2004
Blue Planet Prize
Dr. Susan Solomon (U.S.A.)
Senior Scientist,
Aeronomy Laboratory, National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration

Air on Gaia:
The earth is wrapped with arobe. Thanks to it, we are able tosustain our daily activities. From
some point in time, human activities went too far impairing it. In
2004 the opening film instilled
us with a hint to consider the
future of the global environment,
the ways toward developmentthat enables us to sustain theenvironment.

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland(Norway)
Chairman WCED (World Commission on
Environment and Development)
Former Prime Minister of Norway
Director-General Emeritus, WHO

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Their Imperial Highnesses
Prince and Princess
Akishino at the Awards
CeremonyHis Imperial Highness Prince Akishino congratulates the laureates
Dr. Hiroyuki Yoshikawa,chairman of the Selection
Committee explains therationale for the determinationof the year's winners

The prizewinners receive their trophies from Chairman Seya

Hiromichi Seya,chairman of theFoundationdelivers the
opening address

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland

The prizewinners
at theCongratulatory
Party.

Howard H. Baker Jr., Ambassadorof the United States of America toJapan and Age Bernhard Grutle,
Ambassador of Norway to Japan,
congratulate the laureates○

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Dr. Susan Solomon

Profile

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland
Chairman WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development)
Former Prime Minister of Norway
Director-General Emeritus, WHO

Education and Academic and Professional Activities
1939
Born on April 20 in Oslo, Norway
1963
Graduated from the University of Oslo in Medicine
1964
Obtained a Maters Degree in public health at Harvard University
1965-1967 Medical Officer, Department of Hygiene in the National Directorate of Public
Health1968-1974 Oslo Municipal Board of Health, later becoming the Director of Health Services
1974-1979 Minister of Environment, Norway
1981
Prime Minister of Norway
Leader of the Labour Party of Norway
1983-1987 Chairman, United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development
1986-1989 Prime Minister of Norway
1988
Third World Prize
1989
Indira Ghandi Prize
1990-1996 Prime Minister of Norway
1992
Earth Prize
The Onassis Prize
1994
Karls Preis
2001
World Ecology Award
Global Leadership Prize of UN Association of the USA.
2002
Four Freedoms Award
1998-2003 Director-General, World Health Organization
Dr.Brundtland holds a number of honorary degrees from major universities such as Harvard,
Oxford, Louvain, Cape Town and from All India Institute and the Public Health Institute of
Mexico.

The concept of sustainable development has become a universally accepted foundation
for countries around the world when they contend with environmental problems today. It was
put forward with the leadership of Dr. Brundtland by the United Nations World Commission
on Environment and Development, and was presented through its report in 1987, Our Common

