I warmly
congratulate Mr. John Ashe on his election as President
at the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly and
wish him success during his term.
Over the past decade, the world has experienced a
string of crises. Development has slowed. Confidence
in the global economic system has been shaken. There
are signs of recovery, but growth remains anaemic and
uneven. Unemployment is high in many countries,
particularly among the young. That has exacerbated
problems by increasing poverty levels, widening
income gaps, adding to social instability and causing
public trust in Governments and institutions to decline.
Extreme poverty remains a major concern in many
parts of the world.
Violence and conflict are as great a threat to global
stability as poverty, and the international community
must respond firmly to them. In that regard, Singapore
welcomes the unanimous adoption of Security Council
resolution 2118 (2013) on the destruction of chemical
weapons in Syria. We strongly condemn the use of
chemical weapons under any circumstances, as it
constitutes a violation of international law. We remain
deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in
Syria, and we hope that the “Geneva II” conference
will be convened promptly and will find a political
solution to end the conflict and violence. We also offer
condolences to the Government and the people of Kenya
over the brutal attacks in Westgate Mall, a painful
reminder of the need to remain vigilant against terror.
All countries must unite against violence and terror in
order to create an environment in which sustainable
development can be pursued.
The global ecosystem is under stress from
the transnational effects of human development
activities. Human progress has come at the expense
of the environment and the climate. Deforestation,
desertification of land and the transboundary pollution
of the sea, land and air degrade our quality of life and
threaten human civilization.
We cannot go on with business as usual. We need
to rethink and retool our economies and societies and
to place poverty eradication and sustainability at the
centre of our development agenda. The President’s
choice of “The post-2015 development agenda: setting
the stage” as the theme for the sixty-eighth session of
the General Assembly is therefore particularly timely.
The 1987 Brundtland report of the World Commission
on Environment and Development defined sustainable
development as development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. That should
remain our guiding principle as we negotiate the post-
2015 development agenda.
The United Nations has a critical role to play in the
evolution of the post-2015 development agenda. Only
the United Nations, with its universal membership and
access to global data, has the standing to establish a
new global development agenda that is inclusive,
effective and adaptable. The United Nations has
adopted an inclusive multi-stakeholder approach to
gather the views of Member States and harness the
energy of civil society. Several mechanisms have been
set up, including the High-level Political Forum, the
Open Working Group on Sustainable Development
Goals, in which Singapore is participating actively,
and the Working Group on Sustainable Development
Financing. We strongly encourage the United Nations
to demonstrate leadership and weave those strands of
discussion into a single, clear framework. That would
allow Member States to focus their attention and
prioritize their resources to meet critical challenges.
Singapore understands very well the importance
of poverty eradication and sustainable development
in securing a country’s future. When we became
independent, in 1965, we faced several challenges. To
uplift our population, which had only a small number
of skilled workers and graduates, the Government
focused on education and skills development. To create
jobs and alleviate poverty, we also gradually moved our
industries up the value chain towards higher-skilled,
innovation-focused sectors. Given Singapore’s land
and resource constraints, sustainable development was
a necessity, not just a slogan. At 700 square kilometres,
Singapore is slightly bigger than Manhattan but smaller
than the five boroughs of New York. To ensure that our
city-State remained liveable, we had to ensure that our
policies on housing, infrastructure, transport and the
environment were well integrated in a long-term and
holistic vision.
Over several decades, we have managed to pursue
growth while preserving a good living environment. For
instance, despite the country’s being densely populated
and highly urbanized, our greening efforts have resulted
in more than 50 per cent of Singapore being covered by
vegetation. The Singapore Botanic Gardens, founded in
the nineteenth century, is the only city botanic garden
in the world to include a tract of original, primary
rainforest. And despite our rapid development, we have
managed to preserve much of our biodiversity. One of
our nature reserves, Bukit Timah, contains more plant
species than the entire North American continent.
