Asia-Pacific leaders support ESCAP-ADB-UNDP partnership to achieve 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in the region

SOURCE: ADB

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  From left to right: ADB Vice-President Stephen P. Groff; Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon; and Shamshad Akhtar, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP.
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NEW YORK, UNITED STATES – Implementation of the newly agreed 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, inclusive of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), will be supported in Asia and the Pacific by a renewed partnership forged on Tuesday by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), on the sidelines of the 70th United Nations General Assembly in New York.Heads of state and ministers, private sector and civil society representatives, as well as senior officials of international organizations from Asia and the Pacific shared perspectives on addressing key implementation challenges for sustainable development in the region and supported the partnership at a joint side event on the theme Making it Happen: Transitioning from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to SDGs in Asia and the Pacific.

At a signing ceremony ahead of the high-level forum, ESCAP, UNDP and ADB announced that they will deepen their existing collaboration to advance regional action to end poverty and inequality, support better environmental stewardship, and promote shared prosperity and well-being for all. This will be achieved by facilitating high-level policy dialogues and capacity building services, delivering quality knowledge products and promoting strategic development cooperation in the region.

Shamshad Akhtar, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP, emphasized that a different approach to inclusive growth and sustainable development is urgently needed to ensure the success of the 2030 Agenda in the countries of Asia and the Pacific. “Our regional experience, and relative success in MDG achievement, has set the stage for implementation of the SDGs,” said Ms. Akhtar. “What we need now is a focus on areas such as financing, science, technology and innovation – and in this context we have to lead on policy consistency and coherence.”

“Building the future we want requires mainstreaming sustainable development in national plans and budgets, and backing them with strong follow-up and review at the regional level.”

Stephen P. Groff, Vice-President of ADB pointed out that how the region balances economic prosperity, social equity and environmental responsibility will matter not just to Asia and the Pacific, but to the world. “ADB applauds the increased ambition of the SDGs and will support these in Asia through increased investments in human needs, infrastructure, and cross-border public goods. This renewed tripartite collaboration around the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs will contribute to regional policy dialogue and knowledge services, complementing national actions,” said Mr. Groff.

“In financing sustainable development, ADB will increase its overall lending by up to 50% from 2017 to around $20 billion a year and double its climate financing to $6 billion a year by 2020.”

On the occasion of signing the tripartite agreement, Haoliang Xu, Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, UNDP, underscored the importance of technology and innovation in helping achieve the lofty goals. “The bold global goals agreed to by the world leaders last week will require innovation and extensive action to deliver widespread prosperity in Asia and the Pacific, and to meet the ambitions for people and the planet,” said Mr. Xu. “UNDP stands ready to support countries in the region to help quickly integrate the 2030 agenda into national plans, so that aspirations can be fast-tracked into development results.”

Welcoming the new partnership at the high-level forum, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon said: “We attach importance to the harmonization of the previous strategies with the new agenda for sustainable development for the post 2015 period, and we attach special importance to regional cooperation in development of infrastructure, including realization of projects on construction of railroads and highways, transmission lines and gas pipelines.”

The Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, added: “Pacific small island developing states need, more than ever, to work with a coordinated United Nations system because we need to move quickly to identify and implement programs which will help our nations deal immediately with the needs of our people and region.”

The original partnership between UNDP and ESCAP dates from 2001, with ADB having joined in 2004. The three partners embarked on a regional MDGs project to monitor development progress in Asia and the Pacific in a unified way. Over the last decade, the partnership has evolved into a significant regional platform for policy dialogue, with the Regional MDG Report series contributing to higher visibility of MDGs issues and strengthening cross-country exchange of ideas for MDG achievement. The new agreement will build on this partnership to support the efforts of member States to ensure effective implementation of the SDGs.

For further information, contact:

Katie Elles
Public Information Officer, Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section, ESCAP
T: (66) 2 288 1865 M: (66) 9481 525 36
E: elles@un.org

Stanislav Saling
Media Relations & Public Affairs, Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, UNDP
T: (1) 212 906 6575, M: (1) 917 346 1955
E: stanislavsaling@undp.org

Harumi Kodama
Team Leader, Media Relations, Department of External Relations, ADB
T: +63 2 632 5291, M: +63 908 888 6701
E: hkodama@adb.org

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Asian indigenous groups bag UNDP awards

SOURCE: SciDevNet

Copyright: Kemal Jufri / Panos

[JAKARTA] Indigenous communities from Indonesia have been awarded the Equator Prize 2015 by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for their struggle in advocating land rights and environmental restoration.

