The project “Enhancing South-South Cooperation – Building the Capacity of Developing Countries to Promote Green Economies” was based on the often-articulated wish of developing countries to exchange and share good practices with other countries of the South. The project had two key objectives. The first was to facilitate knowledge exchange between countries of in the ASEAN region and to provide them with opportunities to learn about different approaches to transitioning toward low-carbon and resource-efficient economies. The second objective was to provide capacity building for locally appropriate green economy indicator systems and inform stakeholders of the crucial role that these domestically adapted economic models serve in guiding policymaking and facilitating green economy transition. In addition to achieving these objectives, the project was able to expand its impact beyond the ASEAN region by sharing information about four national sustainable development concepts - China’s Ecological Civilization, Bolivia’s Living Well, Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy and South Africa’s Green Economy - with a wide variety of policymakers and stakeholders from around the globe.
The centrepiece of the project was a report, entitled “Multiple Pathways to Sustainable Development: Initial Findings from the Global South”, which provides analysis of the four national sustainable development concepts and their implementation. The report was accompanied by a series of short videos covering each of the approaches.
In addition to the report and accompanying videos, the project also included three events aimed at knowledge exchange and capacity building on the use of indicators and on different approaches to achieving environmental sustainability and poverty reduction. The events were attended by representatives of the four project countries as well as policymakers and government officials from a wide range of other countries representing all regions of the globe, as well as representatives from a number of international organizations. The first project workshop was held in Bali, Indonesia from 16 to 18 December 2014, second project workshop was held in Seoul, Republic of Korea from 28-29 April 2015, and the third, an embassy event to launch the project report, was held in Geneva, Switzerland on 21 July 2015.
Although outside the scope of this project, UNEP produced a related follow-up report, entitled "Multiple Pathways to Sustainable Development: Further Evidence of Sustainability in Practice", that was launched during a high level workshop at UNEA 2 in May 2016 in Nairobi. The report new added to the output of this project by examining four additional sustainable development approaches that have been adopted at the national level: Gross National Happiness in Bhutan, Natural Capital Accounting in Botswana.