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| Bending the Arc as important as G8 | |
12 May 2005
Mark Malloch Brown, Chief of Staff to UN Secretary General addressed leaders of civil society, government, and business today at the Bending the Arc summit. He commended delegates for sending the right messages to the G8, but encouraged them to be bold: "the decisions you will all be taking may, in the next ten years, have as much importance in their own right in achieving the Millennium Development Goals as those decisions taken by world leaders at Gleneagles, because achieving the Millennium Development Goals is beyond the reach of government alone." He highlighted that "physical and communications infrastructures are needed for countries to reach the goals," and outlined the responsibility of business in a discussion which recognised that the MDGs can only be attained with private sector participation: "We can no longer imagine that water, sanitation and energy will be provided through the traditional model of public utilities alone." However, he warned against always placing the onus on business: "People in Africa, like their counterparts in Latin America and Asia, have made clear that pure private sector solutions that create unaffordable water or unaffordable IT access for the poor, isn’t the way to go either." He commended "creative partnerships, where public guarantees, strong public regulations and, possibly, public start-up funds, create the incentives and regulatory frameworks to allow the private sector to do its bit, and start to connect people to these vital infrastructures." In developing "new MDG-based business models", Mr Malloch Brown demonstrated how businesses can help meet the Goals, "creating both jobs but also services and goods for the poor within a single business model which makes the poor both the labour for the production of these goods and services, but the consumers of them as well." He also encouraged businesses to "go after the markets of Africa and other poor regions with a business model which understands the role of Corporate and Social Responsibility; understands that these are long term investments, where the early returns may be modest, but where the size of markets, the possibility of future growth, the social as well as business returns" give business a key role in meeting the MDGs in Africa. The Bending the Arc summit is co-sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP), and the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force. The event is timed to coincide with the annual summit of the African Union in Libya. It will lead to concrete actions in support of the MDGs in Africa to be implemented by all parties and reviewed on a regular basis including at the UN summit in September. Participants at Bending the Arc included Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu (Chief Executive, New Partnership for Africa’s Development); Barbara Stocking (Director, Oxfam GB); Robert Davies (CEO, International Business Leaders Forum); Ambassador John Maresca (President, Business Humanitarian Forum), Bjorn Stigson (World Business Council on Sustainable Development); Hon. Professor Peter Anyang Nyongo (Minister of Planning and National Development, Kenya); Dr Klaus Toepfer (Executive Director, UNEP); Peter Woicke (former Executive Vice President, International Finance Corporation); Hon Trevor Manuel (Minister of Finance, South Africa) and Paul Skinner (Chairman, Rio Tinto). |
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