International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

Gro Harlem Brundtland

Sustainable Development and its Global Significance

Three weeks ago, when I last visited my native country, Norway, my role was to
launch the countrys largest and newest Wind-mill park,at the Western Coast at
Smla. One could ask: Why is Norway, with its water falls, and oil and gas investing
in such exotic, expensive, renewable energy sources?

First of all, as I reiterated during that launch: At present no single energy source or
mix of energy sources is at hand to meet the world-wide need for energy, one that
is dependable, safe and environmentally sound.

These are words taken directly from Our Common Future in 1987 in the
introductory part of our chapter on Energy: Choices for Environment and
Development. This is still the case today.

We all need to make our contributions to overcome this crucial gap with regard to
a future pattern that is sustainable.

With that in mind my country has set ambitious goals and put in place policies that
make investments in renewable energy feasible.We need many such steps.

It reminds me of 1990, when I again became Prime Minister. I shocked everybody,

in Norway and abroad by introducing a carbon emission tax on the oil industry on
the Norwegian continental shelf. It was a concrete step towards reducing climate
change, taken already 15 years ago.

It is indeed a great honor to be invited here to Basel, and to be asked to speak

about global issues so close to my heart.

In the last 30 years I have increasingly focused on global issues and perspectives,
first as a young environment minister, then Prime Minister, but also as a member of
the Palme Commission on disarmament and security issues, as leader of the world
commission on environment and development, as member of the Carnegie
commission on preventing deadly conflict, and as director general of the World
Health Organization where I served for five years until July 2003.

I believe that 2003 will be seen as an historic year for global public health. Not only
did we succeed to agree on the first ever global health treaty the Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control, a true gift to the world, a true gift to future
generations.

We also faced up to a global infectious disease threat, SARS. It was an outbreak

that underlined the crucial role of WHO, and of international health collaboration.
It captured imaginations, often more column inches than the war in Iraq, and
always, more headlines than AIDS, TB and malaria.

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

One person infected, staying at an international hotel, put the world at risk. And
unlike other diseases which we can prevent or treat, SARS was undiagnosable,
untreatable, and, for one of every six people, fatal.

The way the world responded to SARS was global public health at its best.
Scientists put aside their differences and drive to be the first, and came together,
to share sequencing and study results. Doctors from around the world came
together in virtual conferences, to share advice on how best to treat patients.
Public health authorities from opposite sides of the globe flew to Geneva, to share
their experiences with SARS, their success and failures with 192 member states at
the World Health Assembly. And as a result, in just four short months, we have
identified a new disease and contained a global outbreak, which could have
become a global catastrophe.

The short sharp shock made us all stand up and pay attention. Due to the speed of
science and using the best evidence, we quickly knew that SARS could infect,
anyone, anywhere. Governments were committed. Resources made available.
People made aware. Health workers given tools for action. Information shared
across borders. In short, there was global mobilization to fight a global threat. The
result we probably wont find ourselves 10 years down the road with SARS also
endemic in the countries, which can least afford it devastating lives and
economies. Because we acted. And acted together.

My own experience in life has led me to concentrate on the links between people
and the environment, between health and development, and the crucial
observation that there is no common future unless we invest in people, in all
people, in their future health and well-being. Without it, there will be no hope of
sustainable development, prosperity and peace.

Already as I struggled to prepare the final mandate and the composition of my

World Commission on Environment and Development, twenty years ago, I was
acutely aware of those crucial links, and convinced that only a global response, one
that combined the rights to development and to a safe environment could succeed
in safeguarding our common future.

The World Commission on Environment and Development was fortunate to be able

to build on the reports of the Brandt Commission and the Palme
Commission, on which I had been a member. It was clear to me that after Brandts
Common Crisis and Palmes Common Security, Our Common Future would
have to be the next step in a major effort to persuade countries to return to
multilateralism in an integrated effort to address peace, environment and
development.