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Future.
With aspirations to become a medical doctor from childhood, Dr. Brundtland studied
medicine at the University of Oslo. In 1960 she married Arne Olav Brundtland. After graduating from the university in 1963, she accompanied her husband to the United States who was
accepted to be a visiting scholar, and she herself earned a Master’s degree in Public Healthfrom Harvard School of Public Health.
Upon returning to Norway in 1965, Dr. Brundtland served at the Department ofHygiene in the National Directorate of Public Health and later at Oslo Municipal Board of
Health, where she dedicated herself to protecting the health of children. Meanwhile, she continued her research activities in the field of child growth and development.
An unexpected change of career came in 1974 when Dr. Brundtland, at the age of 35,
was offered the position of Minister of the Environment. She accepted the post and began toundertake environmental issues. In 1977, while she was in the midst of seeking to resolve various environmental problems including the development of a strategy to contend with acid rain
and creating a national park, an uncontrolled blowout took place at the platform “Bravo” in the
Ekofisk oil field. Rushing to the site, Dr. Brundtland personally directed recovery efforts, andupon minimizing the environmental damage, actively made information available to domestic
and foreign journalists. For both Norwegian citizens and government officials, the oil spillage
became a turning point, from which environmental problems became an issue not only for conservationists but an agenda that was central to the formation of national political strategies, andit was recognized that investment towards the environment was a comprehensive investment
towards the future of Norway. Dr. Brundtland’s accomplishments as the Minister of theEnvironment were highly recognized, and in 1981 at the age of forty-one, she became theyoungest and the first woman to become the Prime Minister of Norway.
In December 1983, the United Nations Secretary General requested Dr. Brundtland toestablish and head the World Commission on Environment and Development. When Dr.
Brundtland hesitated due to her extremely demanding post as the leader of the Labour Party,
Secretary General de Cuellar insisted, telling her that she was the only candidate who had theexperience of leading a country as its prime minister after coping with domestic and international environmental issues as minister of environment for years. By accepting the position,
she decided to contend with the challenge of protecting the interests of the next generation, facing the future squarely in the eye.
While heading the Commission, she demonstrated unparalleled enthusiasm and leadership abilities, a set of values founded in justice and equality, and an unyielding determination
for change. For three years beginning in 1984, she held commissions and public hearings innumerous places around the world from Indonesia to Brazil, listening to the opinions of ordinary people. Her efforts culminated in the publication of the well-known report, Our Common
Future, in 1987. This report presented sustainable development as its main theme, introducing
the concept that development should meet the needs of today’s generation without compromising those of future generations. The report further analyzed the structures of a wide variety of problems including population and human resources, food security, species and ecosystems, energy, industry, and the international economy, and provided recommendations of178measures that countries around the world should immediately implement toward sustainable
development.
The report became the impetus behind organizing the Earth Summit, or the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. At thisSummit, Agenda 21, a resolution to implement specific measures to attain sustainable development, was adopted.
Dr. Brundtland's leadership in the areas of public health, environment, and development
has been highly acclaimed throughout the world, and in 1998 she was elected to the positionof Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), becoming the first woman totake the post.
Her numerous accomplishments at the WHO include establishing a support system toenable citizens of impoverished countries to obtain medicine, advancing the eradication ofpolio at a global level, leading the efforts to curb tobacco consumption through the adoptionof the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and creating bold new models to respondto global scale infectious diseases partly triggered by environmental changes such as SARS,
malaria and HIV.
Dr. Brundtland, who is a mother of four children, credits her accomplishments to her
upbringing and the dedicated support of her husband. Recently, she reflected upon her footsteps through an autobiography titled Madame Prime Minister.

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Lecture

We Need to Mobilize Global Democratic Action andResponsibility for Sustainable Development

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland
Introduction
First let me express my deep gratitude for the great honor to receive the 2004 Blue Planet Prize
presented by the Asahi Glass Foundation. I congratulate Dr. Susan Solomon—my co-recipient this year—for her wonderful scientific contribution, a shining example of how science canensure that humanity makes informed decisions about the environment.
As many of you probably know, the decisive meeting in the long process of working on
the report Our Common Future took place right here in Tokyo. I expressed at that time ourgreat gratitude to the Government of Japan for being our host at this important meeting. We
saw it as a token that Tokyo should be the venue of our final meeting. By holding our last meeting here we paid tribute to Japan for the steady support for our work.
In fact it was on the initiative of Japan in 1982 at a special meeting of UNEP’s governing council that the independent commission was called for by the General Assembly in thefall of 1983. Japan had not only given us very generous financial backing, it had also contributed greatly to our political and intellectual deliberation by providing us with such a distinguished member, the world-renowned economist, statesman and devoted environmentalist,
Dr. Saburo Okita.
I believe it is also not a coincidence that many previous recipients of the Blue Planet
Prize are institutions and colleagues I have worked with in pursuing a better world, one that isboth environmentally and socially sustainable.
I think of the International Institute for Environment and Development, the World
Conservation Union, Dr. Bert Bolin, Mr. Lester R. Brown, Mr. Maurice F. Strong, Dr. Norman
Myers, and Professor J. Gustave Speth.
The Blue Planet Prize has been an important source of follow-up and inspiration to pursue the crucial goals identified in the landmark report “Our Common Future.”“Our Common Future”
My commission was given a breathtaking mandate for global change:- Define shared perceptions of long-term environmental and development challenges,
and the most effective methods to respond to them;- Recommend means to foster greater cooperation among developed and developing
countries, and to attain mutually supportive objectives taking account of the interrela-180

