LocationsSDG Platform for Central Asia funded by the European Union: final meeting of the Steering Committee
June 25, 2024
Steering Committee meeting of the SDG Platform for Central Asia, Almaty, 25 June 2024.
The final meeting of the Steering Committee of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project funded by the European Union (EU) on the set-up of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Platform for Central Asia was held today. The event was attended by representatives of UNDP Country Offices in Central Asia, national partners, representatives of the academic community, experts and the donor of the project – the EU Delegation to Kazakhstan.
In July 2021, thanks to the EU funding, UNDP launched an initiative to achieve the SDGs in Central Asia. The mission of this initiative is to bring partners together to address a variety of policy and programmatic challenges, contributing to tangible progress towards the SDGs. The platform is focused on effective actions — from innovative modeling of socio-economic policy to strategic financial coordination.
Steering Committee meeting of the SDG Platform for Central Asia, Almaty, 25 June 2024.
In view of the fact that the start of implementation coincided with the post-COVID period, the project developed five comprehensive scenarios aimed at the recovery and development of the countries of Central Asia, taking into account the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Comprehensive recovery scenarios were developed using International Futures, focusing on the three most important indicators - gross domestic product, poverty reduction and government revenue.
Recovery issues also became the leitmotif of the high-level Second Regional Summit on the Sustainable Development Goals "Beyond COVID – Towards JUST Recovery in Central Asia". The summit was attended by political leaders of the governments of Central Asian countries, international experts, representatives of international organizations, private sector leaders and representatives of civil society in the region.
The sessions of the Summit have become a platform for discussing regional development challenges in Central Asia and post-pandemic recovery strategies, which focus on the “green” economy and the climate agenda. Within the framework of a special session - a round table of mayors of cities - the participants discussed local solutions for the development of large and small cities in Central Asia and their transition to sustainable development through the localization of the SDGs. Separate sessions were devoted to the digitalization of public services, empowering women and youth for sustainable development, ensuring synergy in financing the SDGs and the climate agenda, as well as building new partnerships to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. The summit stressed the importance of joint efforts and bold actions in addressing regional challenges and advancing the SDGs.
With the support of the project, the SDG Dashboard for Central Asia was created, which is a digital solution that offers a dynamic overview of regional progress in achieving the SDGs by countries. The SDG Dashboard includes a comprehensive dataset of 1,500 interconnections that serve as the basis for effective policymaking, showing how actions to achieve the SDGs affect or accelerate the achievement of others. The digital tool linked the monitoring of SDG implementation trends, policies, interlinkages and financing of the SDGs.
One of the key areas of the project was to support the efforts of the Central Asian countries to build a sustainable architecture for financing the SDGs. In order to synchronize the process of developing the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) in each of the countries of the region, the project supported Turkmenistan's efforts to conduct the Development Finance Assessment as the main starting point for the implementation of the INFF. To support the implementation of national development priorities and mobilize the necessary public and private financial resources, the Government of Turkmenistan
As part of the SDG nationalization component in Kazakhstan, the project contributed to the establishment of a Parliamentary Commission to monitor the implementation of national sustainable development goals and objectives under the leadership of the Speaker of the Senate of the Parliament. The Parliamentary Commission plays a key role in the implementation of the SDGs by coordinating and monitoring the Government's policies and aligning them with the SDGs. Its main function is to create an enabling environment for the effective implementation of the SDGs through lawmaking, budgeting and localization of the SDGs.
The project also became a catalyst for the localization of the SDGs in the newly created regions of Kazakhstan – Zhetisu, Abay, Ulytau and in the Kyzylorda region. This pilot initiative identified the key factors contributing to the localization of the SDGs, presented a set of recommendations that facilitate the localization process, laying the foundation for scaling up this work at the level of the whole country. the formation of local development policies; and second, how local and regional authorities can actively contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.
The project assisted governments in building institutional capacity, securing financing, and addressing the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region, acting as an integrator of country-level efforts at the regional level to achieve the SDGs.
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This publication was funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of UNDP and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
A brochure containing the programme results.
