Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Addresses UN Global Initiatives & Contributions from Northeast Asia

June 26, 2008

SPEAKER
Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General

HOSTS
James S. McDonald, President & CEO, Rockefeller & Co. Inc.; Chairman, Japan Society
Evans Revere, President, The Korea Society

Japan Society joined with The Korea Society to welcome UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the first Secretary-General from Northeast Asia, in a celebration of Japan Society's 100th anniversary and The Korea Society's 50th anniversary.

Secretary-General Ban spoke on the eve of a trip to Japan, the Republic of Korea and China. "As you have seen today, North Korea has submitted their declaration of nuclear programs," and the U.S. has announced that it will de-list North Korea from the list of terrorism sponsors and the trading with the enemy act; "this is a very encouraging sign," he said.

He added, "Now, President Lee Myung-bak and Prime Minister Fukuda, and also China's leadership for the first time, have decided to resume their trilateral summit meeting. This is, again, also very interesting."

"Energy prices threaten to divide our world and our societies ever more sharply into haves and have-nots," he said. "Climate change hurts us all, yet risks driving us into two camps, those who pollute and those who suffer. The price of food could rip societies apart, community from community, neighbor from neighbor. And the disparities in health care systems around the world have the power to separate not only rich from poor, but healthy from chronically sick."

"And yet we are not fated to watch our world disintegrate, evolving into the law of the jungle," he declared. "We can renew the ties that bind asserting our common interests, our common ideals and our common humanity."

"As the world's only universal global body, the United Nations is uniquely placed to provide us with the tools to address these global issues," but the United Nations cannot do it alone, Secretary-General Ban said. "We need dedicated, bold and sustained leaderships from government working together in a common, universal framework. We need countries such as Japan and the Republic of Korea to offer concrete measures to address three pressing issues, interrelated challenges: the global food crisis, climate change and the Millennium Development Goals, which we must hit the target by 2015."

As food prices soar "due to a range of factors--escalating energy prices, lack of investment in agriculture and extreme weather patterns, trade distorting policies, subsidies and other policy choices, increasing demand due to population growth, urbanization and change in consumption patterns"--the global food crisis "is having the greatest impact on the most vulnerable countries and vulnerable people," he said.

"Ties between neighboring states are being worn down as those with food restrict the supply to those without. Ties between governments and their citizens are coming under stress as populations protest when they cannot sustain their standards of living. And even the ties within the family are being brutally challenged when the parents are forced into a very difficult choice; no parent would like to make such choice, which child to feed and which to let go hungry and which are the basic needs to forego." Left unchecked, the food crisis "risks unleashing large population movements, instability and inflation throughout the world."

The Secretary-General urged that the international community support food aid programs and replenish the UN Central Emergency Response Fund; "lift immediately all the restrictions on humanitarian food supplies, and cut agricultural subsidies in developed countries" to free up resources for agricultural investment in low-income, food-insecure countries; and boost the share of ODA, or official development assistance, devoted to agricultural production and rural development from the current 3 percent to 10 percent, "without diverting funds from existing education or health budgets."

"Even before the food crisis threatened to divide us, the impact of climate change on our common humanity was becoming evident," Secretary-General Ban said. Praising the achievements of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007, he said that "developed countries must lead the way in these negotiations, given their historical responsibility for the bulk of carbon emissions and in light of the agreed principle of common, but differentiated, responsibilities."

"We look to Japan and the Republic of Korea to show their real, real leadership" as negotiations continue toward the climate change conference meeting in Poznan, Poland in December 2008, when the main framework of a new climate change agreement is to be delivered, and then to the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009, when the new agreement is to be finalized.

The task for the Poznan meeting is to produce "a shared vision of what a new agreement will look like, one that addresses all the building blocks agreed to in Bali. Strengthening or creating new financial mechanisms to assist developing countries in implementing past and future agreements on adaptation and mitigation needs a fully financed and operational adaptation fund and concrete illustrations of transferring low-carbon technologies to developing countries." Moving on to Copenhagen, "we look to you to promote agreement" on both long-term goals for reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases and "on short- and medium-term targets" as "essential for market forces to provide the financing and technological changes required."

On greenhouse gas reduction targets, he commented, "I was disappointed when the Major Economies meeting was held in Seoul to prepare their recommendation to a G8 summit meeting in Hokkaido. There was not much progress and they were not able to agree on these even long-term targets."

In 2000, the Secretary-General observed, world leaders met at the UN Millennium Summit and agreed on a set of Millennium Development Goals to be reached by 2015. "This is a firm commitment of the United Nations, [for] which I am going to galvanize political will. Some progress has been made, but many countries remain off track, particularly in Africa. When we go to southern Saharan countries, there is no single country that is on track. This is a very serious problem."

In addition to poverty and climate change, "our focus must be on health," including essential issues of maternal health, malaria prevention and treatment, and treatment for neglected tropical diseases that afflict over one billion people, a sixth of the total population of the world, he said.

"In the short time that I have been speaking tonight, within 15 minutes, I’m sure that 10 mothers must have died from complications of pregnancy and child birth. That is 10 mothers too many. Maternal health is not only the slowest moving target of the Millennium Development Goals; the setbacks in this area hold back progress on many of our other goals. We must invest in health systems to ensure that it is safer for mothers to give birth."

