At the outset, I wish to express my
congratulations to the President of the General Assembly
upon his election to preside over the Assembly at its
sixty-eighth session. I wish him the greatest of success
in his task and in his efforts to promote the initiatives
proposed for his term.
I am here as a representative of the Dominican
Republic, which was one of the signatories in 1945
of the Charter of the United Nations, which entrusts
the Organization with the monumental task of saving
succeeding generations from the scourge of war. In the
68 years since its inception, there has not been another
world war, but today we are facing a cataclysm that
is just as lethal and destructive as a war of planetary
dimensions: global poverty. It is a war with casualties
in the millions, which calls for a radical change in
the economic paradigm and for the forging of a new
culture — the culture of sustainability. As I address the
Assembly, there is no doubt in my mind that to triumph
over such a daunting challenge, all nations must make
difficult decisions, which will require the full weight of
our collective responsibility.
Allow me to refer to the extensive and detailed
document adopted at the Rio de Janeiro United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) last
year (resolution 66/288, annex), entitled “The future
we want”. In that text, Member States renewed their
commitment to sustainable development and to the
promotion of a future that is sustainable in economic,
social and environmental terms for our planet and for
present and future generations. That declaration shows
that the leaders of the world’s nations are committed to
doing what is needed to attain that future. We therefore
have a road map with profound implications.
Let us acknowledge that we are taking on
an overwhelming responsibility, because we are
committing ourselves to building a reality that is totally
unprecedented in the modern world. Let us acknowledge
that development to date has not been sustainable in
any way. It has not been sustainable either socially
or economically. It has been even less sustainable in
environmental terms. The systems of production that
we have used to achieve economic growth have been
based on methods that have proved to be harmful to
the environment, and the systems that we have used
to distribute the wealth produced have created deep
chasms of social inequality and exclusion.
Over time, we have reached a situation that we now
consider to be intolerable: a world in which more than
1 billion people are living in a state of extreme poverty
and hunger; a world in which many millions of human
beings lack adequate health care, drinking water, good-
quality education or decent employment; and a world in
which extreme malnutrition and social exclusion prevail
to a morally unacceptable extent. If we aspire to a world
where development is sustainable, we must first accept
our shared responsibility for all parts of all societies,
and agree that it is time for actions, not words.
To translate a commitment of such a magnitude
into reality, it must be based on achievable actions and
attainable goals, and we must be prepared to take bold
action, as we are doing in the Dominican Republic,
on several unprecedented fronts. We are putting
citizens at the centre of our policies and making the
fight against poverty and inequality our top priority.
We are implementing a new development model based
on a long-term national strategy built on the pillars of
three fundamental social pacts: a fiscal pact, a pact for
education and a pact for electricity. We are building
transparency into Government actions and establishing
citizens’ groups to oversee and monitor purchasing and
contract systems. We are making support for small-
scale agricultural producers a priority. We are doubling
the budget for free and compulsory public education.
We are extending the school day, and we are putting a
permanent end to illiteracy.
Following the commitments made at the Rio+20
Conference, we have taken a few steps forward and
are moving towards an agreement on a road map that
will lead us to sustainable development and to the
eradication of extreme poverty. We have implemented
a process to determine as accurately as possible what
the sustainable development goals for the post-2015
international development agenda should be.
We are pleased to note that we all agree that the
greatest challenge the world faces is to eradicate poverty
and, for that reason, that goal has been given top priority
on the agenda of our people and our Organization.
Our countries have common problems, but our
economic, social, historical, geographical, demographic
and cultural realities are different. Each of those
dimensions plays a role in how those problems may
or may not be addressed and resolved. Moreover, our
responsibilities for the creation of or the aggravation of
those common problems, such as climate change, are
clearly differentiated.
My country, the Dominican Republic, suffers
the consequences of climate change, because of its
geographical location in the path of annual hurricanes
and tropical storms. For that reason, we are working
to strengthen and improve our preparedness for the
management of risks associated with natural disasters.
We are building a collection centre for emergency
assistance and are working on the creation of a centre
of excellence, dedicated to the education and training
of human resources for assistance in disasters, which
will serve the nations in the entire Caribbean region.
Next month, from 18 to 20 November, the
Dominican Republic will host the third International
Conference on the HOPEFOR initiative, to which all
Members of the United Nations are cordially invited.
Universal sustainable development is a goal that
requires a new vision and approach on the international
stage. In order for development to be sustainable in
our nations, we must undertake structural reforms that
will change many of our policies and our economic and
social systems, turning them inside out, the way a sock
is turned inside out. With sustainable development, we
have taken on a commitment of biblical proportions,
a universal commitment to care for our brothers and
sisters, especially for those who most need to be elevated
to the conditions required for adignified human life.
