I would like to start by conveying my sincere thanks and appreciation to His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain, for his gracious patronage of this Second Arab High Level Forum on Sustainable Development and to the Government of Bahrain for its hosting and active support to the organisation of the event this week.
We thank His Highness Sheikh Ali bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, for joining us at the opening ceremony, on behalf of HRH, Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, the patron of this forum.
I wish to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the Kingdom of Bahrain for generously hosting UNEP's Regional Office for West Asia. Manama is one of the six Capital cities in the world to host a UNEP Regional Office.
His Highness Sheikh Ali bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, Your Excellency Faeqa Bent Saeed Essaleh, Minister for Social Development, Ms. Rima Khalaf, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCWA, Ambassador Twaijary, Assistant Secretary General of the League of Arab States, Ms. Sima Bahous, Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Administrator and Regional Director for Arab States at the United Nations Development Programme, Your Highness, Excellencies, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
I would also like to acknowledge the highly valued partnership with our friends and colleagues at ESCWA and the Regional UN Development Group in bringing together such an impressive list of esteemed representatives from national governments, regional and national organisations, Major Groups and the UN family.
In Bahrain, the Tree of Life - Shajrat Al Hayat - has been standing for more than 400 years. For all this time, it has defied the punishing conditions of the harsh desert climate it inhabits, outliving the successive rise and fall of civilizations. It is a powerful symbol of Bahrain's unique resilience, adaptability and inclination for sustainability, and perfectly represents the aspirations and determinations of its citizens to achieve sustainable development.
The world is changing at an unprecedented pace and the Arab region is no exception. Prosperity is perceived in many countries as the access to material wealth and purchasing power, all too often at the expense of air and water quality, as well as land essential for long-term economic and social prosperity. And in this region there is an added burden of conflict, creating additional sustainable development challenges and seeing many - in total desperation - risking their lives by crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better future.
Your Highness, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
We live an era of material abundance, which also means waste abundance! Currently, up to 90 per cent of wastewater in developing countries goes untreated into rivers, lakes, and coastal zones, threatening health, food security and access to safe drinking water. As a consequence, up to six hospital beds out of 10 are filled with people affected by water-related diseases.
While waste management is ecologically critical, this challenge can be turned into an economically sound option. Appropriate waste management generates clean energy and creates jobs. The Arab region has already made investments in improving management of solid waste as well as wastewater, and best practices and information can be enhanced among Arab countries to continue in the right direction.
Adopting sustainable lifestyles is essential if we want to be in a sustainable development trajectory. However, changing the way we live should not be understood as compromising on happiness, wealth or health. On the contrary, it means changing the way we define and measure quality of life.
Efforts in the Arab region
There is global recognition that not some, but all countries, would benefit from choosing sustainable nationally relevant pathways to development, and that many challenges require working together for a shared prosperous destiny in an interconnected and globalized world.
In order to address the pressing challenges that Arab countries are facing, great effort will be needed towards a more integrated way of doing business. We know that financial matters are not disconnected from environmental or urban issues.
As a case in point, the sand and dust storms that occur in the Arab region have vast impacts in terms of human health. Furthermore, when airports are closed due to insufficient visibility, when dust storms jam port operations, and even cause national security concerns, any attempt to dissociate environmental, social and economic sectors becomes fiction and a figment of the imagination.
The good news is that there are plenty of opportunities in the region for integrating the three dimensions of sustainable development. Some countries have already developed a Green Development Strategy focusing on renewables, energy efficiency, sustainable transport, water security and innovative technology.
In energy production and energy efficiency alone, the investments opportunities and development perspectives are enormous. The proposed SDGs demonstrate how efforts to eradicate poverty, promote universal access to cleaner forms of energy, and double energy efficiency, if fully realized, would go a long way towards putting the world on a path consistent with achieving the two-degree climate target.
Your Highness, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Access to technology and technology development are key aspects that will be essential in achieving a transformative sustainable development agenda. Through the Climate Technology Centre and Network and the National Cleaner Production Centres and Programmes which UNEP co-hosts with UNIDO, there is a great potential for your countries to enhance technology transfers and best practices with the rest of the world.
Another sensitive but crucial question to implement a sustainable agenda is data. Access to information is not only crucial for better assessments, monitoring and accountability, but for measuring our success in achieving our goals. Through initiatives such as UNEP Live, we aim to catalyse a data revolution and become an information and knowledge services provider. Those who better manage data and information would control the world. Environmental and sustainable development decision-making processes will need to be made nearly real time.
With all that needs to be done, I know that a question at the forefront of your minds is: all this requires financing, where will the money come from? Finance is pivotal. It takes commitment to seize these opportunities to put us on a smart and sustainable path for prosperity.
The World Bank estimates that over the next 15 years, the global economy will require $89 trillion in infrastructure investments across cities, energy, and land-use systems, and $4 trillion in incremental investment for the low-carbon transition to keep within the internationally agreed limit of a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise. While these funding requirements may be seen by some as burden, new sustainable development needs also represent wonderful business opportunities for countries and companies of this region.
We need both public and private funding. The private financial landscape is varied, spanning everything from micro-finance institutions to domestic banks to large infrastructure financiers and institutional investors.
However, financial markets do not tend to effectively price environmental resources, resulting in undervaluation of natural capital stocks such as clean air, productive soils and abundant water.
This becomes clear in the work of UNEP's Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System, launched in early 2014, which examines a range of critical sectors such as banking, insurance, investment and securities, explores what will potentially be one of the most important contemporary changes in our international economic and development landscape: the reshaping of our global financial system to fit the needs of sustainable development financing.
Our aim is clear: to speed the transition to an inclusive sustainable economy. To do so, we need to channel trillions of dollars annually into green investment and many more trillions away from polluting and natural resource-intensive investment. Meeting this challenge requires - in addition to leveraging public finance - the mobilization of large amounts of private capital, as well as a concerted effort to develop policies that promote sustainable lifestyles and sustainable consumption and production.
The Arab Region, one of the most vulnerable areas of the world due to its water scarcity, arid climate, coastal zone urbanization, conflicts and governance issues, can benefit greatly from choosing innovative and inclusive sustainable development approaches. Despite the harsh conditions, this region has shown endurance and resilience which can only be equalled by the longevity of « shajarat al hayat », this mythical Prosopis tree that has weathered the harshest conditions.
The extraordinary opportunities that this region carry, its creative youth and entrepreneurial people, its high human capital and strong cultural values can translate challenges and aspirations into flagship policies, planning and investments that bring about transformative change.
Thank you.
