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Professor Guthrie, the Chair of Symposium, noted the rapid pace at which sustainable development had become an integral part of the HKSAR Government's thinking. The symposium was a trailblazer not only for Hong Kong and the region but also for the rest of the world.

Professor Guthrie highlighted the fact that sustainable development still presented great challenges and that robust measurements of success were yet to be established. He hoped some of these challenges would be addressed at the symposium and wished the participants at the event every success.

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Ms. DiSano addressed the symposium on the United Nations' perspectives on sustainable development and what stakeholders could expect from the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002.

Ms. DiSano highlighted some key statistics related to sustainable development. It was estimated that over the next 20 years, the world would have to feed, clothe and provide shelter for an extra 1.5 billion people, the equivalent of creating a new country one and half times the size of India. Despite the fact that food production was up 24 percent since 1961, the world was in danger of rapidly exhausting the soils and biodiversity on which our food supply depended.

Recent studies had confirmed that degraded soils, dried-out aquifers, polluted waters and the destruction of natural forests to make way for agricultural land posed a serious threat to world food supplies. The oceans and the air were under similar threat of depletion and pollution and over a billion people currently lived in abject poverty. There were increased pressures on cities to cope with expanding slums and unsustainable housing due to a rapid increase in migration from rural to urban areas swelling the ranks of the urban poor.

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