In the early 1970ies, the Club of Rome had presented for the fist time how limited
resources could set limits to growth. The ecological movement and many scientists
had since the late sixties become increasingly aware of how we were approaching
limits to the burdens that we could load upon Natures capacity to absorb the
effects of human activities.

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

The increasing knowledge, which we acquired throughout the 1970ies, was new to
our generation. Never before in human history had we had the capacity to destroy
the environment and to reduce the options for future generations. Our generation
was the first which had to be cognizant of its responsibility for the environment,
also on behalf of generations yet unborn. The Stockholm Conference in 1972 was
the first major international effort to address these new threats.

The South was deeply skeptical of the new environmental awareness of the North,
seeing it as a threat to their development ambitions. The North had been
developing for decades without showing much concern for environmental
degradation and destruction. The developing countries were facing completely
different challenges. They were caught in a downward spiral of increasing poverty,
crushing debt burdens, deteriorating terms of trade and inadequate access to world
markets. They felt unable to afford the apparent luxury of protecting their own
resource base.

Our report, Our Common Future, played its maybe most important role in clearly
establishing the link between environment and development. These were formerly
viewed as separate issues, dealt with by different institutions internationally and
different ministries at the national level.

Many in the past had assumed that the goals of environmental protection and
economic development are incompatible, and that the interests of industrialized
nations are in conflict with the needs of Third World countries. Our report proved
those assumptions wrong. In short, neither environmental protection nor economic
development is sustainable without proper attention to both.

Instead we called for a new era of economic growth, one that must be based on
policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base. We formulated a
positive message, one built on greater insight, collaboration and shared
responsibilities.

The World Commission managed to forge the basis for a global consensus because
we made it explicit that it was only by solving social and economic problems that
we could have hope of solving the threats to the environment. We firmly believed
that we could not protect the global environment without establishing a more just
international economic order, nor provide the basis for a more just and equitable
future for all if global trends that threaten the resources base were allowed to
continue.

We developed the concept of sustainable development, which means that we must

meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their needs.

Sustainable development is a political concept for human social, economic and

environmental progress. It will require a new era of international cooperation and
greater participation by people themselves. They must become more actively
involved in political life so that they can have a say in decisions of importance to
their own lives and futures. Thus, democracy, human rights as well as practical

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

solidarity has to become the basis of all effective policies for environment and
development.

We called for an activist civil society, as well as for science and the business
community to get fully involved to create the basis for change. Our report inspired
a new era of partnerships and democratic change. Many in the audience today have
been part of this crucial process. It creates an unprecedented potential for new
breakthroughs.

Our analysis led to the call for a strengthening of international cooperation. Only
by working together, not against each other, can we have a vision of a better-
managed world, better governance, and global adherence to the fundamental
principles of democracy, and to the principle that economic and social
development must be sustainable. Peace, democracy, environment and
development. These would have to be the core issues of our common agenda for
the 21st century.

No less than in 1987 we must now fully recognize how interdependent we all have
become. We pointed to some disturbing trends. World population projections
indicated a doubling of our numbers some time in this century. That increase will
take place in developing countries, and unless corrective action is taken this will
aggravate the vicious circle of poverty and environmental degradation in which
they already are caught. Combined with unsustainable patterns of production and
consumption, especially in the North, these trends will place intolerable strains on
finite natural resources.

In the North we must also recognize that nobody, not even the richest of us, can
hide from these global trends. There will be no sanctuaries where some people can
escape the harsh realities. We would all suffer from the radiation if the ozone layer
would be further damaged. Climate change can cause drought, floods, and
disruption of agricultural patterns both in the North and in the South.

Hundreds of millions of people are living in areas that will be affected by rise of
the sea level. Toxic substances are travelling with winds and currents, and
everybody has to breathe. Pollutants originating in the Temperate Zone are already
to be found in the food chain in the Arctic. Clearly we need fundamental changes
in the way we use the Earths crust, the way we develop and use energy and in the
way we distribute the benefits of economic growth.

