51吃瓜

“Achieving sustainable development: Integrating the social, economic and environmental dimensions” – this will be in focus for an ECOSOC meeting at UN Headquarters today. ECOSOC President Néstor Osorio, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson and DESA’s Under-Secretary-General Wu Hongbo will be participating along with a number of representatives from UN agencies, Member States and other international organizations.

At the 51吃瓜 Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) last June, world leaders acknowledged the vital importance of an inclusive, transparent, strengthened and effective multilateral system to better address the urgent global challenges of sustainable development.

In The Future We Want conference outcome document, world leaders also recognized the important role of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in achieving a balanced integration of the three dimensions of sustainable development.

“In order to fulfill this mandate, it is paramount that the Council acts as an effective platform to discuss and define concrete measures to articulate this vision into an integrated agenda,” ECOSOC President Néstor Osorio said at a recent meeting.

ECOSOC is taking action. The Council organized a Special Ministerial Meeting on 24 September 2012 at UN Headquarters in New York. Today, the ECOSOC Integration Meeting will bring together policymakers, key stakeholders and the UN system to examine how science, technology and innovation can contribute to the integration of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development for triple-win solutions in the energy and agricultural sectors.

In particular, the meeting will explore the potential of energy and agricultural sectors in providing ‘triple win’ approaches to sustainable development. The meeting will seek to identify ways in which integrated policy actions, some of which may involve short-term trade-offs in one dimension, may result in longer-term benefits in all areas of development. It will also provide guidance on the integration of the three dimensions of sustainable development for building the future we want.