Vice Premier responsible for economic affairs, Vladimir Pesevski delivered Thursday an address on the second day of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro. 

Underscoring the importance of the sustainable development process, Vice PM Pesevski presented activities conducted by Macedonia on the matter, which are coordinated by the National Council of Sustainable Development. He said that even though Macedonia was a small landlocked country, it had made a significant breakthrough in managing sustainable development and in implementing adequate policies especially in view of the use of renewable energy sources.

Pesevski pointed out the consistency of the recommendations included in the National Sustainable Development Strategy with the text of the document "The Future We Want", which is due to be adopted at the Rio+20 Conference.

The Vice PM stressed that Macedonia's policies on sustainable development had been harmonised with Europe's.

In his address, Pesevski underlined that states needed to justly distribute the burden of sustainable development, anticipating at the same time the responsibility for the historical and cumulative pollution globally to be accepted. In this regard, he endorsed the initiative of establishing an international mechanism for transfer of technologies and knowledge supported by financial mechanism, thus contributing to overall improvement of the situation involving sustainable development.

The conference brings together 86 heads of state and government as well as top officials of over 150 countries all over the world. Its goal is to reaffirm political efforts for sustainable development by assessing the progress and shortcomings in the implementation of decisions adopted at previous summits.

The Macedonian delegation, led by Vice PM Pesevski, also includes Minister of Environment and Physical Planning Abdulaqim Ademi, environment experts and representatives of the Foreign Ministry.