Our security also depends at least as much on economic wellbeing, social justice
and ecological stability as it does on military threats. Throughout human history,
struggles over access to and control over natural resources have been one of the
root causes of tension and armed conflict. We risk a proliferation of such disputes
if the rapid deterioration of environmental quality is allowed to continue.

Above all we must be uncompromising in our determination to eradicate poverty.

Poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation in the Third World. Poor
people will concentrate on their daily survival. They will be forced to cut down
trees, overgraze pastures and overuse farmland in order to stay alive. Poor
countries, too, will have to overexploit their natural resources in order to produce

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

the export goods needed to pay for necessary import. When prices go down, they
will have to produce more and more basic commodities and extract more and more
of their natural resources to pay for goods that they do not produce themselves.
This illustrates the great importance of improved rules for global trade.

As we look at the situation in 2005, we must once again conclude: There is no

simple solution. Overlooking our growing global interdependence will not be a
choice.

Poverty is in itself intolerable and cannot be reconciled with human dignity. We

need to oppose any tendency to ignore the fundamental challenges of the
continuing North-South divide. Otherwise the very future of our planet is in danger.

During my leadership role on the Commission on Environment and Development we

faced deep political, cultural and religious divides in a number of areas. It applied
to different issues such as the safety of nuclear energy. But the most difficult one
to overcome was linked to our analysis and recommendations in the field of
population, population pressure and human rights, and their links to poverty,
environment and development. The fact that in the end we were able to bridge
our different concerns and come up with a shared vision in 1987, I believe created
an important platform for change as the world prepared for the Child Summit, the
Rio Conference and then the Cairo and Beijing Conferences in 1994 and 1995.
There were some very key sentences that we were able to agree on:

Urgent steps are needed to limit extreme rates of population growth. Choices
made now will influence the level at which the population stabilizes next century
within a range of six billion people. But this is not just a demographic issue;
providing people with facilities and education that allow them to choose the size
of their families is a way of assuring especially for women the basic human
right of self-determination: to strengthen social, cultural, and economic
motivations for family planning, and to provide to all who want them, the
education, contraceptives, and services required.

We had in the end been able to conclude that social and cultural factors are the
ones that dominate all others in affecting fertility:

The most important are the roles women play in their family, the economy, and
the society at large. Fertility rates fall as womens employment opportunities
outside the home and farm, their access to education, and their age at marriage
all rise. Hence policies meant to lower fertility rates not only must include
economic incentives and disincentives, but must aim to improve the position of
women in society. Such policies should essentially promote womens rights.

Thirteen years after the presentation of Our Common Future, the Millennium
Declaration made clear that gender equality is not only a goal in its own right, but
is critical to our ability to reach all development goals. The world is now clearly
moving forward as it establishes the values that underlie global development. And
when we look at the eight development goals they have strong links to womens
lives and to health, and they have of course taken on board the necessity to ensure
environmental sustainability.

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Develop a global partnership for development.

In fact, as I see it, the Millennium Development Goals are a shorthand declaration
on the most crucial recommendations put forward in Our Common Future, a
shorthand for how we must pursue sustainable development.

Although global literacy rates have risen during the past 30 years, women remain
less likely to be able to read and write than their male contemporaries do. Of the
900 million illiterate people, women outnumber men 2:1. Illiteracy is worst in
Africa and West Asia with 65 per cent of women classified as illiterate compared
with 40 per cent of men. In many parts of the world, traditional attitudes make it
more likely that girls, rather than boys, will be kept out of school to help with the
domestic chores and care for dependants.

