Words by José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs
Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
Plenary session of the Future Summit
(Monday, September 23, 2024)
His Excellency, President of the General Assembly,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
The Future Summit offers us a unique opportunity to show the world that it is possible to restore confidence in the multilateral system and demonstrate that international and regional cooperation can respond to the enormous challenges we face and serve to build a more peaceful, fair, productive, inclusive and sustainable future through collective action.
The process that led us to the Pact for the Future, as well as the Global Digital Pact and the Declaration on Future Generations, has given us important lessons. Beyond the agreements on each topic, perhaps the added value and the most important lesson that the Pact for the Future leaves us is that it is crucial to think about the future in order to, from the future, establish the issues that are important for the present.
That is to say, it is important that the policies and actions that countries and the international community are taking today are taken with full awareness of what kind of future they are building.
Unfortunately, as societies we tend to live in the immediacy and the short term, a tendency that has been aggravated by social media, which also generates more emotions than analytical thinking. Thinking about the future is a way of creating spaces for encounter and analysis to combat this short-termism and polarization.
At ECLAC we believe that, with adequate monitoring, the Pact for the Future and complementary agreements can be an accelerator for achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs.
Furthermore, the Pact for the Future is a major step in the right direction to reform a multilateral system that was designed more than 70 years ago and which, as the SG has pointed out, requires urgent reforms, such as the international financial architecture that is not up to the challenges of financing development today.
The issues of peace and security; science, technology, innovation and digital cooperation; youth and intergenerational solidarity; and gender equality are fundamental issues for the world and for Latin America and the Caribbean.
In this regard, one of ECLAC’s priorities is to contribute to strengthening the foresight and anticipatory governance of the countries in the region. For example, we are creating a network of Parliamentary Future Commissions in the region.
And we are emphasizing not only the answers to the questions about what needs to be done but how to do it, which leads us directly to the issues of the TOPP capacities of the institutions, that is, technical, operational, political and prospective, as well as the spaces for social dialogue to manage the indispensable transformations.
The world and LAC need and would benefit from a world at peace; a strong multilateral system; a rules-based trading system; collaboration to advance sustainable development; to advance the SDGs; and to confront climate change.
At our upcoming 40th session of ECLAC in October in Peru, we will have the first opportunity to discuss the implementation of the Future Summit commitments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Thank you so much.
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