They are among the 21 community initiatives in Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America that were given the UN prize on 21 September for securing land rights, protecting forests from destruction, saving endangered species and creating thousands of jobs for their localities.

During the press conference in New York announcing the winners, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres linked the importance of the upcoming UN climate change conference in Paris this December to the role of indigenous groups and local communities in assisting the world to reach its collective climate goals.

“The agreement governments will reach in Paris will be a crucial catalyst for sustainable development in the twenty-first century — everyone from governments, cities and companies to local and indigenous communities have an interest and everyone has a role to play in reducing emissions and building resilient societies,” she said.

“These winners show what is possible when indigenous people and local communities are backed by rights to manage their lands.”

By Helen Clark, UNDP administrator

One of the winners is Komunitas Adat Muara Taen, an indigenous group in East Kalimantan which has replanted 700 hectares of forests with traditional wood and fruit trees. They have also been struggling for land rights in Muara Tae since the 1970s to protect their land from the government and private companies which are trying to claim these.

Hairudin, information head of the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), the umbrella group of Indonesian indigenous groups, tells SciDev.Net that the people of Muara Tae are a unique community compared to other indigenous groups in Kalimantan because of their persistence in asserting their rights.

“The people in Muara Tae have kept on struggling and they have secured 4,000 hectares of traditional forests,“ he says.

Other winners from Indonesia are Peoples in the Heart of Borneo, an Indonesia-Malaysia indigenous peoples’ alliance championing land rights and improved livelihoods, and Kelompok Peduli Lingkungan Belitung, an environmental group in Belitung island, Sumatra which has restored coral reefs and fishing zones devastated by tin mining.

Three other winners in the Asia-Pacific are the Prey Lang Community Network in Cambodia, an alliance of indigenous Kuy communities that have protected 500,000 hectares of lowland forests through forest patrols and geo-referencing technology; the Yunnan Green Watershed Management Research and Promotion Center in China, a model for indigenous self-organisation which has protected over 1,300 hectares of mountain forests; and the Wanang Conservation Area in Papua New Guinea, an alliance of ten indigenous groups which has protected 10,000 hectares of forests from commercial logging and operates a research station.

According to UNDP administrator Helen Clark struggling for land rights is good for the climate and sustainable development because forests and wildlife are protected, water is secured, jobs are created and local people are empowered.

“These winners show what is possible when indigenous people and local communities are backed by rights to manage their lands, territories and natural resources,” she says.

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Sustainable agriculture key to green growth and reducing poverty

SOURCE: UNDP

02 Jul 2015 by Magdy Martínez-Solimán, Director, Bureau for Policy and Programme Support

Indonesia’s palm oil smallholders, who produce about 40% of the country’s palm oil, are plagued by bad production techniques. Photo: UNDP in Indonesia

The Financing for Development summit in Addis is a decisive point in the process towards the post-2015 development agenda. World leaders, high-level policy makers, funders and finance ministers, among others, are expected to deliver the political will, policy reforms, and financial investments required to end extreme poverty by 2030.

Agriculture and nutrition is one of the four key focus areas at the summit, along with sustainable infrastructure, social protection and technology. Already at the core of much of what UNDP does every day across the globe, this reinforced agriculture as a key pillar of our poverty reduction efforts in over 170 countries.

The production of agricultural commodities, such as palm oil, beef, soy, coffee, and cocoa, plays a pivotal role in global efforts to improve livelihoods across the globe. Sadly, agriculture is also the main driver of deforestation today, and is threatening to devastate the very environment upon which we depend to survive.

UNDP is engaged in promoting sustainable agricultural practices to improve the lives of millions of farmers through its Green Commodities Programme (GCP).

