April 2011: The three Working Groups set up to advise the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP) recently completed their work and presented their findings to the Panel. The GSP Secretariat has made available the report of each Working Group.

The Working Groups (WGs) shared their findings and recommendations in separate reports to the Panel at its second meeting (GSP 2), held from 25-26 February 2011, in Cape Town, South Africa.

The report of the Working Group on Poverty, Social Cohesion, and Employment concludes that: economic growth is necessary for creating jobs and reducing poverty but does not generate per se equitable and sustainable outcomes; the sustainable use of natural resources is critical for poverty reduction; the perceived trade-off between poverty reduction and sustainability is the result of political and policy choices; with appropriate political guidance, low-carbon and resource-conscious growth provides opportunities for poverty reduction; the promotion of sustainable agriculture is critical for poverty reduction and for the establishment of a more sustainable global economic system; and ensuring women’s social and economic rights is crucial to reducing poverty, furthering sustainable management of natural resources and strengthening resilience to climate change.

The report of the Working Group on Paradigms, referring to “the overall vision for the Panel and the possible approaches that could help translate sustainability into actionable items to address the challenges of today,” suggests that a new paradigm for sustainable development could build on both a green economy approach and on a rights-based approach. The Group proposes several recommendations, including to: find new ways to internalise the external costs of greenhouse gas emissions; secure people’s universal access to food, water and energy by targeted investments, institutional innovation, accountable policies, new legal tools, transparency and benefit sharing, inter alia; conclude a new compact between governments, civil society and business partners to enable action from the local to the global level, address short-term development imperatives and long-term vision, and bridge generational and gender inequities; and establish sustainable development goals and indicators building on existing ones (Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs) and improved ones (Human Development Index/”HDI+”).

The report of the third Working Group, on “ensuring that business and markets are part of delivering sustainability, rapidly and at scale,” called for “quantum change” and outlined recommendations on the use of market tools, including in the areas of: public policy innovation, capital market reform, corporate sustainability and governance, reduction of subsidies, and reviewing the global trading system. [Publication: Report of WG 1 (Poverty)] [Publication: Report of WG 2 (Paradigms)] [Publication: Report of WG 3 (Markets)]