On 28 March 2019 (12:00 - 13:15 PM UTC+7:00), the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) is hosting Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development 2019 - Promoting Enabling Environment for Inclusiveness by Localizing SDGs in Bangkok, Thailand.
Venue: Meeting Room F, 1st floor, UNCC
Organizers: Government of Japan (Ministry of the Environment: MOEJ), (Cabinet Office: CAO), Government of Indonesia (Ministry of National Development and Planning: Bappenas), Government of Philippines (the National Economic and Development Authority), UCLG ASPAC and IGES.
Background: Cities account for over two-thirds of the world's energy consumption and more than 70% of global CO2 emissions. With more people migrating into cities, more jobs will be needed in cities. Against these enormous challenges, best practices from countries and cities in this region have demonstrated that holistic, integrated, and inclusive approaches and localisations of SDGs can address these challenges simultaneously: by creating green decent jobs and sustainable livelihoods (SDG8&10 and empowerment) and educating and enabling its residents to be part of efforts towards sustainability (SDG4 and inclusivity), cities can be the centre of decarbonisation and fight against climate change (SDG13). Hence, localisation of SDGs presents opportunities of changes for local governments.
Scope: Making enabling environment for inclusiveness in reality, many national and local governments have been acting to be the catalyst of changes by localizing the SDGs. Indonesia has promoted the concept of inclusiveness and participation in the preparation of their local action plan as stipulated in the Presidential Regulation 59/2017. Jakarta has initiated a process of localising the SDGs and established the SDGs working group including NGOs. With this inclusive platform, the city has empowered its own staffs and NGOs to institutionalise SDGs as part of its regulation and policy and to take necessary actions. In Japan, the ‘SDGs Future City’ initiative under the Cabinet Office has selected 29 cities whose proposals have potentials to achieve co-benefits of different goals and to encourage peer-learnings (SDG17). Japan also promotes the ‘Circulating and Ecological Economy’ concept to frame how to simultaneously achieve decarbonisation (SDG13) and green prosperity (SDG8&10) at local/regional scale (such as the usage of renewable, decentralised energy system to locally create new jobs). To enhance the accountability and inclusivity of cities, IGES has succeeded to launch world first ‘Voluntary Local Reviews (VLR)’ on three Japanese cities (Kitakyushu, Toyama, and Simokawa) at HLPF2018. Furthermore, SDG localization is already being implemented in the Philippines, through mainstreaming and cascading the global goals and 2 targets into the subnational plans, such as through Regional Development Plans (RDP) and Comprehensive Development Plans (CDP). UCLG is providing trainings (empowerment), so that cities can localise SDGs and set their own action plan.
These form of collaboration between national and local government from Asia Pacific aspire others to promote inclusive and integrated approaches to achieve the SDGs. The objective of this 1.25 hour side event is to promote and showcase best practices from countries in Asia Pacific in their pursuit to localize the SDGs through promoting policy coherence and integration for inclusivity as means of implementation from both national and local government. The side event will also aim to open an in depth discussion on how to give the appropriate enabling environment which encourage inclusivity.
Key Questions:
- How national governments can create the appropriate enabling environment to encourage inclusiveness as the main mode for local government functions?
- What are the examples of best practices in your respective countries which demonstrate local government initiative for inclusivity?
Contact details: Junichi Fujino ([email protected]) and Hirotaka Koike ([email protected])