Yet, repeated studies have made it clear that educating women is an effective way
of improving health and income, and protecting the environment. Giving girls the
ability to access knowledge, to question and to analyze, and to build their capacity
for self-improvement, will help their families and communities. The size of the
effect that girls education has been shown to have on health and fertility
outcomes is a powerful argument for investing in girls access to education. Indeed
if development is about widening womens and mens choices and a more
equitable distribution of resources, the interaction of gender and poverty
constitutes the greatest limiting factor to human development.

In the year 2000, Secretary General Kofi Annan called for a Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, that has recently become available. It starts by pointing out that the
rapid and extensive change of ecosystems that humans have initiated over the past
50 years has contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic
development. But not all regions and groups of people have benefited in fact
many have been harmed. The full costs associated with these gains are only now
becoming apparent.

The assesment concludes that 60% of the ecosystem services examined are being
degraded or used unsustainably.

The harmful effects are being born disproportionately by the poor, contributing to
growing inequieties and disparities across groups of people, and are sometimes the
principal factor causing poverty and social conflict.

The degradation of the ecosystem services is already a significant barrier to

achieving the Millenium Development Goals, and will continue to grow as a

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

consequence of a likely three to sixfold increase in global GDP by 2050, even while
population growth is expected to slow and level off in mid-century.

The urgency of more effective, collaborative action is illustrated by the reality that
most of the drivers of ecosystem change are unlikely to diminish in the first half of
the century. Two drivers climate change and excessive use of fertilizers will
become more severe.

The perspectives of climate change are indeed scary.

Following our report in 1987, we saw a dramatic shift in public opinion. This was
driven by concerned NGOs, policymakers and experts, extreme climate events and
then a masterly crafted scientific consensus process under the auspices of IPCC
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Five years after Our Common Future we had a global framework. The climate
convention was established. That was surely beyond our dreams. Then the 1990ies
saw an impressive series of global summits, tough negotiations and new scientific
reports leading up to the Kyoto meeting in December 1997. Crucially, Kyoto
established the basis for legal commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse
gases.

It is impressive, but, unfortunately, it is by no means enough! Vested interests

continuously mobilize against progress, negotiators are bogged down in intricate
details, and global emissions are increasing.

The world has a long way to go, but a crucial start has been made. Increasing
awareness in the worlds richest and most powerful nation gives new hope. There is
no true alternative to multilateralism in facing up to our responsibility for future
generations and the planet itself. We dont have much time. A number of
developing countries have increasing and rapidly growing emissions. Developing
countries may soon represent a bigger part of the total than the industrialized
world. The future is one of including all countries in our global solutions, but
before that can happen, the rich countries must rise to the occasion, show
leadership, and take responsibility.

This year, outside Oslo the Nord-Pool power exchange launched the first
initiative in the world to offer trading and clearing of European Union Allowances.
Sales for the first 10 days amounted to 359.000 tonnes of carbon dioxide,
facilitating more efficient trading across national boundaries and industrial sectors,
an important requirement if the EU is to succeed with its model for meeting the
obligations of the Kyoto protocol.

The role of business is a crucial one. We knew back in 1987 that we had to engage
business in order to influence change. Unless the sustainable development issues
where taken seriously by the stock market, at Frankfurt, Zurich, London, New York,
Tokyo and gradually the emerging economies, our impact on the global forces of
change would be incomplete.

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

Important parts of that process started here in Switzerland. Back in the late 80ies,
the World Economic Forum and its founder Klaus Schwab at first reluctantly
accepted to place sustainable development on the Davos Agenda. They felt, not
surprisingly, that the world of business was perhaps not yet ready to accept the
directions set by the World Commission.

However, Davos embraced these challenges. Sustainable development has long

been an integral part of the annual meetings. An important and initial success
story was no doubt the Montreal protocol and the rules on emission reductions to
protect the ozone layer. This came at a point in history when industry was ready to
replace old products with new and more ozone-neutral ones. The global
acceptance of the Montreal Protocol, within a short time span, provided a solid
example and a source of inspiration for dealing with the wider strategic issue of
climate change.