The Organization is helping to point the way with
the launch of parallel processes of study, discussion
and analysis; panels of eminent persons; consultations
with regional economic commissions; the Leadership
Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions
Network; and the open-ended working groups that are
contributing to marking the path.
We would therefore like to take the opportunity
to express our appreciation for the work done by
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in putting documents
in the hands of Member States that will serve as a guide
for our debates and our decisions. One such document,
An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development, a
report prepared for the Secretary-General in June by
the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development
Solutions Network, is a bold and optimistic platform.
It is an exhaustive and practical plan that requires
a collective commitment that we cannot shirk. All
reports agree that we cannot continue treating the part
of the planet that each of our nations occupies as if the
resources that nature has generously put within them
were inexhaustible. The world’s forests, water supplies
and mineral resources are decreasing, and animal
species are endangered. At the same time, we continue
to use methods of cultivation that poison or impoverish
the Earth and methods of industrial production that
poison the air we breathe.
We must revise the very methods by which our
economic growth is driven. That is not a new concern
for the United Nations. We have been talking about
sustainable development for decades. What is new now
is that the situation has become a matter of urgency.
The time for words and promises is over. The time
for action is now. We must step up the pace to establish
the foundations of sustainable development, because
time is running out. We must address the purpose,
knowing that what we do or do not agree upon in
this session of the General Assembly may determine
whether the future of our peoples, or rather, the future
of humankind, will be promising or miserable. That
presumption may seem exaggerated to representatives
of larger or more highly developed nations. If so, we
invite those nations to look beyond their borders and
to consider the peoples of the nations from which
they seek cheap labour. They must look at the peoples
whose human resources they employ to produce their
goods and services. They must look at the peoples in
the countries that need the industries of the developed
countries to process their mineral exports and at the
peoples in the countries where they want to market
their products.
For many of those people, the situation is intolerable.
That is why we are pleased to note that the documents
that have already been written and which are intended
to serve as a platform for our debates and decisions
have an optimistic tone. They give us, for example, the
assurance that if we act now, the problems we face will
not become insoluble.
Universal sustainable development, which
addresses the challenges that have been so clearly
identified, will translate into social justice in the world.
It will also translate into peace, international peace,
the achievement of which is a strategic goal of the
Organization.
To speak of eradicating extreme poverty, measured
in terms of living on an income of less than $1.25 a
day, sounds like an enormous goal, especially because
it is estimated that some 1.2 billion people in the world
suffer from poverty. In reality, that is just one step in
a long journey. If those who are now below the income
level of $1.25 per day are elevated to an income level
of $2 per day, we will have eliminated what we now
call extreme poverty. However, we all know that human
beings cannot meet their basic needs on an income of
$2 per day. The difference in hardship between the one
income range and the other is not very noticeable. What
happens is that talking about poverty in statistical
terms does not allow us to visualize, much less feel, the
reality of the human misery and desolation behind the
numbers and the percentages. How can we understand
the pain of a father and mother who have suffered the
loss of their child when the words in which we are
informed about that family tragedy are that every 10
seconds a child dies from hunger-related causes in the
world?
Let us put ourselves in the place of parents of
families living in a state of extreme poverty. They
have to raise their children in extremely unsafe living
conditions, without sanitation or safe drinking water,
without sufficient resources to buy medicine or to
provide each child with food to ensure proper nutrition,
without resources, without a bed or mosquito net to
protect him from insects that transmit serious diseases.
They have to decide which of their children can go to
school and which cannot, or which of their children
have to work and which do not.
We know that a difficult road still remains ahead
before we can agree on a satisfactory arrangement for
all in regard to the post-2015 international development
agenda and the most effective ways to implement
it. Let us remember that what we need is not a new
commitment. We have had many commitments to
eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. We have had the
World Food Summit of 1996, the Millennium Summit
in 2000, another World Food Summit five years later in
2002, and the recent Rio+20 Conference in 2012. What
we need now is for those commitments to finally be
translated into political action.
Although sustainable development may sound
like an economic concept, it really is a political
concept. That is why we are discussing it here, at the
Organization, which is a forum of States and therefore a
political forum. Economists measure the dimensions or
the pillars of reality in economic terms. Economists and
other specialists can set the goals that must be reached
for a sustainable development that meets their exact
specifications. But political decisions are the driving
force. Political decisions are what ultimately determine
whether or not the goals are achieved.
We therefore have the primary responsibility. It
depends on us to put the declarations of good intentions
into action.