UN seeks bigger Korean role for sustainable growth

By Kim Tae-jong

Sustainable development is a common policy goal in countries around the world, but most people think it is too complicated for them to understand and put into practice. A senior U.N. official says it is a common misconception he wants to tackle.

“There are people who are afraid of the complexity of sustainable development,” said Tariq Banuri, director of the Division for Sustainable Development of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “Things are not as complicated as you think.”

According to him, sustainable development is to bring together and integrate different views from different levels and allow people to pursue an integrated goal without conflict, as in making rope from individual strands.

He strongly believes the answers and solutions exist but people don’t know the right way to find them, adding his commitment is to provide “customized information on what they would like to do, depending on their needs.”

To effectively pursue this goal, the U.N. will soon open an office for sustainable development in Incheon where people can have easy access to information, experience-based knowledge and any advice they need.

“What we’ll do is to collect information and examples and put them in a way in which you can get the answer you need. So our idea is to make this center a hub. Everybody in the world can look at the center, and to make them say, ‘If I want something, this is where I want to go,”’ Banuri said.

But the center will not be a mere database center or search engine, he emphasized.

“It’s not going to be like Google. On Google, you type something, it then gives you millions of sites and then you have to search again. It doesn’t give you exactly what you need. So we want to set up a system which responds to people’s different needs.”

Before the official launch of the center, there was a two-day pre-seminar on sustainable development on Thursday and Friday with the participation of distinguished U.N. and Korean officials. Banuri joined the event as one of the key speakers.

Regarding the reasoning for choosing Incheon for the site of the center, he said the country has many things to share with other nations in terms of sustainable development.

“Our interest is Korea has been a model for many developing countries because in a very short period of time it transformed its economy and society - a very poor traditional society to a modern society, and from dictatorship to a very open democratic society. Now these are very important lessons. Every developing country is engaged in thinking how to do exactly the same. So we’re very keen that these lessons should be available to people.”

He went on to say that the country’s recent effort for so-called “green growth” is another appealing factor in deciding to set up a center here, as he believes sustainable development is not just a matter of choice but a necessity.

In this regard, he said the upcoming U.N. conference on sustainable development in Brazil in 2012, Rio+20, conveys significant meaning to address new emerging challenges that the world has faced such as oil price hikes, food shortage crises and social inequality problems. Banuri now serves as head of the Office of the Conference Secretary-General for Rio+20.

He said those recent problems also took place in the past, citing oil price increases, food crises and financial recession 40 years ago, and they repeatedly happen with more serious impacts on people and the world.

“When we look at the pattern, we can tell you it’s not an accident. One of the reasons is that exactly the same thing happened in slow motion forty years ago.”

During the conference, different views on various topics from all kinds of levels seeking solutions will be presented and integrated, Banuri said.

He said ignorance is not a solution and it will simply make things worse, adding if people just feel afraid without doing anything, “then, what they are afraid of will happen.”