If smallholder farmers, many of whom are women, are to be lifted out of poverty, we need to improve the economic, social, and environmental performance of our key agricultural commodity sectors. By 2020 UNDP’s GCP aims to contribute to enabling eight million farmers, managing 20 million hectares, to improve the sustainability of their practices and as a result, their livelihoods.

Smallholder farmers mainly seek out a living by using outdated and poor production practices. Improving these production techniques will lead to increased efficiency, higher yields, and improved product quality. This in turn means increased household food security and higher household income, especially when money is saved through less fertilizer and pesticide use. There will also be a positive environmental knock-on effect.

The expansion of smallholder coffee farms in Peru, a direct result of low productivity and poverty, has contributed to deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, especially in the highly sensitive Western Amazon. Indonesia’s palm oil smallholders, who produce about 40% of the country’s palm oil, are also suffering, plagued by bad production techniques. This perpetuates the deforestation cycle as farmers seek to boost productivity by carving out even more land from the pristine forests of the archipelago.

UNDP, through the GCP and its global network of country offices, is working with government, private sector, civil society, and the farmers themselves, to improve production practices, yields, and product quality while protecting the environment. In other words, all the stakeholders are working together to identify, understand, and really implement solutions to the major challenges. This will take time, as all long-term strategies that really want to have an impact on our planet must. But this type of collective action – that could catapult the development agenda into the post-2015 era – is what we need to see in Addis.

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Regional Consultation on women’s access to justice: developing a framework for programming and research on women’s land and property rights.

The ILC Asia regional facilitator participated in this regional consultation organized by UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre (APRC) in Bangkok on 9-10 June. The meeting brought together key actors and experts from across the region to discuss and validate key issues and entry points on women’s access to land and property from an access to justice perspective, including to draft a common framework for future programming and action.

The ILC Secretariat had been involved in the preparation of the event, mainly by providing inputs on topics and potential participants from our network. ILC members intervened on a range of topics from Privatization and Enclosure of the Commons – CIFOR/SAINS (Indonesia), Statutory Laws and implementation – Landesa (India/Global) and Huairou Commission (Global), Corruption and Elite Capture – ALRD (Bangladesh), Indigenous Women – AIPP (Asia regional), and Common Property and Pastoral Land – MARAG (India).

Contact: Erpan Faryadi (e.faryadi@landcoalition.info)

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Global Call for Nominations: Equator Prize 2014

Call for Nominations open from: January 22 – March 22, 2014

Source: UNDP, 2014

The Equator Prize 2014 will recognize twenty-five local sustainable development solutions for people, nature and resilient communities. Profiles of past Equator Prize winners can be found here.

Equator Prize 2014 winners will each receive $5,000 (USD), with several selected for ‘special recognition’ and an additional $15,000 (USD).

Representatives of winning communities will be supported to participate in a series of events held in conjunction with the United Nations General Assembly, scheduled for September 2014 in New York.

Eligibility

In order to be eligible for the Equator Prize 2014, nominees must:

✔  Have been in operation for at least 3 years

✔  Be a community-based or local group, operating in a rural area

✔  Be located within a country receiving support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), excluding countries with a high level of development. See List of Eligible Countries here

Please review our eligibility requirements, selection criteria and FAQs for more information.

Nominating

The Equator Prize 2014 call for nominations will be open from January 22 – March 22, 2014. Nominations received after this date will not be considered.

Nominations may be submitted directly by the initiative, by a partner organization, or by any third party that is familiar with the activities and achievements of the initiative. Nominators are encouraged, where possible, to quantify results and include data which demonstrates impacts and positive changes in socio-economic and environmental conditions.

Online nominations are strongly encouraged and can be completed at the link here

Download Poster:  Equator Prize 2014 – Call For Nominations – EN ; Form in 15 other languages: here

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Resource – New platform on Anti-Corruption for Sustainable Development

October 2013

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Democratic Governance Group has launched the Global Portal on Anti-Corruption for Development, a web platform on anti-corruption for sustainable development. The platform provides knowledge on efforts to address corruption alongside development challenges including natural resource management (NRM). An e-library organizes anti-corruption documents by region. An interactive map illustrates and provides details on anti-corruption efforts around the world. The platform also aims to facilitate exchange of ideas through blogs, e-discussions and webinars. View article here.

More updates available on Land Portal

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