tionship among people, resources, environment and development, and;- Propose long-term strategies to achieve sustainable development, combining global
economic and social progress with respect for natural systems and environmental
quality.
Indeed our commission grew out of awareness that over the course of the last century,
the relationship between the human world and the planet that sustains it had undergone profound change.
When the century began neither human number nor technology had the power radicallyto alter planetary system. As the century was closing not only vastly increased human numbers
and their activities had that power, but also major unintended changes were occurring in theatmosphere, in soils, in waters, among plants and animals, and in the relationships among allof these. The rate of change was outstripping the ability of scientific disciplines to assess andadvise. It was frustrating the attempt of political and economic institutions, which evolved ina different and fragmented world, to adapt and cope. And it deeply worried many ordinary people who were seeking ways to place their concerns on the political agenda.
It was already abundantly clear that the international community was unable to deal
effectively with the vital issues confronting us. Throughout the 1970s, the United Nations had
dealt with important areas such as population, housing, safe water, and new and renewableenergy sources by holding major conferences. This offered hope, but all in all the United
Nations system was too weak and fragmented to deal with human needs in an integrated way.
The World Commission on Environment and Development was fortunate to be able tobuild on the reports of the Brandt Commission and the Palme Commission, on which I had
been a member. It was clear to me that after Brandt’s “Common Crisis” and Palme’s“Common Security,” “Our Common Future” would have to be the next step in a major effort
to persuade countries to return to multilateralism in an integrated effort to address peace, environment and development.
In the early 1970s, the Club of Rome had presented for the first time how limited
resources could set limits to growth. The ecological movement and many scientists had since
the late sixties become increasingly aware of how we were approaching limits to the burdensthat we could load upon Nature’s capacity to absorb the effects of human activities. The
Stockholm Conference in 1972 was the first major international effort to address these new
threats.
The increasing knowledge, which we acquired throughout the 1970s, was new to ourgeneration. Never before in human history had we had the capacity to destroy the environment
and to reduce the options for future generations. Our generation was the first which had to becognizant of its responsibility for the environment, also on behalf of generations yet unborn.
The South was skeptical of the new environmental awareness of the North, seeing it asa threat to their development ambitions. The North had been developing for decades without
showing much concern for environmental degradation and destruction. The developing countries were facing completely different challenges. They were caught in a downward spiral ofincreasing poverty, crushing debt burdens, deteriorating terms of trade and inadequate access181

to world markets. They felt unable to afford the apparent luxury of protecting their own
resource base.
Analysis and Recommendations
Our report, “Our Common Future,” played its maybe most important role in clearly establishing the link between environment and development. These were formerly viewed as separate
issues, dealt with by different institutions internationally and different ministries at the national
level.
Many in the past have assumed that the goals of environmental protection and economic development are incompatible, and that the interests of industrialized nations are in conflict with the needs of Third World countries. Our report proved those assumptions wrong. In
short, neither environmental protection nor economic development is sustainable without
proper attention to both.
Instead, we called for a new era of economic growth, one that must be based on policies
that sustain and expand the environmental resource base. We formulated a positive message,
one built on greater insight, collaboration and shared responsibilities.
The World Commission managed to forge the basis for a global consensus because wemade it explicit that it was only by solving social and economic problems that we could havehope of solving the threats to the environment. We firmly believed that we could not protect
the global environment without establishing a more just international economic order, nor provide the basis for a more just and equitable future for all if global trends that threaten the
resources base were allowed to continue.
We developed the concept of sustainable development, which means that we must meetthe needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations tomeet their needs.
Sustainable development is a political concept for human social, economic and environmental progress. It will require a new era of international cooperation and greater participation by people themselves. They must become more actively involved in political life so thatthey can have a say in decisions of importance to their own lives and futures. Thus, democracy,
human rights as well as practical solidarity had to become the basis of all effective policies forenvironment and development.
Our analysis led to the call for a strengthening of international cooperation. Only byworking together, not against each other, can we have a vision of a better-managed world, better governance, and global adherence to the fundamental principles of democracy, and to theprinciple that economic and social development must be sustainable. Peace, democracy, environment and development. These would have to be the core issues of our common agenda forthe 21st century.
No less than in 1987 we must now fully recognize how interdependent we all havebecome. We pointed to some disturbing trends. World population projections indicated a doubling of our numbers some time in this century. That increase will take place in developing
countries, and unless corrective action is taken this will aggravate the vicious circle of poverty
and environmental degradation in which they already are caught. Combined with unsustain-