In the Early 90ies, the Swiss businessman Stephan Schmidheyni helped create the
Busines Council for Sustainable Development, which took shape in 1991. It was
founded in Bergen, Norway, during the pre-Rio regional European conference.

The Secretary General to the Rio Summit, Maurice Strong, had made it a priority to
recruit Schmidheiny as the coordinator of the business input. To this end, he put
together a team of CEOs from about 50 companies to form the new-borne Business
Council for Sustainable Development.
The Councils participation at Rio thus rested on two premises: To provide a voice
for business, and to translate that voice into a book: Changing course: A Global
Business Perspective on Environment and Development.
In 1995, the Council merged with the World Industry Council for the Environment
(WICE) in Paris a brainchild of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ,
and set up a permanent base in Geneva as the World Business Council for
Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
Today, the WBCSD is a coalition of 170 international companies drawn from 35
countries and more than 20 major industrial sectors, involving some 1,000 business
leaders globally. The Council also comprises a Regional Network of 45 national and
regional partner organizations called Business Councils for Sustainable
Development (BCSDs) mostly located in developing countries.
The vision of business contributions to sustainable development that took shape
with Schmidheiny around the Rio Summit are now well-established within the
WBCSD, and spread through extensive member involvement, stakeholder
consultations and research reports tackling the most pressing sustainability issues
affecting todays corporate world.
Important drivers for business pursuance of sustainable pathways are the needs to
renew and secure their licence to operate which is the unwritten social
contract with the communities in which they work.
The World Business Council, but also organizations setting business reporting
standards have had important positive effects on corporate actions and attitudes.

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a multi-stakeholder process and an

independent institution whose mission is to develop and disseminate globally
applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.
These Guidelines are for voluntary use by organisations for reporting on the
economic, environmental, and social dimensions of their activities, products, and
services. The GRI incorporates the active participation of representatives from
business, accountancy, investment, environmental, human rights, research and
labour organisations from around the world.
The GRI became independent in 2002, and is now an official collaborating centre of
the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and works in cooperation with
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annans Global Compact.
A sign of success is the extent to which private business see as important, and as a
sign of quality, to design their reporting schemes according to the requirements
laid down by such organizations.
The Global Compact, a set of standard minimum requirements, under the auspicies
of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to which international business are invited to
committ themselves, also contribute to higher standards of workers protection,
transparency and sustainable development.
The Dow sustainability index has also become a most prestigious institution.
Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes
tracking the performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.
Based on the cooperation of Dow Jones Indexes, they provide asset managers with
reliable and objective benchmarks to manage sustainability portfolios.
All in all, these instruments serve as beacons and benchmarks for business and
industries quest to define their course within expectations and norms set by
political institutions. They inspire business to develop processes and products
which meet the requirements of the present and the future. They make it less
necessary for governments to regulate. They also provide arenas where business
meet across sectors, countries and continents, and where managers can measure
themselves and their companies performances.
An important trend to follow will be when and how the energy industry develops
carbon emission-free coal-fired power plants. Expectations are that we may see a
cleaning of coal before we see large scale cleaning of gas-fired power generation.
This could happen since the price of pollution per unit, i.e. the price of carbon
emission certificates under the EU Emission Trading Scheme, is so much higher and
the potential gains are so much higher from a corporate investment point of view.
China is perhaps the most interesting case to follow closely. With 1.2 billion
inhabitants China ranks second in the world after the United States in terms of
total carbon dioxide emissions, but it is catching up fast.
Each year, China brings online new electricity-generating capacity equivalent to
more than the entire present output of Switzerland. The Lions share of these new
power plants in China are coal-fired plants. Therefore, the technology used in

