 So, thanks very much, Mr. Arnold. Thank you for the invitation. Ladies and gentlemen, so let me start with a couple of facts and actually they're facts that you're quite familiar with. That is that around four-fifths of the world possesses around 70% of its wealth. Second fact is the other four-fifths, I should say one-fifth of the world possesses 70% of its wealth and the other four-fifths would like their share of this wealth and how they get it and how they develop over the coming decades is going to have a profound influence on the kind of well-being that they're going to have. It's not just a matter of getting wealth but it's also how you obtain the wealth and the kind of wealth. And it will also have a profound influence on Ireland and the rest of OECD of the kind of well-being, the kind of development that occurs over the coming decades. Now it turns out that right now internationally there's one of the most interesting debates that I've experienced anyway about the kind of development that should go on over the coming decades. I don't think I've ever seen so much debate and so many meetings, so many negotiations going on. That's because one of the reasons is that the current international framework for development, namely the Millennium Development Goals are going to be running out in 2015. These are the goals that were accepted by countries at the Millennium Summit in year 2000 that have gone a long way I think in increasing primary education in the world, decreasing poverty in some places, decreasing child mortality. So I think really they're making great progress but they are running out in 2015. The question is what comes next? So the countries of the world last year in Rio had a little bit of a party in June. Rio plus 20 and they decided not exactly to replace the MDGs. It makes it a bit tricky I have to say. But by 2015 to adopt far-ranging sustainable development goals, one of the many debates going on right now are will the MDGs continue and will there be parallel sustainable development goals or will the sustainable development goals replace the MDGs? Now the idea of the SDGs and why 190 countries wanted them is that they felt that the MDGs while making progress on the social economic front were not encompassing the environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Therefore this idea of having sustainable development goals. So the big question now is what are these sustainable development goals going to look like? To try and figure that question out there are lots and lots of processes going on where Ireland is also very active along with the EU. There's the open working group which is a group of countries that was meant to be initially something like 15 or 20 countries but everybody's joined now where they're trying to sort out what the overall vision for the SDGs would be. There is the secretary general's high level panel of eminent persons that has just produced a report on the post 2015 agenda. There's the UN system-wide task team from UNEP and other UN agencies trying to sort out what the post 2015 agenda should be. There's the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a public-private partnership and many other processes going on. Now I'm from UNEP, come here to talk to you because UNEP also as part of Rio plus 20 was officially recognized by Ireland and the other countries of the world as the principal environmental authority within the UN system. So we thought it would be important to chime in on how environment should play an essential role in the SDGs. We've just put out a discussion paper which I'm going to leave you a couple of copies of and in that discussion paper we address a couple of different things. First of all, what can we learn about current global goals and targets? Did you know that there's over 500 different environmental treaties in the world, one sort or another, international environmental treaties, not to speak of the various legislation within a particular country? So there's a lot of lessons to be learned if you look at it critically. And secondly then, how would we create a framework, a general framework now at this critical juncture in negotiating the SDGs as to how to make sure that the environment is included. That's why I called my talk today, Embedding the Environment in the SDGs. So first of all, a few words about the lessons that we learned. UNEP as part of its global environmental outlook, which it published last year, a big thick book which is great for if you have a small child, if they need to be higher on their chair. It could be used by one of my colleagues as a doorstop. It's one of these huge mega things that's supposed to have everything in it, but one of the more interesting parts of it was an analysis of current goals and targets. And what we found was that out of the whole complex of 91 that we looked at, and these 91 were selected by an intergovernmental panel that advised us, that only four were making really advanced progress, whereas around 40 were making some progress. But of those that were making progress altogether, we found that first of all, the successful ones, the ones making the most progress, tend to have general support of society and also a strong scientific consensus behind it. So for example, the goals that were set by a public-private partnership to take lead out of all kinds of vehicle fuels in the world has been successful. We have managed to take fuel at the refinery level, to take lead at the refinery level out of fuels and all around the world. And it's thought that one reason that was successful is the fact that there was very strong scientific consensus that this lead in the atmosphere of cities was killing people, was creating respiratory and other diseases, strong science behind it. We also found that the successful goals basically were often were embedded in successful governance regimes. And that's what a lot of people say that the success of the Montreal Protocol, which has focused successfully on decreasing the consumption of chemicals that make their way into the atmosphere and then lead to the deterioration of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, much of its success has to do with the fact that it's organized quite well in a governance standpoint with the scientific advisory bodies effectively feeding into the political bodies for further negotiation and supported by a strong financial structure, the multilateral fund to support developing countries to go ahead and take actions against these ozone-depleting substances. So effective governance regimes. Thirdly, that if solutions were around, then the goals tended to be more successful, but also that they were linked to specific and measurable targets that countries and other entities were then responsible and held responsible for achieving these goals. Now, focusing specifically on the MDGs, the Millennium Development Goals, what