DG/98/30 Original: English UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION Address by Mr Federico Mayor Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the closing session of the World Bank/UNESCO Conference Understanding Culture in Sustainable Development: Investing in Cultural and Natural Endowments Washington DC, 29 September 1998
Excellencies, Friends and colleagues, Ladies and gentlemen, If, 10 years ago, I had been told that I would be here for a conference on culture and sustainable development at the World Bank, sponsored by UNESCO, it would have seemed utopian! You can imagine therefore just how happy and honoured I am to be here at the World Bank in Washington to address a conference co-sponsored by the Bank on an issue which is so central to UNESCO's concerns. The choice of theme is very heartening for us at UNESCO because it demonstrates the increasing impact of our efforts to introduce culture into the development equation and it testifies above all to the receptivity and vision now prevalent within the World Bank, which has taken up both the opportunities and the challenges inherent in a commitment to the cultural dimension of development. I thank and I congratulate James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, for his leadership in moving the Bank's cultural agenda forward. As I stand here in the Preston Auditorium, I recall how Lewis Preston used to say: "People are both the means and the end of development." His vision of development helped foster the notion that culture must also become both a means and an end of development. Together we can now advance on a quest to put into practice our shared understanding of the role of culture in sustainable development. To this quest may be applied the words of the Spanish poet Antonio Mercado: "Traveller, there is no road. You make the road by walking." When this is the case, when we set out to tread a new road, partnership becomes an essential means to successful pathfinding. That partnership within the international community begins at the conceptual level. It is together, collectively, that we have been able to move forward our thinking on development issues. It has taken us years, even decades, to begin to replace the mental maps that identify development in terms of linear economic growth alone. As Director-General of UNESCO, I have seen how hard it has been to broaden the goals of the United Nations development strategies. Education and, to a lesser extent, science, were introduced only for the fourth development decade at the end of the eighties, and with a lot of difficulty. I remember coming here ten years ago for the preparation of the first Global Conference on Education for All that took place in March 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand And I remember my conversations with Barber Conable trying to persuade him to make some funds available for Education for All. Progressively, Barber Conable was able to persuade all those who are Governors at the Bank. I was with him one evening here at the World Bank, and he said to me, "Today, I have very good news for you. The Bank will make available for this Education for All Meeting"--and he said it very rapidly--"one
3 billion." I did not understand if it was "one million" or "one billion". So I said, "Please, can you repeat - is that b for Barcelona or m for Madrid?" He said, "It is b - one billion». I was delighted to realize that finally, we had $1 billion available for Education for All. I think this was one of the best pieces of news that we have had in these last years. There has been a very significant increase in education provision throughout the world and there has been a decrease in fertility rates. Today I am sure that culture and communication will also become central components of all development policies. In 1995, the Independent World Commission on Culture and Development was set up jointly by UNESCO and the United Nations and chaired by Mr. Xavier Perez de Cuéllar. It emphasized that development must be concerned with "the flourishing of human existence in all its forms and as a whole." Not only must development be sustainable, it must also be cultural. This powerful message is now being heard. Indeed, the current global economic crisis drives home its fundamental truth. In the words of a headline which appeared earlier this month in the International Herald Tribune: "Good Societies are about More Than Free Markets." Sustainable development is about more than economic growth, as there is no sustainability without sharing, without justice, without freedom of expression. There is no sustainable development without a sustainable democracy. On one level, this broader, more complex approach to development is an ethical imperative. South Africa's Deputy President, Mr. Thabo Mbeki recently made this point very clearly when he said, and I quote: "The political leaders of our contemporary world should face up to the question of whether universal human values have any place at all in the ordering of human affairs." I like to express culture in behavioural terms. Behaviour - how I act - in accordance with what I think or know, with what I remember or forget, with what I love or reject, with what I create or innovate - this the supreme expression of culture. Creativity, this pre-eminent capacity specific to the human race, allows us to reinvent every day the way we live. Creativity allows us to reinvent meaning and responses. This aspect of culture is the key to development, to integral, endogenous, sustainable human development. It is particularly important in the form of cultural diversity. Our conceptual advances on these issues have allowed us to establish a process of rethinking by governments and their partners on the nature, priority and scope of their cultural policies in the context of development. The impact of the Commission's work led us directly to the holding in April this year in Stockholm of the important Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development. The Action Plan adopted by 140 member states at the conference marked, in my view, a new
4 commitment to culture. It is not enough to have a plan, however. We must also have action. In the words of Ismail Serageldin in his address to the Plenary of the Stockholm Conference: "The time for action is now. It can be done. It must be done." As I myself said on that occasion: "If, after this conference, governments take practical steps to apply the ideas and proposals now before them... if they take the necessary budgetary and legal measures to turn them into active policy, then the name «Stockholm» will come to stand for a new departure and will be considered as a turning point." It is time for all of us to keep our word. For three decades, we have made our case. Today, we have the tools. We now need the will to act: the political will to persuade governments and decision-makers that at the end of the day, even if we have the necessary financial and technological means, there can be no development without human resources, without imagination, and there can be no lasting expression of culture that is not informed by cultural values. I am confident for my part that our deepening partnership with the World Bank will help strengthen the resolve of our partners as well as our joint capacity to follow up on our commitments. We can remind the decision-makers that they must show the necessary political will. Together, we can raise public awareness, particularly among young people, as they are our future. We can call on the parliamentarians to translate this willingness into budgetary decisions. In partnership, our voice carries much, much further. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to mention briefly the recognition by UNESCO in 1972, through the World Heritage Convention, of the importance of safeguarding historic remains, This Convention, ratified by 155 states, established international standards in the area only of not only of the tangible heritage, but also, just as importantly, of the intangible heritage. In the same spirit, the Organization has been and continues to be in the forefront of efforts to promote cultural industries and cultural tourism, encourage book production, develop copyright legislation, and protect intellectual property. Through such intercultural activities as its celebrated Silk Routes project, it has pursued its essential mission of promoting intercultural dialogue.
