Opening Remarks at the 13th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development

Mr. Chairman, the Policy Session we begin here today will cap the CSD’s first-ever two-year "implementation cycle." The United States is encouraged by what this cycle has already accomplished. Through the new two-year format, we have built political momentum for addressing our water and sanitation goals. We have integrated partnerships into the conduct of our work. Thanks to the leadership of Italy and Morocco, we have expanded our reach from the basements of the UN to Partnerships Fora in Rome and Marrakech. Hundreds of people have received training and capacity building through Learning Centres at CSD and at other UN events. Thanks to the innovative matrix you produced as an outcome of the Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting (IPM), we now have a user-friendly set of policy options and practical steps to guide implementation.

Clearly, we still have a long way to go toward achieving the international development goals of the Millennium Declaration. We face complex challenges. As Minister Borge Brende identified, we must address financing; we must increase capacity, especially in the developing world; we must integrate action on water into broader development efforts. The future of our work will become even more complex, as actors, institutions, and programs multiply. Some may find it tempting to seek centralized control over this diffuse and complex system. However, future efforts are likely to be increasingly spread out, increasingly specialized, and increasingly local. Our challenge here is to try to find a way to help all those efforts, all those projects, work towards the same goals.