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able patterns of production and consumption, especially in the North, these trends will place
intolerable strains on finite natural resources.
In the North we must also recognize that nobody, not even the richest of us, can hidefrom these global trends. There will be no sanctuaries where some people can escape the harshrealities. We would all suffer from the radiation if the ozone layer would be further damaged.
Climate change can cause drought, floods, and disruption of agricultural patterns both in the
North and in the South.
Hundreds of millions of people are living in areas that will be affected by rise of the sea
level. Toxic substances are traveling with winds and currents, and everybody has to breathe.
Pollutants originating in the Temperate Zone are already to be found in the food chain in the
Arctic. Clearly we need fundamental changes in the way we use the Earth’s crust, the way wedevelop and use energy and in the way we distribute the benefits of economic growth.
Our security also depends at least as much on economic wellbeing, social justice andecological stability as it does on military threats. Throughout human history, struggles overaccess to and control over natural resources have been one of the root causes of tension andarmed conflict. We risk a proliferation of such disputes if the rapid deterioration of environmental quality is allowed to continue.
Our future depends on our collective ability to change. We must address issues in a precautionary, integrated manner, and we must deal decisively with all the underlying causes ofhuman conflict and distress.
Above all: Poverty
Above all we must be uncompromising in our determination to eradicate poverty. Poverty is amajor cause of environmental degradation in the Third World. Poor people will concentrate on
their daily survival. They will be forced to cut down trees, overgraze pastures and overuse
farmland in order to stay alive. Poor countries, too, will have to overexploit their natural
resources in order to produce the export goods needed to pay for necessary import. When
prices go down, they will have to produce more and more basic commodities and extract more
and more of their natural resources to pay for goods that they do not produce themselves. Thisillustrates the great importance of improved rules for global trade.
As we look at the situation in 2004, we must once again conclude: There is no simple
solution. Overlooking our growing global interdependence will not be a choice.
Poverty is in itself intolerable and cannot be reconciled with human dignity. We need to
oppose any tendency to ignore the fundamental challenges of the continuing North-South
divide. Otherwise the very future of our planet is in danger.
Building Consensus
During my leadership role on the Commission on Environment and Development we faced
deep political, cultural and religious divides in a number of areas. It applied to different issues
such as the safety of nuclear energy. But the most difficult one to overcome was linked to ouranalysis and recommendations in the field of population, population pressure and humanrights, and their links to poverty, environment and development. The fact that in the end we183

