Welcome to the 5th World Sustainability Forum
I warmly
welcome you to the 5th World
Sustainability Forum. This Forum takes place at a promising moment from a sustainability
perspective. The intergovernmental negotiations on both Financing for
Development and the 2030-Agenda for Sustainable
Development have
just been concluded successfully. This opens the way for the official adoption
of the 2030-Agenda for Sustainable Development by heads of state and government
on the margins of theUN General Assembly later this month. Switzerland
welcomes this universal framework for sustainable development, which guides our efforts between now and 2030.
Switzerland has played an active and substantive role in the elaboration of the
2030-Agenda. The 2030-Agenda acknowledges that global challenges such as
extreme poverty, environmental degradation and climate change can only be
solved if all countries and stakeholders contribute jointly to implement the
so-called Sustainable Development Goals, while taking into account the
interactions between the social, economic and environmental dimensions of
sustainable development. Now that the framework is defined, let us set our
sights on its implementation. Switzerland intends to implement it through
activities at home and abroad, independently and with partners. The whole
government supports the 2030-Agenda in a number of ways.
For instance, the economic cooperation and development of my ministry provides
technical assistance to support developing countries in creating better tax systems.
As a result, these countries can better raise domestic resources to finance
sustainable development. This support is fully aligned with the 2030-Agenda,
which underlines that domestic resources are central to the pursuit of
sustainable development. Another example involves various ministries: REPIC (Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency
Promotion in International Cooperation) is a platform to support renewable energy
and energy efficiency projects by offering seed money and capacity development
for promising initiatives run in collaboration with local entrepreneurs in
developing countries. In Tajikistan, for example, REPIC is supporting a small
hydropower initiative in a remote village, by providing technology and know-how
transfer. These examples illustrate how we can contribute to implementing the
2030-Agenda.
As all of us prepare to implement the Agenda for Sustainable Development, I
commend you for choosing sustainability as the focus of your work and wish you
well in exploring how your efforts can contribute to sustainable development.
Johann N.
Schneider-Ammann
Federal Councillor
Federal Department of Economic Affairs,
Education and Research EAER
Basel, 7 September 2015
The 5th World
Sustainability Forum - ZLF, University of Basel - 7.-9.September 2015
Accessed 24 August 2015