We have also developed creative solutions to
overcome some of our resource constraints. Take the
example of water: Singapore now imports slightly more
than 40 per cent of our water needs. To meet our drinking
and industrial needs, we use a variety of methods,
including collecting water through reservoirs, the
desalination of seawater, and cutting-edge membrane
technology to reclaim waste water into high-grade,
ultra-clean water, which we call “NEWater”. When
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Singapore in
March 2012, he was impressed enough by our water
management to make a toast with NEWater, rather
than wine, calling NEWater, “something far more
valuable — the elixir of life”.
Let me now turn to the post-2015 development
agenda and suggest three priority areas. First, we should
learn from the example of the Millennium Development
Goals. We should avoid being prescriptive. As each
country is unique, countries should be allowed to
exercise flexibility as to which goals they choose to
prioritize and how they will achieve them. The new
global development road map should have poverty
eradication and sustainable development at its centre
and should converge around a single, clear set of
practical and quantifiable goals. We should keep to
that outcomes-based approach and not forget that the
core purpose of the post-2015 development agenda is to
improve the lives of people. Today, 1.2 billion people
still live in extreme poverty. That is a staggering figure.
Secondly, we should emphasize urban management
and the intertwined issues of water and sanitation.
According to the United Nations Human Settlements
Programme, more than half of the world’s population
lives in urban areas. By 2050, 7 out of 10 people will
live in urban areas. Many cities are already under
strain. More than 2.5 billion people lack access to basic
sanitation, and another 800 million do not have safe
drinking water. Some 2,000 children die every day
from diarrhoea. The crisis will be exacerbated as more
people move to crowded cities, where the infrastructure
cannot grow fast enough to support them. Singapore
introduced a draft resolution in July, which was
adopted by the General Assembly (resolution 67/291),
to designate 19 November as World Toilet Day. We
hope that will encourage countries to take a close look
at how the nexus of urbanization, water and sanitation
can be better managed.
Thirdly, it is important for the views and concerns
of small States to be incorporated into the post-2015
development agenda. Small States make up more
than half of the United Nations membership; many,
especially small island developing States (SIDS), are
among the more vulnerable Members of the United
Nations family. Singapore identifies closely with the
urgent concerns of our fellow SIDS. The third SIDS
Conference, to be held in 2014, will be an important
milestone, and Singapore has participated actively
in all the preparatory meetings to date. At last year’s
inaugural Conference on Small Island Developing
States, which was organized by the Forum of Small
States (FOSS), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon agreed
that small and vulnerable States deserved special
attention. Singapore will continue to work with the
members of FOSS to share the perspectives of small
States and ensure that our views are factored into the
evolution of the new global development road map.
Although we are a small country, we will continue
to play our part in assisting other countries in poverty
eradication and furthering the sustainable development
agenda. We established the Singapore Cooperation
Programme in 1992 to share our developmental
experience with our friends — our successes and our
failures alike. We believe that technical assistance
and capacity-building are more effective in creating
the right conditions for growth. More than 80,000
Government officials from 170 countries have received
training under the Programme in areas as diverse as
sustainable urban development, water management
and human-resource development. To support our
engagement in the post-2015 development agenda,
we will develop and customize new programmes on
sustainable development and climate change that meet
the needs of SIDS and least developed countries.
Singapore has also been working with other
Governments to promote sustainable development
internationally. In 2007, Singapore and China embarked
on a joint project to develop the Sino-Singapore
Tianjin Eco-city, which is envisioned as a city that
will be socially harmonious, environmentally friendly
and resource-efficient. That will become a model
for sustainable urbanization in China. By 2020,
the Eco-city is intended to be a low-carbon, green-
living environment approximately half the size of
Manhattan, housing around 350,000 people. Singapore
will continue to share its experience in sustainable
urbanization through Singapore-led events such as the
biennial Singapore International Water Week and the
World Cities Summit.
The only way to secure our collective future
is through poverty eradication and sustainable
development. The next two years will be critical for the
world as we embark on an ambitious journey to map out
the post-2015 agenda. The United Nations must play a
leading role, and we are fully committed to working
closely with other Member States to achieve that.