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

Chinas energy sector is perhaps the most important driver influencing climate
change today, together with US oil consumption.
Today, still, crude oil is perhaps the cheapest alternative to buy. China is the
worlds second largest importer of oil after the US, accounting for 10 per cent of
global consumption and almost half of the increase in global consumption. With a
sustained economic growth of 9 per cent over the past 25 years, which many
predict will last for another decade or so, it may equal the size of the US economy
by 2020 and then become the worlds largest economy.
China produces 2/3rds of all photocopiers, microwave ovens, DVD-players and
shoes. It produces of all digital cameras and 2/5ths of all PCs and is expected to
become the worlds largest automaker by 2010.
Chinas record on pollution and the constraints it is experiencing will be an
important driver for change and technology choice. Home to 16 of the worlds 20
worst cities for pollution, China faces respiratory problems and traffic problems, -
the challenges we faced some decades ago and still face, even if to a lesser extent.
The mindset of the new generations of Chinese managers seem to be focused on
building a private sector for the future and doing business to the highest
international standards. It seems that the whole country is now investing
enormously and with pride in presenting a modern and forward-looking China
during the 2008 Olympics.
Given the scale of these mega-trends, international cooperation will have to fully
include China in order to produce legitimate and productive results. Much of Asia
is pursuing a Chinese course, albeit on a lesser scale than China, itself, but on an
altogether larger scale than in European countries.
International political leaders know this. G-8 knows this. Sooner rather than later
we need to see a G-9 in place and eventually also a G-10. Billions of people living
on medium or smaller incomes are impatient and disinclined to wait for the next
generation to enjoy greater material prosperity.
Knowledge in the East of the Western world helped bring the Berlin wall down.
Such knowledge is a part of globalization that is the key driver for material well-
being also in Asia.
Half of the worlds population will not settle for less than a full say of where they
are heading. Technology and transparency will influence that course of events to a
great extent. We have come to a crossroads which we did not believe we would see
so soon. When the international rules on the future are written, we in the West
must take care not to be left behind. The young and dynamic will not wait.
We are the first generations that face the challenge of taking main global steps to
protect our planet from a far-reaching breakdown of nature itself, permanently
affecting our global biological systems.
We must secure change in time in our patterns of production and consumption,
changes that both take care of the needs of the present generatios - and that
safeguard the ability of future generations to do the same.

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 International Sustainability Conference, Basel, 13-14 October 2005

That calls for a much greater awareness of our interdependence, and the need to
take key policy decitions across borders, not only nationally.
A new era of global cooperation is essential for us to be able to safeguard our
common future, through fundamental changes in present patterns and trends both
in developed and developing countries. Having recently had the honor to serve on
the Panel Threats, Challenges and Changeappointed by the United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan,I would like to end on the following note:
Depending on wealth, geography and power, we preceive different threats as the
most pressing. But the truth is we cannot afford to choose. Collective security
today depends on accepting that the threats which each region of the world
perceives as most urgent are in fact equally so for all.

In our globalized world, the threats we face are interconnected. The rich are
vulnerable to the threats that attack the poor and the strong are vulnerable to the
threats against the weak, and vice versa. A nuclear terrorist attack on the United
States or Europe would have devastating effects on the whole world. But so would
the appearance of a virulent pandemic disease in a poor country with no effective
health-care system.

On this interconnectedness of threats we must found a new security consensus, the

first article of which must be that all are entiteled to freedom from fear, and that
whatever threatens one threatens all. Once we understand this, we have no choice
but to tackle the whole range of threats. We must respond to HIV/AIDS as robustly
as we do to terrorism and to poverty and as we do to proliferation. We must strive
just as hard to eliminate the threats of small arms and light weapons as we do to
eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction.Moreover, we must address all
these threats preventively, acting at a sufficiently early stage with the full range of
available instruments.

To contribute to a culture of prevention and progress, to improve the lives of all,

and to increase the opportunity, dignity and rights of individuals is a common
responsibility. We can all make a difference, to influence public policies, nationally
and globally. What we need is to inspire greater political commitment and
determination to make this world a better place.

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