were able to bridge our different concerns and come up with a shared vision in 1987, I believe
created an important platform for change as the world prepared for the Child Summit, the Rio
Conference and then the Cairo and Beijing Conferences in 1994 and 1995. There were somevery key sentences that we were able to agree on:
Urgent steps are needed to limit extreme rates of population growth. Choices made now
will influence the level at which the population stabilizes next century within a range of six billion people. But this is not just a demographic issue; providing people with facilities and education that allow them to choose the size of their families is a way of assuring – especially for
women – the basic human right of self-determination. Governments that need to do so should
develop long-term, multifaceted population policies and a campaign to pursue broad demographic goals: to strengthen social, cultural, and economic motivations for family planning,
and to provide to all who want them, the education, contraceptives, and services required.
We had in the end been able to conclude that social and cultural factors are the ones that
dominate all others in affecting fertility, and we also agreed on the following, critical observations and recommendations:
The Role of Women
The most important of these are the roles women play in their family, the economy, and thesociety at large. Fertility rates fall as women’s employment opportunities outside the home andfarm, their access to education, and their age at marriage all rise. Hence policies meant tolower fertility rates not only must include economic incentives and disincentives, but must aim
to improve the position of women in society. Such policies should essentially promote women’s
rights.
Today, this basic analysis is of course much more generally accepted, and gradually
increasing knowledge and new data confirm it’s crucial relevance. I choose to remind us all thatwhat seemed surprisingly radical in 1987, in 2004 has become an accepted reality in global
debate, although we must be vigilant to avoid new setbacks.
The Millennium Declaration
Thirteen years after the presentation of “Our Common Future,” the Millennium Declaration
made clear that gender equality is not only a goal in its own right, but is critical to our ability
to reach all development goals. The world is now clearly moving forward as it establishes thevalues that underlie global development. And when we look at the eight development goals
they have strong links to women’s lives and to health, and they have of course taken on board
the necessity to ensure environmental sustainability.
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger- Achieve universal primary education- Promote gender equality and empower women184

- Reduce child mortality- Improve maternal health- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases- Ensure environmental sustainability- Develop a global partnership for development.
In fact, as I see it, the Millennium Development Goals are a shorthand declaration on themost crucial recommendations put forward in “Our Common Future,” a shorthand for how wemust pursue sustainable development.
Let me share some observations in key areas.
Educating Women
Although global literacy rates have risen during the past 30 years, women remain less likely tobe able to read and write than their male contemporaries do. Of the 900 million illiterate people, women outnumber men 2:1. Illiteracy is worst in Africa and West Asia with 65 per centof women classified as illiterate compared with 40 percent of men. In many parts of the world,
traditional attitudes make it more likely that girls, rather than boys, will be kept out of school
to help with the domestic chores and care for dependants.
Yet, repeated studies have made it clear that educating women is an effective way of
improving health and income, and protecting the environment. Giving girls the ability to accessknowledge, to question and to analyze, and to build their capacity for self-improvement, will
help their families and communities. The size of the effect that girl’s education has been shownto have on health and fertility outcomes is a powerful argument for investing in girls access to
education. Indeed if development is about widening women’s and men’s choices and a more
equitable distribution of resources, the interaction of gender and poverty constitutes the greatest limiting factor to human development. The time has come to look beyond the sexual andreproductive health of women and view their different needs during the entire life span.
Equitable access to education, research into gender differences in disease and valuing women’s
paid and unpaid work are some of the ways we can push for change.
Women’s lives are both illustrated by hard work and a lot of work. Statistics that show
how men are privileged in working life, and earn much more than women are well known. Allover the world an even more interesting picture comes out when you look at the total workload
within and outside of the home. Surveys in Cuba showed that women work 20 percent more
hours than men. But less than a third of that time is paid work. For the men, the opposite is thecase. Two-thirds of their workload is paid work. And we have reason to believe that Cuba is
middle of the road. In most countries the picture would be far worse.
HealthDespite the long list of successes in health achieved during the 20th century, the balance sheet
is indelibly stained by the avoidable burden of disease that the world’s disadvantaged population continues to bear.
Despite the great achievements of the 20th century, successes in health have been185

