The Chronicle interview.

• Position: Nitin Desai, United Nations - Interview

With preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development already well under way, Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and Secretary-General of the conference, has a lot on his mind. But this is not the first time Mr. Desai has found himself facing such a challenge. From 1990 to 1993, he was the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). One major outcome of that Conference was Agenda 21, which will be one of the many topics discussed at the Sustainable Development Summit, taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August to 4 September 2002. Mr. Desai sat down with the Chronicle's Russell Taylor on 17 January to discuss, among other things, Agenda 21, the Johannesburg Summit and the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico.

Why hold the International Conference on Financing for Development and the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development?

The Financing for Development Conference has been in the works for some time. But it acquired additional force after the Millennium Summit because, with this big global commitment to the development goals, we had to address the question of the resources required for reaching them. It has acquired still greater force because of the search for a vibrant multilateralism following the events of September 11. We should see these three conferences as in some ways connected: Doha, the ministerial meeting of the world Trade Organization; Monterrey, the meeting on Financing for Development; and Johannesburg, the meeting on sustainable development. In a way, what was achieved in Doha was that development was placed at the centre of the world trade agenda. It is not that development was not there, but it was always treated as an add-on to a system of trade policy, which was focussed very much on the basic objective of trade liberalization.

It is very important that we recognize that the concerns of developing countries receive central place. Monterrey is trying to place development in the centre of the world financial agenda. It is not that this has never received attention, but the focus of financial policy has always been in terms of issues such as stability, etc. what I am saying is that we should judge the effectiveness of financial policy at every level--national or global--from the perspective of what it means for development, what it means for savings and investment, what it means for resources for major, committed public programmes, particularly on the part of the United Nations. And Johannesburg is very much a conference about what sort of development that should be. In that sense, the three are very connected. It's very important we recognize that you need success in all, because together they constitute a package that would place development absolutely at the centre of the agenda of global economic cooperation. That's why it is a ver y opportune time for this conference.

One of the topics for discussion is mobilizing financial resources, domestic and foreign direct investment, and other private capital. What's required?

When we talk of domestic resources, the issue really is about building capacity to develop the financial system domestically: savings institutions; capital markets; institutions which channel investments in appropriate directions; and institutions which give poor people better access to credit...