Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Along with this legal personality for ASEAN, the ASEAN Leaders have adopted a Roadmap comprising the three community blueprints – political-security, socio-cultural, and economic - and the Initiative of ASEAN Integration work plan laying out the goals, strategies and actions to realize an ASEAN Community by 2015. An ASEAN Community that is politically cohesive and peaceful, economically integrated and vibrant, and socially responsible and caring.

Therefore the ASEAN Day celebration this year heralds such a historic and eventful transformation of ASEAN. We have chosen to commemorate such an event with a very apt theme – Green ASEAN.

The theme essentially reflects the three-pronged facets facing ASEAN now – building an environmentally sustainable clean and green ASEAN; transforming the “green shoots” of growth in the face of the current global financial crisis into an economically resilient ASEAN; and more importantly nurturing the new and green ASEAN to be a people-oriented and globally respected institution among the community of nations.

We in ASEAN are fully aware of the dangers confronting us in following the conventional path of development. Although occupying only three percent of the earth’s total surface, the ASEAN region contains over 20 percent of all known plant, animal, and marine species. This rich biological diversity significantly contributes to global environmental sustainability, providing foundations for ecosystem services to which the well-being of human societies are intimately linked. The region is home to three of the 17 known mega-diverse countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and has one-third or 284,000 square kilometers of all known coral reefs in the world. The region has 35 percent of the world’s coastal mangrove forests and 30 percent of the world’s coral reefs. These resources provide its people and the world with a wide range of essential goods and services through fisheries, vast storehouses of biological diversity, and unparalleled commercial and recreational opportunities.

The ASEAN Leaders have also shown their commitment to environment and sustainable development emphasizing the need for sustainable actions at national, regional and international level, when they focused on the theme of environment, energy and climate change at their Summit in 2007 and issued several declarations.

Nevertheless, environmental protection cannot be realized by environmental activism alone. We need to act beyond the realm of the environmental sector, and address all external drivers that impact on the environment. All aspects of sustainable development – environmental protection, economic growth, and social development – should contribute to each other, rather than negatively affecting each other.

This brings us to the stark reality that we cannot separate environment from economic growth and social development. Each should support and complement each other. There are encouraging signs the nations all over the world are adopting and implementing policy and strategies such as green growth, low carbon growth trajectory, and placing importance on the environmental goods and services as the future growth sector. Many countries are also pursuing sound environmental programs as a means to strengthen and diversify their economic sector, to sow the seeds of growth out of the current financial crisis and to establish the foundation for resilient and sustainable economic growth.

On the third aspect, I would say, that the ASEAN Charter has given root to a new ASEAN. An ASEAN that is budding itself into a people-oriented organization. And a region that is taken as a serious regional inter-governmental organization with clear shared commitment and collective responsibility.

If ASEAN succeeds and grows, it will be good for the region and the world. At least the world will have one less region to worry about. And that is a very significant achievement and contribution indeed.

HAPPY ASEAN DAY !