REMARKS: Opening Remarks by Secretary General Baron Waqa at 8th Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development

Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP,

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

Ekamawir omo, and warm Pacific greetings to all of you. Welcome to your Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.

We are indeed very pleased to host the Eighth Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development. This is an important platform to further discuss pressing and emerging issues confronting our Blue Pacific region. 

Your meeting is also key to firmly establishing our priorities in preparation for the 2025 Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable 
Development, and the 2025 High-Level Political Forum.

I am therefore appreciative of your presence here today. I also thank you most sincerely for your continued support with our work throughout this year.

Despite our countries’ vulnerabilities and challenges we face, your discussions over the next two days will ensure that our region’s determination and commitment to achieving sustainable development is properly considered and rendered. 

The Agenda 2030 provides the opportunity to boost the implementation of regional frameworks, like the 2050 Strategy for the 
Blue Pacific Continent. In the last three decades since the Barbados Programme of Action, the specific challenges and opportunities for all SIDS, including Pacific SIDS, as well as our multifaceted views of development and partnerships, should now be well documented.

The focus of your discussions bodes well with some of our key areas of ongoing regional work to support national priorities: Good Health and Well-Being – SDG3; Gender Equality - SDG 5; Decent Work and Economic Growth - SDG 8; Life Below Water - SDG 14; and Partnerships for the Goals - SDG 17.

In the interest of time, I shall not reiterate why these areas of work are important to the implementation of the 2050 Strategy. 
But I do wish to make this point clear: the 2050 Strategy, as the overarching framework for sustainable development in our Blue Pacific region, should be where all efforts by our partners should be working to support. 

The Agenda 2030 and our 2050 Strategy have much in common, but none more important than requiring genuine, effective and inclusive partnerships, as well as mutual trust and accountability, to support their implementation. 

The calls made at the Fourth International Conference on SIDS in May of this year for the international community and multilateral system to work together with all SIDS to realise the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS) resonated strongly throughout the Forum Leaders’ meeting in Tonga, and in the recent UNGA79 general debate. 

Through the theme Transformative and Resilient Pasifiki: Build Better Now, the importance of integrated resilience across all our Pacific communities and sectors was reaffirmed at the Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga. These include building economies through collective solution; building the capacity of Pacific people through innovation and technology; and by working together to address continued health and education challenges.

At the multilateral level, the Pact for the Future, adopted at the UN Summit of the Future held last month, opens pathways to new possibilities for us all. Its key focus areas and commitments provide opportunities to redefine the multilateral system and guide humanity on a new course to meet existing commitments and solve long-term challenges. 

To realise the goals of the 2050 Strategy and the Agenda 2030 amongst all other regional and multilateral development agendas, genuine and durable partnerships are critical. 

It will require improved global-regional coordination and cooperation, strengthened national systems, transformative reforms, strengthening digitization, shared experiences, lessons learnt and technical expertise, especially in the health and education sectors, effective resource mobilisation, and the sustainable management of our natural resources. 

There must be clarity on the contribution partnerships make to the implementation of the sustainable development agenda at all levels. 

As you consider key issues before your meeting, it would be useful toalso consider these in the context of the implementation of the ABAS, in particular its monitoring and evaluation over the next 10 years. 

I wish all of you successful discussions over the next two days.
Thank you.