tv Interview - Achim Steiner The world wont improve on its own. Deutsche Welle June 24, 2018 6:02am-6:16am CEST
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germany state by state. the most traditional. any time. check in with a with special. take a tour of germany state by state. d. w. dot com. refugees climate change wars and conflicts. today we'll be talking about how we can still save the world with her head of the united nations development program i find the bed so mr steiner you've wanted to make the world
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a better place since finishing college you went to india to help out in a small village what did you do there in the market. dominance of oz i'm going there yeah there's a kind of apprenticeship you know i was eager to work for an organization in india . i wanted to get to know development work on the ground and to get a better sense of what i could contribute. to these i was my first year in india. and my subsequent career took me to many other countries too. it wasn't also about having an adventure or just about helping others. and i just wanted to do of course there was a sense of adventure but i had the clear objective of gaining qualifications in this area of work. i was a student who had graduated from oxford so i probably thought i knew everything one needed to know that. it was an. misting experience to be almost
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a gandhian development organization on the ground where we had just one room. we spent the night our own straw mouse during the day we'd work in the local people while trying to promote development. it was a very interesting perspective and it stayed with me if i didn't look like that point is in today you are the third most powerful person that the united nations with a budget of five billion dollars. but your power is not enough to wipe out hunger once and for all. and what is that frustrating. having so much influence but no quick solutions. are is something to be treated with caution sure of the united nations is a very big organization and i had the largest organization within the u.n. family of the five billion dollars for the development program as a lot of money. enables us to operate in one hundred seventy countries working with
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people on a daily basis resolving problems and you know proving people's lives that does mean enormous power. although five billion sounds like a huge amount to us as private individuals it's really a drop in the ocean so we have to make intelligent use of it. with money to begin with so i'm pressed on ok but there are still eight hundred fifteen million people in the world going hungry isn't that simply unacceptable. as the problem you know isn't acceptable which is why we're working on this issue has a global community n.g.o.s the u.n. and national governments. but remember that we've seen astonishing progress in development over the last three or four hundred years the four or five hundred years ago nine out of ten people lived in extreme poverty today it's just one out of ten. that's something we must not forget ultimately it's also
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a reason to look optimistically into the future when we can put an end to poverty especially extreme poverty but our choirs and international solidarity and cooperation. is all that also requires money. u.s. president donald trump wants to slash the budget his country has been paying to the u.n. . aren't you also afraid that others will follow his example in these times of growing national self interest not. women. believe me i'm we are living in a political climate where nationalism protectionism and isolationism had become a tempting option and one of the ministration in washington as already begun reducing its funding for the u.n. because i can only repeat my ideal for others in the world to see things in proportion. with what we invest in international cooperation amounts to less than zero point seven percent of the world's g.d.p. . that's the minimum we need to solve these problems together the world cannot be
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regulated by itself or by one major power so regardless of whether it's the administration in washington or in europe the appeal is still we need your support and we have to work together to overcome these problems of goodwill issues that could otherwise become a massive problem is closer to home and will be about. so what if there isn't enough money for aid like this is syria a drastic example that. you have offered the it's often forgotten that the waves of refugees a few years ago were ultimately interpreted by the lack of response to appeals strongly united nations get what it in the case of syria to we had refugee camps in the countries the border syria they were the first to take and refugees we had to close schools and clinics and cut food rations because we didn't get the funding we needed to help the refugees there with the by. when people in desperate circumstances unable to get medical care or schooling for their children unable to
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feed their families they have only one option to move on again and we have to put far greater focus on prevention than on that that we've been through and through fact in four that's also the goal of the u.n. secretary general antonio terrorists not intervening earlier identifying crises as they are merge. so that we're not reduced to being a fire truck or an ambulance when it's already too late and it's just a this season there are many crises in violent conflicts around the world. the u.n. says there are sixty five million displaced persons most of them in africa often you mustn't have one in africa and is europe truly aware of the dimension of this problem and its repercussions for us in europe but the voice. in that in recent years europe has learned graps more than any other region the consequences of failing to recognize a new refugee crises in time and the need for the international community to act
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together that. in addition europe is itself having an identity crisis a clash between its values and objectives and the reality of dealing with all the pressure involved that these are real political points of debate in practically every country. at the same time there's a certain helplessness these developments are taking place on a scale that we're not accustomed to the warmth in. europe is being seen as a continent that says development aid has to stop people becoming refugees as in we give the africans money to put up the fences there that we don't want to see in europe right. this is not how i would address the issue and sure there are people who would use that argument but i've always said that if we help countries in africa to build up their economies so that people have jobs and opportunities for the future and a past. that will provide a boost for those countries developed. by the fact that this also has the positive
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effect of getting people to stay in their countries and reducing the problem of migration and refugee sing along with the pressures on a region like europe a bit of damage does not deal in generalized cooperation. we are actually joining the two aims by which you can subordinate one to the other. about death but what you're aiming for is not something that takes effect quickly people won't wait can you change the situation in the short term and then i'm gonna. go come on so yes you can. given the dramatic situation with millions of people becoming refugees i have already explained the need for a substantial investment in countries that are under my more pressure than others and we do have a greater burden to bear the neighboring countries are where the refugees go first . most people want to return eventually because it's their homeland their relatives lives that are that they want to go back and they're not but if people find refuge
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not in neighboring countries but further afield and with her children growing up in a different culture here then it's less likely that they'll return it so the first thing is to intervene immediately in crises as in organizing the return of refugees not just in syria but also in iraq not that before that they're going towns were liberated from the highest terrorists by the international community and the iraqi government we were there within twenty four to forty eight hours. we started restoring water supply and sent our an overbearing school roofs and hospital windows so a couple could return to their homes as quickly as possible that's also part of development work that's the growth. would lead ultimately those regions need to see more wealth so that people have prospects worth staying for if you used to head the un's environment program can development lead to greater prosperity. without a negative impact on the environment on one of us to invade life it yet leave me
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feeling we are seeing in many areas renewable energy technology in particular is enjoying an enormous boom right now it's essentially an energy revolution and one or germany's showed the way forward how to profit and what i was talking about developing countries looking at africa the impression is often one of china's securing the raw materials of the continent without consideration for the environment and investment in production only goes where social and wage standards are lower we've got about saying that's the way it is. i know but that's one viewpoint china is now the world's leading producer of renewable energy technologies and it's becoming a major investor in renewables technology in africa as well. one of the reasons for low kilowatt hour prices for renewables is that china has drastically reduced the cost for these technologies on the global market. because this is a segment that has increased accessibility to electricity in africa in particular.
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the nuclear the it is so much over simplifying things to just look for mistakes between one block and another. but we are working today in a global network we're living in an age where we have to reinvent our economy sorry infrastructure our energy and transportation sectors for positive economic development will be increasingly linked to sustainability and how we implement such principles the financial sector is currently starting to discover that. and based on what you're saying any solution will take time. and now we'll conclude our talk by asking you to complete three sentences for us. that despite all the conflict in crises i remain optimistic about development policy because by. because we might ultimately have to be united to take effective action and that's a perspective that still enjoys widespread popular support. but what connects me to
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my native brazil is for i'm i'm for confidence in the future despite all the difficulties to be overcome for my children i wish to see a world. he's now one hundred a world that responds more quickly and gives them the freedom to make decisions if i had been tried and i'm a change and she has become an example of how things that we do not decide and result in our children being denied the chance to shape their own future for the movement as they envisage at the birth and he's using force to talk about him steiner thanks for talking to us but my pleasure thank you don. make your small t.v. even smaller with good ideas. watching what you want to. up to date. extraordinary. depth.
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