The countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been very active in promoting energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) technologies in order to fulfil their global commitment on climate change. In the ASEAN Plan for Action for Energy Cooperation 2016-2025 (APAEC), EE and RE are key program areas to be addressed.
In this vein, examples of actions include feed-in tariffs (notably in Thailand and Malaysia) and the liberalization of the electricity market. In relation to EE, ASEAN member countries are progressively adopting Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) with EE standard and labelling programs. ASEAN member countries coordinate their energy policies through the ASEAN Energy Efficiency & Conservation Sub-Sector Network (EE&C-SSN) and the Renewable Energy Sub-Sector Network (RE-SSN). Both are composed of government agencies acting as program coordinators, and report to the Senior Officials Meeting on Energy (SOME) and the ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting (AMEM).
While being broadly framed as 17 separate and diverse elements, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and associated targets inherently interlink with one another making up indivisible parts of sustainability from a systemic perspective. Actions or measures taken for achieving one goal may be mutually reinforcing or contradictory with achieving other goals. SDGs and associated targets through the connections among and between each other form a network of interlinkages. Understanding the interlinkages among the goals and between the targets is crucial for integrated governance and policy coherence for the implementation of SDGs. However, existing knowledge about these connections remains limited.
The G20 Green Finance Synthesis Report adopted at the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou in September 2016 set out seven options identified by the G20 Green Finance Study Group (GFSG) to accelerate the mobilization of green finance. This paper highlights some of the progress made against these seven options in G20 members and internationally since June 2016. Progress described is illustrative and non-exhaustive, drawing on voluntary contributions from GFSG members and a broader review of global trends. While not comprehensive, it provides a useful summary of many of the key developments and the overall progress made to mobilize private capital for green investment.
Twenty years ago, the BioTrade Initiative was launched as the UNCTAD response to implementing the 1992 Earth Summit’s Agenda 21, the blueprint for sustainable development action into the twenty-first century.
