December 2022 - You are accessing an archived version of our website. This website is no longer maintained or updated. The Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform has been migrated here: https://sdgs.un.org/
December 2022 - You are accessing an archived version of our website. This website is no longer maintained or updated. The Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform has been migrated here: https://sdgs.un.org/
“The high-level political forum on sustainable development will be the home for the SDGs and the Post-2015 development agenda. It is the place where the international community comes together to address and coordinate the entirety of sustainable development issues,” said Nikhil Seth, Director of UN DESA’s Division for Sustainable Development, ahead of the Forum’s second meeting from 30 June to 9 July 2014 which will be the first meeting under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council. The theme of the Forum’s second meeting will be ‘Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and charting the way for an ambitious post-2015 development agenda including the Sustainable Development Goals’.
Social, economic and environmental dimensions under one roof
The high-level political forum (HLPF) is the main United Nations platform providing political leadership and guidance on sustainable development. An important role of the Forum will be to integrate the three dimensions of sustainable development.
The Forum is also to follow up and review progress in implementing sustainable development commitments and address new and emerging sustainable development challenges. Earlier this year, ECOSOC President Martin Sajdik said that “a transformative agenda for development will only make a difference if effectively implemented. This will be the role and function of the high-level political forum.”
The preliminary programme of the HLPF envisions that during the second meeting of the Forum, 21 dialogues and a host of other events and presentations will take place along the following four tracks: From Rio+20 to post-2015; Regional dimension and countries in special situations; Shaping the forum beyond 2015; Science policy interface.
Doors wide open for Major Groups and other Stakeholders
The HLPF is the most inclusive and participatory process of its kind, bringing all States Members of the United Nations and States members of specialized agencies together. Through the major groups and other stakeholders format it provides participation opportunities for non-central state actors like no other UN process does. Major groups, civil society and other stakeholders will have various opportunities to contribute to the discussions at the HLPF, including morning sessions with the ECOSOC President and participation as panellists and lead discussants in a number of dialogues.
Sustainable development science as foundation
The Rio+20 Conference highlighted the importance of basing sustainable development policies on solid science including through a Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), which is to bring together existing assessments and to strengthen the science‐policy interface at the HLPF. In response to the Rio+20 mandate, a “prototype” report has been produced. It illustrates a range of potential content, alternative approaches and various ways of participation in respect to such a report. The prototype Global Sustainable Development Report will be presented by Under-Secretary-General Wu Hongbo at the Forum.
In their closing remarks at the eleventh session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals on 9 May, the Group’s co-chairs, Ambassador Csaba Kőrösi, Permanent Representative of Hungary, and Ambassador Macharia Kamau, Permanent Representative of Kenya, welcomed the outcome of the week’s deliberations, referring to the very many concrete suggestions on targets made by delegations.
Ambassador Kamau highlighted four areas in which the co-chairs see a particular need for more work, namely equality, climate change, means of implementation, and ‘peaceful and inclusive societies, rule of law and capable institutions.’
He said that, responding to calls from many delegations, the new iteration of the working document would contain an additional goal on promoting equality, bringing the number of focus areas to 17. This new iteration will be issued by the co-chairs shortly. The Ambassador also said that the co-chairs are “very emphatic that it would not be a good idea to end up with too many focus areas,” and encouraged members of the Group to keep thinking of how to cluster some of them better.
The session ended on a high note, with delegations greeting the co-chairs’ proposal on the way forward with acclaim. At the next session, the co-chairs intend to proceed by obtaining agreement on targets one by one. Informal-informals will be held from 9 to 11 June, in the week before the 12th session of the Open Working Group, with the aim of removing potential stumbling blocks to progress. A draft chapeau has been produced and is available on the Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. As in previous sessions, the Open Working Group continued holding morning meetings with Major Groups and other stakeholders.
The Group’s twelfth session will take place from 16 to 20th June.
The May issue of Natural Resources Forum, a United Nations Sustainable Development Journal, is available online. Topics in this issue include: the water, energy and food security link in Myanmar; evaluating drinking water sources in China; development of food banks via forestry for food security; the role of myths in the disaster risk assessment of coastal communities in India; extending the EU Renewable Energy Directive sustainability criteria to solid bioenergy from forests; and NTFP for rural development in Mexico. Natural Resources Forum delivers cutting edge research on policy issues relevant to the sustainable development agenda. It considers papers on all topics relevant to sustainable development.
The overarching theme of the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States is "The sustainable development of small island developing States through genuine and durable partnerships". The Conference will serve as a forum to build on existing successful partnerships as well as to launch innovative and concrete new ones. The SD in Action newsletter will present a successful “Partnership of the Month” in each of its editions in the run-up to the Conference.
CCRIF
The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) is a risk pooling facility, owned, operated and registered in the Caribbean for Caribbean governments. Established in 2007 with a specific design to limit the financial impact of catastrophic hurricanes and earthquakes to Caribbean governments, the CCRIF quickly provides short term insurance payouts when a policy is triggered. It is the world’s first and, to date, only regional fund utilising parametric insurance, giving Caribbean governments the unique opportunity to purchase earthquake and hurricane catastrophe coverage with lowest-possible pricing.
The beauty of this partnership lies in the essence of its paradigm shift tactic in the way governments treat risk, particularly SIDS, with Caribbean governments leading the way in pre-disaster planning.
CCRIF was developed through the partnership of sixteen Caribbean governments and their generous development partners. Under the technical leadership of the World Bank and with a grant from the Government of Japan, the Facility was born. It was capitalised through contributions to a multi-donor Trust Fund by the Government of Canada, the European Union, the World Bank, the governments of the UK and France, the Caribbean Development Bank and the governments of Ireland and Bermuda, and membership fees paid by participating governments.
The Facility has made eight payouts, sum of US$32,179,470 to seven member governments, since its inception. All payouts were transferred to the respective governments immediately after the stipulated 14-day waiting period (and in some cases advances were made within a week) after each event.
As part of the celebrations for the International Year of Small Island Developing States we are looking for images that showcase the beauty and richness of this group of countries. You can enter your photo under three categories: culture, environment and development.
The best pictures will become part of the UN library and will be used for media materials seen all over the world. They will also be exhibited at the Third Conference on Small Island Developing States in Apia, Samoa.
