Alicia Bárcena Encourages Private Sector and Civil Society to Contribute to the New Development Pattern Proposed by the 2030 Agenda

Today the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, called for building global governance through alliances between governments, the citizenry and the private sector to promote a change in the development pattern in tune with the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Alicia Bárcena spoke at the inauguration of the Regional Consultation for Latin America and the Caribbean about public policies on human rights and business in the framework of the 2030 Agenda. The gathering was convened by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and is taking place from March 2-3 at ECLAC’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

Other participants in the opening session included Dante Pesce, President of the UN Working Group on business and human rights; Amerigo Incalcaterra, the OHCHR’s Regional Representative for South America; and Hernán Quezada, the Human Rights Director at Chile’s Foreign Affairs Ministry. Representatives of governments, international institutions, civil organizations and the private sector are attending the meeting.

After the inauguration, Alicia Bárcena presented the challenges to implementing the 2030 Agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean. She highlighted that the new agenda approved last September in the UN General Assembly questions the dominant development model and represents a civilized step forward by putting people at the center of the discussion and seeking economic, social and environmental inclusion.

ECLAC’s Executive Secretary indicated that to achieve that objective, coalitions are needed between States, civil society and the private sector, with the participation of businesses that can help build more egalitarian societies. “This is about a universal and inclusive agenda to achieve collective action on public goods such as peace and respect for human rights, as well as decent employment,” she emphasized.

Regarding the current context in Latin America and the Caribbean, the senior United Nations official indicated that the region is facing the recessionary bias that is reigning at a global level, with little demand and excess liquidity, which has complicated the recovery of trade and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). In contrast, the financial sector has been growing and has decoupled from the real economy, she stated.

Alicia Bárcena also said that productivity gains must be better distributed between capital and labor and that tax collection must be improved since fiscal structures that include a low tax burden and regressive bases persist in the region, accompanied by high rates of evasion and avoidance, which total 320 billion dollars annually, and illicit financial outflows.

ECLAC’s Executive Secretary also called on business enterprises to collaborate with governments to achieve better governance of natural resources, adopting policies regarding their ownership, appropriation and distribution, with the aim of maximizing the collective benefits of their exploitation and minimizing the socio-environmental conflicts that extractive activities produce.

“Definitively, spaces of dialogue between the private sector and public institutions are needed to make business strategies compatible with the new Sustainable Development Goals,” Bárcena concluded.