unevenly distributed: 1.3 billion people have entered the 21st century without having benefited
from the health revolution. These are the people who are still living in absolute poverty. Thatis, living on less than US$ 1 a day.
The health impact of this inequality gap is staggering. Despite the rise in average global
life expectancy, in the least developed countries, three out of four people die before the age of
50. Infant mortality is almost seven times higher in a developing country than in industrializedcountries. A child born in a developing country today runs a 1000-fold greater risk of dying
from measles than a child born in an industrialized country. Children living in absolute poverty
have a five-fold greater probability of dying before their fifth birthday than their wealthiercounterparts.
And tragically, giving birth in Africa is a perilous undertaking for far too many women.
Where the statistics are the worst, one woman in every 16 faces death because of poor healthand because she does not receive the care she needs when pregnant. By contrast, in most ofEurope and North America, such a tragedy will hit only one woman in 4000. No other indicator so starkly reflects the disparities in this world.
And, perhaps not surprisingly – 70 percent of the world’s poor are women.
Throughout much of the world; families and societies treat girls and boys unequally,
with girls disproportionately facing lack of opportunity and lower levels of investment in theirhealth; nutrition and education. Prevailing gender norms stymie adolescent girls’ access toschooling and employment opportunities.
In the worst affected regions of sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls account for 58 %of those living with HIV/AIDS, and girls age 15 - l9 are infected at rates four to seven times
higher than boys. These disparities illustrate the roles of girls and women. They are due to sexual abuse, rape, coercion and discrimination. Generally; unequal power relations between men
and women lead to widespread violations of health and human rights.
Among the most persistent and pernicious is adolescent or child marriage, sexual trafficking, sexual violence and coercion, and female genital mutilation. Despite an improvement
in many parts of the world, 82 million girls in developing countries who are now between 10
and 17 will be married before they are 18. In some countries, the majority of girls still marry
before they are 18. In India, the number is 50%, in Nepal 60%; and in Niger 76%.
Providing opportunities for girls to continue their schooling or to earn money helps todelay marriage and improve life skills and choices. In Bangladesh, a secondary school scholarship program for girls, requiring that girls remain unmarried through the final examination,
had an immediate effect in delaying marriage. In areas covered by the project, girls’ enrolment
more than doubled between 1994 and 2001. Trends are improving. The world is learning.
Taking Responsibility in WHO
At WHO I put a key emphasis on the need to get our science and evidence right, not only ourhealth evidence but also the evidence about the interaction between health and development.
Led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, now at Columbia University, the Commission on
Macroeconomics and Health delivered a report that will remain a landmark in improving ourunderstanding of how wise health interventions can spur development.

