General Assembly - UN Documents

A/CONF.216/PC/2
E. Addressing new and emerging challenges
37. In 2008 a series of crises hit the global economy, including a rapid escalation
of food prices, unprecedented volatility in energy prices, the unfolding of the
financial crisis in some developed countries, and the ensuing global recession. In
addition, new evidence emerged to suggest that climate change was a more
imminent danger, and also that a number of other environmental trends had
worsened far more rapidly than anticipated and that some planetary boundaries
might even have been exceeded. All countries are vulnerable to these crises, but
they differ widely in their ability to cope with the risks and shocks inherent in them.
Challenges have been exacerbated in developing countries by poverty, competition
for scarce resources, the rapid pace of rural/urban migration, and the concomitant
challenges to provide food, infrastructure and access to basic health, water and
energy services. This vulnerability was exposed most tragically in the recent
earthquakes. Besides the loss of human lives, the development agenda was set back
by many years, additional pressures on the environment were generated, and the
potential for other unanticipated consequences (such as involuntary migration) was
enhanced.
38. To use a cliché, these challenges have created threats as well as opportunities.
On the one hand, they lend urgency to the pursuit of all three dimensions of
sustainable development — not only to the environmental dimension. On the other
hand, the challenges have created a more prominent role for global and national
public policies.
39. Billions of people remain poor and their living standards must rise. The
question is whether the development transition can be completed (as indicated, for
example, by near universal attainment of a threshold level of human development
and well-being) before resource depletion and environmental degradation short
circuit the process. That depends in part on developed countries blazing the trail
towards a de-coupling (or sustainable consumption and production) transition, and
in part on developing countries pursuing a sustainable development transition.
40. The practical importance of sustainable development thinking for development
policy has been diluted by the still common perception that, even if, in theory, limits
are real, in practice they are sufficiently remote in time and malleable as to be
ignored in practice. More than anything else, climate change has begun to challenge
such complacency.
41. The sustainable development challenge posed by climate change illustrates
well the importance of a holistic response from the international community. As
argued in a report to the General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session (A/64/350), the
response to the climate change threat must have multiple prongs: strongly
addressing the mitigation challenge head on in ways that are supportive of
sustainable development; promoting inclusive economic growth in developing
countries as a key means of building resilience and adaptive capacities; urgently
increasing international financial and technical support for the adaptation of
developing countries, especially vulnerable countries; strengthening institutions at
the local level to manage resource scarcities and environmental stresses peacefully;
and strengthening the United Nations and other international institutions to be able
to provide effective humanitarian, reconstruction and development support to
countries faced with climate-related disasters and longer-term impacts.
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