Forum, Legislation, Lithuania

Dalia Grybauskaitė at UN Conference in Rio de Janeiro. Photo: president.lt

The round table, moderated by the President of Lithuania together with President Laura Chinchilla Miranda of Costa Rica, focused on ways to achieve sustainable development goals set forth in the Rio+20 outcome document "The Future We Want", promote green economy as well as reform and strengthen the UN institutional framework for sustainable development, informs BC presidential press service.

President Dalia Grybauskaitė underlined that with the world's diminishing natural resources, economic growth at previous rates was no longer possible. The current economic model should be reformed by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging energy efficiency and saving.

"Preserving the environment is our responsibility for the future generations. We must set precise, definite and clear global development goals and pursue them responsibly and in solidarity," the President said.

According to President Dalia Grybauskaitė, such goals should not be too many. They have to be both universal and country-specific. She pointed out that the new sustainable development goals had to be aligned with the UN Millennium Development Goals without reducing efforts to achieve them by 2015.

The President also underlined that the institutional framework for sustainable development lacked effectiveness and cooperation. She emphasized the need to reform UN institutions, while reinforcing coordination, avoiding overlapping, improving the result-oriented approach, strengthening their monitoring, and increasing transparency.

Taking part in the high level round table were Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt of Denmark (current EU presiding country), Prime Minister of Tonga, Siale Ataongo Kaho (Lord Tuivakanō), ministers from Iceland, Japan, Malta, Greece, Romania, the Czech Republic, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Mauritius, Russia, Singapore. and Toga.