Statement by H.E. Mr. Kim Sook (Republic of Korea)
Opening statement
Mr. Sha Zukang, Secretary-General of the Conference,
My fellow co-chair, Ambassador John Ashe,
Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me all greet you here in Rio. I thank our Brazilian hosts for providing us with this excellent venue in Rio Centro.
Little time has passed since our last informals in New York. But I hope it has been sufficient for you to take another good look at the outcome document and see where we are.
We have the ingredients of a document that can inspire and change the future. A document that we can confidently give to our Heads of State and Government on 20 June.
Yet, there are various types of outstanding issues. Firstly, I see a number of areas where we just need to work on the language. Secondly, there are others where we need to agree to a concept, or to a target. Thirdly, there remain areas where there is still no agreement and where more discussions are necessary.
Time is of the essence. We have only three days to finalize this document. We owe it to our Heads of States and Government to have a clean document when the conference starts. We owe it to ourselves: we have adopted a GA resolution 66/197 where we urge ourselves to finish by the end of this Prep Com. We ultimately owe it to our future and to our planet.
We all know what is at stake. The whole world is watching us. We need to deliver!
The Bureau had a discussion yesterday evening and has agreed on organization of work for today, which is also posted in the e-room. The Bureau has also entrusted the co-chairs to come up with organization of work for the next two days in consultations with negotiators.
Let me first propose that our Prep Com meetings will have a casual dress code (no suits and ties for men and casual dress for women).
We will continue to work in two working groups with the same sharing of tasks –Working Group I will deal with sections V and VI and will continue to be chaired by Ambassador John Ashe.
Working Group II will focus on sections I,II,III and IV and will be chaired by myself.
We will start today with the following negotiating groups that will meet according to the schedule provided in the e-room for Working group 1 on (i) Means of Implementation and Sustainable Development Goals; Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns, Water and Climate Change; (iii) Oceans; Gender/Education/Health/Cities/Transport/Mining; and (iv) on Chemicals/Desertification. For Working group 2 it will be (i) on Green Economy and (ii) on Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development.
There is always the issue of predictability versus flexibility, so there is a dedicated team from the Secretariat who will help manage the schedule. Their names and contacts are provided in the e-room together with a timetable. So if you finish before or require more time, they are the ones who will ensure that you get a room or can schedule a different theme. You may of course arrange among yourselves to meet outside official hours.
We know it is not perfect, but let us try this model and see whether we are satisfied.
Contact group meetings will start at 10 a.m. and will continue daily until 8 or 9 p.m.
We will need to have consecutive plenary meetings of working groups 1 and 2. There is only one team of interpreters, so in order to have interpretation in both groups, we need to have meetings one after the other.At these plenary meetings we will hear reports from the facilitators of the various contact groups and hopefully agree to the text at hand.
The Bureau also agreed that we will immediately start with contact and informal groups and continue for the rest of the day. The working groups meet in plenary at 8 p.m. (Working group 2) and 9 p.m. (Working group 1) tonight.
I hope that you are all agreeable to this plan - as we tried to maximize the use of time.
I urge you to approach the negotiations in the same mood you did in New York, but with an even greater sense of urgency and a stronger spirit of compromise.
Let us deliver a text, one that isas clean as possible, to our Brazilian host. Let us show we are up to this challenge.
I would also like to welcome our stakeholders. As Secretary-General said at the latest press conference on Rio+20 on 6 June “We aspire to nothing less than a global movement for generational change”. In order for this to happen, we need to have everyone on board, we need general mobilization. We can do it only together, Stakeholders play a crucial part in this and we are very happy that we, the co-chairs, will have interaction with them every day at 6 p.m. together with those Bureau members who will be available as well as interested Member States.
Let us embark on this path.
I thank you all and wish us all good luck.