5 In 1995, UNESCO's General Conference upgraded UNESCO's Medium-Term Plan by transforming it into a Medium-Term Strategy. This is very important, because by thus being more closely concerned with upstream decision-making, we can better transmit today our message of peace, freedom, and justice. We can better promote worldwide action. The new context we face is one of economic interdependence, the changing role of the state, and the power of the new communication and information technologies. Globalization in terms of the economy, in terms of social improvement, will not become a reality until the present asymmetries of wealth, of knowledge, of decision-making and of gender are reduced. Our physical heritage must be protected and our intangible cultural heritage is equally important. So is our genetic heritage. As you know, the Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights has been approved by all countries, even observers such as the United States. It was adopted unanimously at UNESCO s General Conference in 1997 because Member States understood the need to protect our human genome. Underlying all these notions of heritage and of supreme importance is our ethical heritage. Ladies and gentlemen, We are ready to join hands with the World Bank with a view to establishing a Global Cultural Facility analogous to the Global Environment Facility. This idea, which the World Bank has championed for several years, has been warmly welcomed by the members of the World Commission on Culture and Development. We have a major stake in mobilizing resources that match the richness of our cultural diversity. By the same token, we would also urge the World Bank to work with us by developing microcredit programmes for a range of cultural endeavours that have a social, political and, above all, economic dimension. A wide variety of potential partnerships opens out before us today. I consider particularly relevant in this respect the «culture and trade» chapter of the important meeting held in Ottawa in June 1998, organized by the Canadian Ministry of Cultural Heritage as the very first follow-up to the Stockholm Conference. The Network of Ministries of Culture is an excellent initiative of that meeting which UNESCO actively supports. After the meeting in Ottawa, another significant gathering took place in Rio de Janeiro, also on culture and development, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. This series of follow-up meetings is, I am sure, the best guarantee for the implementation of the Stockholm conclusions and plan of action. The succession of distinguished speakers at the present conference have given many pertinent examples of issues and activities which call out for a new approach, a new
6 partnership, a new perspective on culture and development. They have mapped out the way ahead. Let us take up the challenge. As President Clinton has said, "The future is ours, provided we invent it." Creativity allows us to reinvent every day the way we live. Creativity allows us to reinvent meanings and responses. Alone, as I said before, we cannot change, and to change from a culture of coercion, of force and war to a culture of peace, non-violence and dialogue is indispensable at the dawn of a new century and a new millennium. The year 2000 has been declared "The International Year for the Culture of Peace" by the General Assembly of the United Nations. One of the firmest foundations for this celebration will be a worldwide awareness of cultural identity and of the importance of intercultural dialogue, of the defence of cultural identities and better knowledge of others. In the 21st century, the egoistic self must give way to the altruistic self, the self that embraces and does not reject otherness. I would like to end with an anecdote. We recently had three young Canadian interns at UNESCO from three different first nations, or indigenous peoples of Canada. One of them, a Cree, described how, after learning about UNESCO's approach to education, he immediately felt its relevance for the young Cree people. For him, it solved a dilemma. Left to themselves on the reserve, the young people's only prospects were dependency, despair, delinquency. But given mainstream training, their only prospect is to be transferred off to the cities, where their newly-learned «transferable skills» get them jobs away from their communities. Education as UNESCO understands education, he said, can enrich our young people's lives, help them develop activities and stay on the reserve - because it includes rather than denies traditional learning. He called it, in his Cree language, "Wahhoh-to-win" (the state of being connected). I would like to use that Cree expression for our partnership and for our approach to culture and development. Let us be connected. Let us connect.