can we learn from them? First of all, from the standpoint of others, but certainly from UNEP, it was way too narrow from the environmental standpoint to cover all of the important linkages between the socioeconomic aspects of society and the environment. And that the MDGs were quite fragmented. One example that I always use is the lack of connection between MDG-1, which has to do with poverty alleviation, and MDG-7, which has to do with environmental sustainability. We find it hard to believe how can you talk about poverty alleviation if you're not talking about contaminated water, if you're not talking about linkages with soil deterioration, degradation. Strong linkages that exist in reality, but these were not made as part of the MDGs that we need to make for the SDGs. Now, based on these and other lessons learned, UNEP is proposing a way of embedding the environment in the SDGs, a four-part way, which turns out to be, actually, we think a framework by which the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of SDGs can be integrated together. First has to do with establishing a rationale and overarching vision. The second is an integrated approach to structuring these goals and targets. The third is a set of criteria for judging proposed goals and targets. And the fourth are a list of best practices for selecting the indicators that would underpin these goals and targets. Let me just skip to the integrated approach. So, we believe that in order to encompass the various dimensions of sustainable development, that at the highest level there should be a set of simple-to-understand goals that we call integrated goals, integrated in the respect that each goal embodies the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. I'll give you an example in just a moment. That these should be underlain by a mix of targets. Now, it would make sense then if the goals are integrated and talk about social, economic environment, why not the targets? Well, it turns out that if you get to the specific level of targets, it may be very difficult to make them trackable and quantitative. We find that very important based on the experience from current goals is that you need targets. You have aspirational goals that make everyone feel very good and that are all encompassing, but when you get to the target level, it has to be trackable. So, in that case, to be pragmatic, there'll probably be the goals will be underlain by a mix of integrated as well as non-integrated targets. I'll give you an example in just a moment. And these have to be supported by indicators that you can go out and measure. And the whole thing has to fit together so that they're complementary and reinforcing. So, if you have a food security goal somewhere along your set, you have to talk about water. Otherwise, and if you are talking about water, not necessarily in terms of agriculture, you have to make the link between your food security goals and your water security goals. So, the set has to work together in a complementary phase. Not easy, but we consider it an important objective. So, an integrated goal would be, for example, to ensure food and nutrition security worldwide through different things, through adequate nutrition for all, equitable access to food supply. So here, you cover some of the major social and economic objectives. And thirdly, through the expansion of sustainable fisheries and agriculture. You put in your goal explicitly the environmental dimensions, together with the social and economic dimensions. It would seem like this is a no-brainer, but I can tell you right now, go through the literature and a lot of smart people are thinking we have to go another route. An integrated target would be to increase affordability and access to food and reduce the environmental consequences of food production. Okay, so you're building in all three aspects of sustainable development by reducing food loss and waste by a certain percentage, by a certain year. So there you have an integrated target. It doesn't always work. We think that we could monitor food waste on a survey statistical way, but it's very difficult to track other integrated targets. So you may want to have non-integrated targets. For example, reducing the number of children suffering from malnutrition by a certain percentage by a particular year. So, integrated goals underpinned by a mix of targets. Now, this is just a kind of a vague structure which would ensure that environments included, but also an integration of the different dimensions. We also think that there should be certain criteria by which we judge the different goals and targets that are proposed by others or that are going to be developed. So here are our suggestions for criteria. First of all, there should be a strong linkage of the environment if you are going to have environmental goals and targets for these social and economic dimensions. So in the case of food security, you should not have food security goals without talking about the ecological foundation that underlines the food security system. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few moments. Secondly, we should decouple the ideas of social economic development from both unsustainable resource use and a proportional increase in environmental degradation. I would argue that most environmental policies right now that talk about increasing access of energy in developing countries to poor people probably will lead, as they have up to now, to a proportional increase in air pollution, a proportional increase in greenhouse gases, and a proportional decrease in fossil fuel resources. The idea is that we need to decouple now in the sustainable development goals the ideas of socioeconomic development from this environmental degradation and resource use. A policy that would be put the bigger focus on renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency would decouple that trend. You could have a linear increase in the amount of electricity used per person or the amount of energy used per person, but you would likely not to have a proportional increase in the amount of greenhouse gases or air pollutants that are produced. Simple-minded stuff, but somehow we're not thinking enough about it and a lot of the goals being discussed will lead to this coupling again of development and environment. The third one is that we need to cover the critical issues of environmental sustainability to a much better job than we've done with the MDGs up to now, especially those problems that may be irreversible. And in that list, unfortunately it's a fairly long list, but it includes the destruction of coral reefs, the extinction of species, the release of methane from melting permafrost. There's a variety now of irreversible problems of global scale that need to be embedded in the SDGs. Fourthly, we need to take into account, we cannot ignore this huge landscape