practice.
It is important to focus attention
on a few selected policy priority issues within the field of
sustainable development – which is long term in nature – so that it
leads to concrete and targeted policy action. Analyzing important
policy trends – notably long term interactions between economic and
environmental developments – can make significant contributions in
this regard.
It is a clear advantage to link
policies to promote long term sustainable economic, social and
environmental development to central economic policy process,
decisions and documents. This is to avoid a policy setting where
economic and environmental sustainability issues are pursued
separately. A key strength of the concept of sustainable
development is to use it to look at key interactions, synergies and
conflicts in the longer term. If issues are separated, or if
“everything important” is defined as relevant to sustainable
development – a common error in my view – the concept loses much of
its policy relevance.
Norway`s national strategy for
sustainable development, presented to the Johannesburg Summit in
2002, states that:
“The overriding objective for
Norway and the international community is to make development
ecologically, economically and socially sustainable. The basis for
continued utilisation of nature and natural resources must be
maintained. Within these constraints, we will promote a stable and
healthy economic development, and a society with a high quality of
life. And we will play a part in helping the poor people of the
world to achieve material welfare and a higher quality of
life.”
The Governments action plan, or
National Agenda 21 of 2003, is a follow up intended to advance this
process as an aid to achieve our longer term goals.
The action plan focuses much more
precicely than the strategy on certain key policy areas. In all,
the following seven priority areas have been selected:
- International cooperation to promote sustainable development
and combat poverty.
- Climate change, the ozone layer and long-range air
pollution.
- Biological diversity and cultural heritage.
- Natural resources.
- Hazardous substances.
- Sustainable economic developments.
- Sami perspectives on environmental and natural resource
management.
In the National Budget 2004, we
presented preliminary indicators for progress in these policy
areas, and I have asked a group of experts to advise the Norwegian
Ministry of Finance on possible adjustments and refinements.
The point of departure for
measuring sustainable development will be estimates and projections
of
national wealth. Some supplementary indicators to this key
indicator of sustainable development are needed because estimates
of national wealth, as of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in actual
practice are crude.
Let me also mention that the
political follow up of our National Agenda 21 is delegated to a
group of State Secretaries, of which one of my State Secretaries is
chair. Ultimately, of course, it is the responsibility of the
entire Government to see to it that Agenda 21 is carried out in
actual practice.
It remains for me to wish you a
successful Conference. Politically it is a very important topic,
and on behalf of the Norwegian Government I hope it will contribute
to broad engagement from other Ministries, the business sector,
Local Government, NGOs and independent experts to the overriding
objective of achieving sustainable development.