"Equally unacceptable, malaria kills at least one million people a year. These deaths can be prevented through bed nets treated with long-lasting insecticides, indoor residual spraying, public health facilities providing effective treatment and diagnosis, and rapid expansion of community and home-based case management. Most important, these measures will dramatically cut mortality rates among the most vulnerable, pregnant women and children under five in Africa."

Health care aid needs to be scaled up, and beyond that, donors need to provide a schedule of aid levels; "there needs to be some predictability on aid" so that recipient nations can work out plans for domestic economic development, he said. Comprehensive primary care systems must be built to "provide the backbone for all health interventions." To reduce maternal mortality, the international community needs to ensure "universal access to reproductive health, and [push] for the collection of accurate gender-specific data"; and "an additional $10 billion a year would ensure coverage of basic services for maternal, newborn and children's health." Finally, the countries of the world must mobilize "against AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases in Africa, including by funding 120 million desperately needed insecticide-treated bed nets."

"Ladies and gentlemen, what I have described requires a collective effort," Secretary-General Ban said. "They are not separate endeavors to be pursued by separate ministries, organizations or NGOs, and they require leadership at the highest levels, which only world leaders themselves can mobilize. We must pull together the various strengths of our world on food security, climate change and the Millennium Development Goals, because we cannot successfully address these challenges in isolation. The United Nations can serve as the multilateral platform for implementing concrete actions on all of them. I look to Japan and Korea to share their visionary thinking and their know-how to help us advance towards our goal."

"I wholeheartedly welcome" the agreement of Japan, Korea and China "to hold their first trilateral summit and also to cooperate on climate change, the food and energy crisis, and assistance to Africa," the Secretary-General concluded. "All three are working together as part of the multilateral Six-Party Talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a process that carries the most realistic promise to defuse one of the gravest security threats in the region. All these issues are central to the United Nations. It is only natural and indeed necessary that this evolving trilateral partnership and the UN work together. On this optimistic and forward-looking note, I wish these two remarkable societies, Japan Society and The Korea Society, further success in their noble mission."

***

James McDonald, Chairman of Japan Society, began the Q&A:

You referred to the role of energy and energy costs in the current food crisis. Could you provide us with any thoughts about what we should be doing about energy at this point?

Energy issues traditionally haven't been dealt with by the United Nations, the Secretary-General responded, but "when I met the Saudi King Abdullah last Saturday in Jeddah, I raised this issue and I was able to discuss this matter in depth" and the effects of high petroleum prices on food prices and on the core aspects of the Millennium Development Goals, including poverty and environmental sustainability. "He also agreed that the price was unusually high and it should be fixed at a reasonable price. He said he would do all what he could do. In fact, he promised me to increase their production," and a commitment for such an increase "was announced last Sunday after a high-level oil ministers' meeting in Jeddah."

"I will continue to address this issue on many important occasions," he concluded.

Evans Revere, President of The Korea Society, asked:

I’m wondering if these three challenges, the food crisis, climate change and the Millennium Development Goals, might be a very appropriate agenda that China, Japan, Korea and the U.S. might take on as the basic elements of a new architecture for cooperation and security that could address these issues, regionally perhaps, and also globally.

"If we look all around the world, in fact you will see that Northeast Asia is almost the only place where we don’t have any multilateral security consultation or cooperation framework," Secretary-General Ban responded.

"We can easily understand why it has happened so. We used to have very deeply divided ideologies, and there are very delicate historical legacies. But with all these encouraging development of situations over the North Korean nuclear issue, I think at this time if we are able to address the North Korean nuclear issue properly through a Six-Party process, it may be an idea to seriously look at the possibility of levering up this Six-Party process into a broader framework for security cooperation."

Audience members joined in the Q&A:

What can the WTO and the UN do to really persuade the rich Western countries to stop these food subsidies and food import barriers that are so damaging to the developing world?

"It would be extremely important at this time to expedite the process of the Doha Round so that we will be able to address all these issues," replied the Secretary-General.

Korea is an OECD country without any commitment under the Kyoto Protocol. Would you suggest that Korea take on commitments as Japan has done, or ask for special conditions as China has done?

"This is exactly one point which I am going to discuss with the Korean government leaders," Secretary-General Ban answered. "As the Secretary-General, I have to be very fair and objective and impartial to all the countries, including Korea, my home country. My mission will be very delicate and difficult to say something which they may not like me to say. But, as I said, this is a global challenge, which requires a global response.

"Any country in the world however powerful or resourceful--say, for example, the U.S.--the U.S. by any standard is the most powerful in terms of political and economic resources. But not a single country in the world is able to address these climate change issues alone. We need the full participation of all the countries, rich and poor."

Historically, "it's mainly Europeans and American countries that have contributed significantly to the pollution of greenhouse gas," and "that is why I have been urging that this campaign must be led by the industrialized countries."

I know you have a very, very full agenda there, but can the United Nations do a little bit more in engaging civil society here in New York to address the challenges you have laid out?

Member states, the business community and civic organizations are the main constituencies of the United Nations, and "we cannot emphasize more the importance of the contributions and the work of civil society" in contributing to peace and security, human rights, and humanitarian assistance, Secretary-General Ban said. "That is why I have been trying to visit many important cities around the U.S. and also other countries. Whenever I travel I always try to meet the business community leaders as well as the civil society leaders. That will continue. And at this time I am very much moved and grateful for their committed devotions and their contributions to the United Nations."

--Katherine Hyde