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The Commission’s report provides a reference for any policy maker – in rich and poor
countries alike. It offers a strategy for investing in health for economic development, especiallyin the world’s poorest countries, based upon a new partnership of the developing and developed countries.
Extending the coverage of crucial health services, including a relatively small numberof specific interventions, to the world’s poor could save millions of lives each year, reducepoverty, spur economic development, and promote global security. These conclusions illustrated my own observations and convictions: We need to invest in people, in their health andeducation, not only to promote human rights, but to spur economic growth.
Health on the Global Agenda
There are promising signs that policy makers are taking the signal. Health is now on the agenda
of decision-makers far beyond the health sector and new alliances have been formed to fundimmunization as well as increased efforts against HIV, TB and malaria. This is all well, but it
can only be a beginning.
The poor need to increase their investment in health, be it modest step by modest step.
The rich need to increase their official development assistance and earmark a real proportion
to health. The research agenda needs to change to include a much larger focus on the diseasesof the poor. We need a transfer of knowledge and technology to the poor countries. Market
mechanisms need to be mobilized and the public sector needs to provide visible incentives. We
need mechanisms to safeguard the health and social sector in the ongoing round of trade talks.
We already see some headway towards making HIV-medicines available at a lower price, butthere is still a long way to go.
Energy and Climate
In Japan, you certainly have experience of the crucial role of energy for sustainable development and you were global leaders in energy efficiency already in the 1970s. The perspectivesof climate change are indeed scary.
Following our report in 1987, we saw a dramatic shift in public opinion. This was driven by concerned NGOs, policymakers and experts, extreme climate events and then a masterly crafted scientific consensus process under the auspices of IPCC – the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.
Five years after “Our Common Future,” we had a global framework. The climate convention was established. That was surely beyond our dreams. Then the 1990s saw an impressive series of global summits, tough negotiations and new scientific reports leading up to the
Kyoto meeting in December 1997. Crucially, Kyoto established the basis for legal commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
It is impressive, but, unfortunately, it is by no means enough! Vested interests continuously mobilize against progress, negotiators are bogged down in intricate details, and global
emissions are increasing.
The world has a long way to go, but a crucial start has been made. Increasing awarenessin the world’s richest and most powerful nation gives new hope. There is no true alternative to187multilateralism in facing up to our responsibility for future generations and the planet itself. We
don’t have much time. A number of developing countries have increasing and rapidly growing emissions. Developing countries may soon represent a bigger part of the total than theindustrialized world. The future is one of including all countries in our global solutions, but
before that can happen, the rich countries must rise to the occasion, show leadership, and takeresponsibility.
In the last 30 years I have increasingly focused on global issues and perspectives, firstas a young environment minister, then Prime Minister, but also as a member of the Palme
Commission on disarmament and security issues, as leader of the world commission on environment and development, as member of the Carnegie commission on preventing deadly conflict, and as Director-General of the World Health Organization where I served for five years
until July 2003.
Public Health Successes
I was deeply grateful to Japan and to other countries, that 2003 will be an historic year for
global public health. Not only did we succeed to agree on the first ever global health treaty –the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a true gift to the world, a true gift to future
generations.
We also faced up to a global infectious disease threat, SARS. It was an outbreak that
underlined the crucial role of WHO, and of international health collaboration. It captured
imaginations, often more column inches than the war in Iraq, and always, more headlines thanAIDS, TB and malaria.
One person infected, staying at an international hotel, put the world at risk. And unlike
other diseases which we can prevent or treat, SARS was undiagnosable, untreatable, and, for
one of every six people, fatal.
The way the world responded to SARS was global public health at its best. Scientists
put aside their differences and drive to be the first, and came together, to share sequencing andstudy results. Doctors from around the world came together in virtual conferences to shareadvice on how best to treat patients. Public health authorities from opposite sides of the globe
flew to Geneva to share their experiences with SARS, their success and failures with 192
member states at the World Health Assembly. And as a result, in just four short months, wehave identified a new disease and contained a global outbreak, which could have become a
global catastrophe.
The short sharp shock made us all stand up and pay attention. Due to the speed of science and using the best evidence, we quickly knew that SARS could infect, anyone, anywhere.
Governments were committed. Resources made available. People made aware. Health workers given tools for action. Information shared across borders. In short, there was global mobilization to fight a global threat. The result – we probably won’t find ourselves 10 years down
the road with SARS also endemic in the countries, which can least afford it – devastating lives
and economies. Because we acted.

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The Crucial Role of the UN
In September 2003, the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, made an urgent call to thenations of the world, in an address to the General Assembly. Having seen the shared vision at
the Millennium Summit 3 years ago, a vision of global solidarity and collective security, hereminded delegates that recent events have called that consensus into question. He announced
that he would establish a high level panel to analyze the present and future challenges to peaceand security, to consider the contribution which collective action can make in addressing them,and to recommend ways of strengthening international collaboration and the United Nations.
I am honored to be part of that crucial process, and have focused much of my attention to thechallenges of social injustice, disease, lack of development and poverty. We now need to refocus our attention to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, the common
struggle to protect our environment, and the struggle for human rights, democracy and good
governance.
Today there are enormous gaps between rich and poor countries. This is an unsustainable situation, for many reasons. They relate to ethical, economical and security perspectives.
To conclude – we need a shift in awareness towards the idea of building global public
goods that can help us reap the huge potential benefits of globalization while at the same time
containing the risks and vulnerabilities that comes with it.

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