that's out there already, which Ireland and other countries have bought into of international environmental goals and targets. They have to find a place in the SDGs. One way of doing it, simple way, is we have to make sure whatever goals and targets we set in the SDGs do not mean a setback in our current goals. We have to use them as a ground floor. Whatever's in there about the environment has to be a bit more ambitious at least, if not much more ambitious than current goals and targets. Secondly, there's an opportunity to use the SDGs to accelerate the implementation of current goals. So one example you hear a lot is that under the Convention for Biodiversity, some very important goals and targets were agreed upon just a year ago, the IG targets, or actually a year and a half ago. And they set out a whole series of targets to decrease deforestation and lower the extinction rate of species. They're running out in a few years. So the SDGs might be an opportunity to take those goals and targets or at least refer to the IG targets to accelerate the implementation of these targets. So these are a couple of ideas. We can't ignore existing goals and targets. Otherwise, we're going to end up perhaps with overlapping goals and targets or even contradictory ones. We have to take them into account. We need to think about how we're going to take them into account. These sustainable development goals, we believe, have to be scientifically credible and verifiable, easier said than done, but I think that's a minimum criterion. And again, we come back to this trackability that there has to be some accountability, some way of tracking progress. Experiences shown that if you don't have that in goals that generally you're not going to achieve where you want to go to. So backing up and as part of this trackability is that these targets and goals need to be backed up by solid, transparent indicators. And that's the last part of our recommendations which I'll go through quickly. And that is that there needs to be a best practice in adopting these indicators in the SDGs. They need to be limited in number. Not so many that developing countries or even developed countries can't keep track of. They have to be understandable, clear and ambiguous. A lot of these are no-brainers and yet often ignored when we're setting up international environmental regimes. They need to be specific and measurable. They need to be linked specifically to the target so that the politicians can explain progress in meeting these targets. They need to be policy relevant and sensitive also to policy interventions. If you're tracking, for example, if you have a water security target or goal and one of your indicators is the water quality of your public water supplies, you have to be able to measure that across the board for all countries. And also you have to include not only relative changes but also absolute changes. One example from the MDGs that's pointed to a lesson to be learned is that there is embedded in MDG7 a target to reduce the number of, not the number, but the percentage of slum dwellers. And it turns out because of urbanization, the size of cities have grown so large in developing countries that it's been pointed out many times that yes, we have decreased the percentage, but actually the number of slum dwellers has increased since we set the MDGs. It's an honest mistake, but nevertheless it's something to be learned for the SDGs. So what would be the strengths and weaknesses of this approach? The weakness is that if we're talking about an integrated approach about linking social, economic, and environment into goals and perhaps targets, it's going to take a lot of work because our governments are not organized to integrate these things. Our scientific communities are not organized to integrate these kinds of things. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a shift in thinking about development. The weakness, I'd say, was also the first strength of the approach in that it's going to encourage governments and institutions to move away from a silo approach to have more cross-department coordination, perhaps even to think about new governance structures where people are working on all three dimensions of sustainable development at the same time. It's going to lead to a higher level of integration of these dimensions in sustainable development. It'll help avoid unintended environmental impacts of socioeconomic development that happen. As the example of poverty could lead to increased air pollution inadvertently. If reducing poverty means to have access to cook stoves that are working improperly, it conveys the message to the policymakers that you need to conserve and invest in environmental goods if you are going to increase well-being in the world. And that SDGs should not just be an incremental step, but SDGs indeed should be a transformative step, a new way of achieving development in the world. Now this is to sum up the framework. It includes a rationale and overarching vision, an integrated approach to setting goals and targets, some criteria for assessing goals and targets, and some best practices for indicators. All very general, and therefore in the last part of my talk what I like to do is get a little bit more specific and tell you why I think using the example of food security, why food security is an example which justifies an integrated approach towards sustainable development goals. Now food security, I don't have to tell anyone here, has many different dimensions. Academics love to argue about what the dimensions are and the various parameters of it. I'll just quote an international meeting where a lot of governments participated, the World Food Summit a couple of years ago and the World Food Summit agreed that the four main socio-economic pillars of food security were number one, availability, whether food trade and the food production system in a country is adequate in order to make enough food available. Secondly, whether available whether people have the capability to buy the food or grow the food. Thirdly, whether utilization, that is whether people are well enough to consume the food. Because at that conference at least it was thought that you need to bring in a more comprehensive idea of the health of people if you're going to talk about food security. And fourthly, whether the food system would be stable throughout the year but especially between years. Now, what they didn't talk about which I would insist is equally important not maybe a fourth pillar but maybe a foundation to this pillar and that is that these four pillars are underlain by an ecological foundation that is not taken into account adequately in the discourse about food security. In agriculture we often overlook the critical value that biodiversity off-farm and on-farm plays. You know that about 30% of crops in the world, 30% require bee pollination but