Ban Ki-moon: Welcome to Turtle Bay, now pay up

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened the U.N. General Assembly session with some good news and some bad news. The world’s 7th billion child, he announced, will be born next month. But he or she will more likely be poor, and will enter a world that has seen better days. The global financial crisis is continuing to wreak havoc on people’s lives. Joblessness is back on the rise, and social inequality is growing, he said. If that’s not enough, he warned, global warming is threatening to burn our future away.

With that, Ban made another plea to world leaders to sign a binding climate agreement, a goal that seems more elusive than when he came into office five years ago. He also encouraged them to set a new set of “bigger” benchmarks on measures to improve basic living standards once the Millennium Development Goals deadline is reached in 2015.

But Ban also extended the tin cup to traditional donor countries, from the United States and Europe, which are facing increasing financial strains at home. He said the U.N.’s peacekeeping budget has swelled to $8 billion, and the costs of responding to natural and political crises are not getting any cheaper. He also urged the newly wealthy powers, like Brazil and India, to commit more.

“Today, I ask governments that have traditionally borne the lion’s share of the costs to not flag in their generosity,” Ban said. Budgets are tight. Yet we also know that investing through the U.N. is smart policy. Burden sharing makes the load lighter. To the rising powers among you, dynamism increasingly drives the global economy — with power comes responsibility.”

To be fair, Ban said all the news wasn’t bad for the U.N. He cited achievements in Ivory Coast, where the U.N. helped install an elected president, Allasane Ouattara, and the U.N.’s assistance in paving the way for the independence of the world’s newest nation, South Sudan.

On Syria, Ban chided the U.N. membership for not doing enough to halt the government crackdown that has led to the deaths of 2,600 people. “The government has repeatedly pledged to undertake reforms and listen to its people. It has not done so. The moment to act is now. The violence must stop.”