Partnership of Global Sharing
Japan's initiatives for WSSD including
- 30 million dollars for Southern African famine
- Capacity building of 9500 personnel for more trade and better environment
- and more
Press Conference, August 26, 2002 at WSSD
by Kaoru ISHIKAWA, Deputy Director-General, Multilateral Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Basic strategy for nation building and sustainable development
(1)Hope
(2)Concrete actions - KOIZUMI INITIATIVES
(1) Human resources development
(2) Ownership and Solidarity
(3) Today's complacency, Tomorrow's plight
Introduction
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press,
Thank you very much indeed for your coming to my press conference in spite of your busy schedule..
I would like to share with you today Japanese strategy to realize nation building and sustainable development, and her concrete actions in the context of international solidarity.
1. Basic strategy for nation building and sustainable development
(1) Hope
In my country, there is an old saying as follows: "People is the stone wall of castle, in fact people is castle itself." As you may have heard of, my country has no natural resources and built our nation based on human resources. This is why we are optimistic about nation building of many of our partners.
I may draw your attention to the flow chart on the screen. As you see here, to build a nation, peace and security are the basic starting point to build a better future. At the same time, people should not go to jail unless he or she breached law, and there should be no confiscation of goods without rule of law. In such a society, ordinary people will be able to think about the next day or next year, because predictability is there. Ordinary people will realize political and economic participation, which means free election and entrepreneurship.
Thus, ordinary people can have hope. He and she may think that 'Tomorrow can be better than today'. Indeed, this HOPE is the strongest motivation for life.
Ordinary people motivated by hope may invest in future that is education, take care of their own and other's health, respect their partner that is gender, and will speak using modern technology as necessary. This will lead to materialize people's empowerment and ownership.
BUT, here we must remind ourselves of the sad historical facts that I call historical handicap, imposed by external factors during centuries especially in this continent. Most unfortunately, there are also geographical handicaps, if I may call so, such as tropical diseases. These are the reasons among others why we must extend hand of solidarity to developing countries. It is especially so in Africa, where countries decided to launch NEPAD, based on ownership and partnership.
My country highly appreciate the courageous decision and will support NEPAD. In fact, the spirit of NEPAD is in line with TICAD, Tokyo International Conference on African Development launched in early 1990's, when western countries were talking about aid fatigue.
Indeed since Rio Summit, Japan alone has been supporting one fifth of total world ODA. Some years it was one fifth, the others more than one fourth..
In this context, I personally welcome that those countries which reduced ODA since Rio Summit talking and justifying themselves by a notion of 'aid fatigue', are now coming back to the scene..
(2) Concrete actions
Japan is also an action-oriented country. With no natural resources, the only way to build our nation was concrete actions led by people, as I said earlier.
Now, if you could look at the upper row of the conceptual flow chart, you will see the importance we put on water and science. You may be aware that in March next year, Japan will host the 3rd Water Forum and related ministerial meeting in Kyoto. We all know that the four largest ancient civilizations were all born thanks to water, and modern civilization is based on science. In Ubuntu village you can see concrete projects on science. We are also launching an energy education campaign following WSSD.
Economic sectors in the flow chart reflect the reality, for example 70% of labor force is in agriculture. We have been supporting since several years a development experiment of hybrid rice between Asian rice and African rice, and now we have successful result. WARDA, West Africa Rice Development Association in Cote d'Ivoire is promoting the New Rice for Africa or NERICA with Japanese support both in terms of finance and technology. Some of the main characteristics of NERICA are: high yield (three times more than African rice), dry resistant, resistant to insects and weed competitive, quick growth (30-50 days) giving crops in Western Africa in August. August is the most difficult month for the local farmers in Western Africa. We are now moving forward to a new stage of expanding the new rice together with local farmers. Needless to mention, NERICA is not a GMO.
Forest certainly is another sector, which we will push forward concrete actions, in this case with Indonesians.
Transportation sector is important infrastructure, not only for farmers but also for the whole economy. It is also an important sector for environment, and you can visit Japan Pavilion in Ubuntu Village to see environmentally friendly cars, which is very well sold in Japanese market. This is to show that environmentally friendly technology is not a dream but a reality.
I will not mention all of the sectors because of the time constraint, but I would like to emphasize that our actions are based on this kind of strategic approach.
Thus we will be able to realize recycling society, and also robust growth with equity.
2. Koizumi Initiatives
Prime Minister Koizumi in his inauguration speech mentioned a historical episode in Japan about hundred barrels of rice. A defeated clan in Meiji revolution war was starving and received hundred barrels of rice from their supporters. Instead of eating, they sold them and with the money gained they built a school from which many legendary leaders later graduated.
Three pillars of KOIZUMI initiatives are all centered around human capacity building, based on our conviction that ordinary people is the treasure of a nation and in fact they are the protagonists of sustainable development.
They are: (i) People and Hope: we propose "the decade of education for sustainable development" to be declared in the United Nations so that each and every child of the world become sustainable development conscious. We will further continue our 3 billion dollars 5 year health initiatives launched in Okinawa two years ago, to fight back HIV, TB and malaria.
(ii) Ownership and Solidarity: we will train thousands of trade samurai in developing countries. We will extend training plan for AU integration.
(iii) Today's complacency, Tomorrow's plight: this is to enhance environmental preservation through human capacity building of 5000 persons. Of course we will continue to pursue diplomatic leadership for the entry into force of Kyoto Protocol.
In other words, we also believe in the African wisdom saying that "To learn how to catch fish is more important than to receive fish."
Please refer to the paper on KOIZUMI initiatives, which I distributed for you.
One emergency is the starvation in Southern Africa. Japan offers 30 million US Dollars to seven affected countries.
My last comment is about the sharing of experiences. Japan had nothing left in August 1945, because almost all cities and town were in ashes because of carpet bombing. We had to rebuild our nation in a great hurry, and the first thing we did was to reconstruct schools. That was a good decision. Wrong side of the coin of the economic miracle was pollution. In the mid 1950's, through 1960's and early 70's, our once beautiful archipelago became a kind of collection of pollution of water, air and soil. We paid very high price including human life. We will show all these mistakes and lessons learnt in a seminar to be held in Ubuntu village Japan Pavilion, on Thursday 29th at 10:30. After the seminar, video will be continuously shown there all day long until the end of WSSD. This is to tell our developing friend: Dear friend, do not repeat our mistakes. We will help you as necessary to chose another way to realize growth, i.e. sustainable development where environmental objectives and development goals can be both realized.
This is the real friendship. We are happy to be the real friend of the developing world.
Thank you for your attention.
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