it's not unusual to come to an agricultural area where the habitat of bees in the vicinity of crops are being totally destroyed. It'll just work for a certain period of time until finally we realize that and in some parts of the world there's actually artificial pollination of populations not big enough. A simple example of how off-farm and on-farm biodiversity plays an important role in food production. Apart from the fact that we're reliant on biodiversity you also know that there's still a lot of competition for land especially in developing countries for the agricultural land. If you just take a medium scenario of the expansion of biofuels even take into account that now the whole bandwagon towards biofuels in Europe has really slowed down. If you take that into account still you come up with estimates of around about one to one and a half million hectares of new biofuel land each year if you take figures from Brazil and other countries like that. If you add that up between 2010 and 2030 it turns out to be a big number that's about the size of the area of the UK actually. Parallel to that cities are still expanding maybe not in Ireland, maybe not in Europe in general even though there is still this urban sprawl going on but what you certainly get are the expansion of cities in the developing countries just in the last four years I've been in Nairobi it's been incredible how that city's been expanding and it's thought that even if you look at medium scenarios about one and a half to two million hectares of new urban land is coming online especially in developing countries each year currently and it's expected to continue at least up to 2030 then maybe the urbanization curve will turn around. So we're losing land in fact and we're losing the opportunity for expanding agricultural land because of other land uses but meanwhile we're losing about one fifth we're not losing it but about one fifth of cultivated land in the world is thought by the scientific community by Ilras a distinguished soil science institute in the Netherlands about one fifth of the land to be degrading each year pressures on land pressures on biodiversity and at the same time going degradation what I wanted to talk about now is the fact it's not just a matter of agriculture we often overlook the fact of the importance that fisheries play in world food production fisheries in total inland and marine only account for around 10% of caloric consumption right now but it accounts for a disproportionate amount of animal protein used in different societies especially as you know in Asia partly in Latin America and coastal zones and in Africa but it turns out FAO tells us that a full one half of all marine fisheries right now are at their maximum exploitation level at about a third are being over exploited meaning that the production the amount of landings coming from that particular fishery has reached a peak and is heading south why? because of overfishing primarily but also because of habitat destruction the destruction of coral regions for example you hear about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia it's in the news recently but also did you know that about one third of the mangrove area along the coast of the world has been destroyed over the last few decades one third one of the major habitats for the marine fisheries now that's enough bad news there's also good news when it has to do with food security and that there are lots of good solutions available and they're all prefixed as it turns out by the word sustainable they're sustainable agriculture which on the farm level the key word here is integrated you've heard about things like integrated pest management integrated nutrient management there's even integrated livestock management what it basically means is to use the amount of materials the amount of fertilizer the amount of pesticides the minimum amount needed to do the job rather than an excess of nutrients which would lead to groundwater contamination an excess of pesticides that would lead to poisoning of the adjacent biodiversity of the adjacent ecosystems rather on a landscape level the key word is mixed use combining livestock grazing crop grazing and also agroforestry actually forestry where the output from one part for example where the waste material from crops would be used as food for the livestock on the same stretch of land to close the cycles more to create less contamination on a global level the key word is investment investing in innovative ways of carrying out sustainable development but it also means in investing in stakeholders for example to bring them into the international markets and tie them in also with sustainable food production another key word is sustainable fisheries expanding the amount of marine protected areas so that the spawning areas of fish are protected reducing the perverse subsidies right now if you add up all of the subsidies that countries put to their fishing industry it adds up to the figure of somewhere around 25 to 30 billion dollars a year not to say that all of this works in a negative environmental way but a lot of it actually encourages inadvertently overfishing in the world we have to think about, UNEP loves to call them perverse subsidies we have to re-examine the subsidies and think whether the costs of the subsidies are simply too high we need to find an alternative feed for agriculture because about one quarter of all the marine landings go to feed other fish you just can't keep up a cycle where you're using fish to feed fish it just doesn't work out over the long term and another the third key idea is sustainable consumption and production here the basic idea is to reduce food waste the rough estimate is that about one third of the food produced, harvested through the whole food chain is wasted doesn't need to be disposed of that's not only in the food waste on our tables in rich countries but it also has to do with the waste of food because small shareholders are not able to get their harvest to market fast enough and that's where developed countries can come in by increasing storage facilities and transportation to get that food to market in a quicker way reducing post-harvest losses so to sum up we're undermining the ecological foundation of the world food system and through this food security example I think it provides a clear illustration of the need for an integrated approach to SDGs certainly we want strong social and economic objectives but we need to support these objectives with strong environmental objectives just as food security and the social and economic objectives that go along with food security have a very strong ecological foundation in the same way all social and economic well-being is underpinned by a strong environmental ecological foundation and needs to be underpinned by a strong sustainable environment thank you very much for your attention