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The project aimed to foster interactive exchanges on best practices and lessons learned, so as to create a knowledge platform to further strengthen (a) the national capacities in integrated policy formulation to accelerate the 2030 Agenda implementation and reporting through the VNR, and (b) the participation in international policy dialogues and global decision-making processes.

The project areas of work were:

• Poverty elimination, including through sustainable food and agriculture, (SDG 1)
• Innovations in Infrastructure Development, and (SDG 9)
• Support to Asian and Pacific countries to build and/or strengthen the building blocks necessary for implementing the 2030 Agenda and monitor and report accordingly. (SDG 17)

The project had two main components (sub-projects) implemented respectively by the Office of Intergovernmental Support and Coordination for Sustainable Goals (OISC) of UNDESA and, jointly, by UNDESA and UNDP.

The main delivery of this first sub-project was the 2017 ECOSOC Special Meeting on ¡°Innovations for Infrastructure Development and Promoting Sustainable Industrialization¡± (31 May 2017, New York). The meeting brought forward the challenges and opportunities associated with the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 9 (SDG-9) to the attention of Member States and UN partners and gathered around 120 experts and official from public and private sector. The Special Meeting was the culmination of several months of in-depth substantive preparations undertaken by a UN inter-agency Core Group in partnership with countries and other stakeholders, including through the organization of two preparatory events in Dakar, Senegal (26 March 2017) and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (24-26 April 2017), the latter thanks to the 2030 Agenda Sub-Fund.

The main results of the second sub-project were:

• A Regional Synthesis report was prepared in collaboration with ESCAP-ADB-UNDP. The report titled: ¡°Transformation towards Sustainable and Resilient Societies in Asia and the Pacific¡± takes stock of the changing nature of increasingly complex risk factors in Asia and the Pacific, and the stresses and shocks that are affecting a diverse region¡¯s prospects for achieving the SDGs. The report was launched at the Fifth Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) in March 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand (picture: cover of the published report). The report was the building-block leading to the First Quadrennial Pacific Sustainable Development Report.
• Building blocks for implementation of the 2030 Agenda and preparation of VNR =>Support to Lao PDR in the mid-term review of its 8th National Socio-Economic Development Plan and the successful integration of the 2030 Agenda more explicitly into the government¡¯s core national planning document (Validation during the 2018 Round Table Meeting, Vientiane Capital, 04 December 2018) and Supported the development of the new National Sustainable Development Plan (NSDP) in Vanuatu, including a planning and implementation framework to ensure cross sectoral and cross ministry coordination in the achievement of the NSDP, the 2030 Agenda and SDGs. Vanuatu VNR was one of the 5 countries of this project (Fiji, Philippines, Timor-Leste, Tonga) that presented at the 2019 HLPF (total 47 VNRs). Similar technical support was provided to the other SIDS countries expected to present their VNR in 2020: Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa. (3 pics on the bottom: view of the 2018 Round Table meeting in Laos above-mentioned; snapshot of a new online mapping application developed by the Scientific Pacific Community (SPC), called PopGIS3 released in Tonga which the project¡¯s activities supported; and Vanuatu 2019 VNR cover (above-mentioned).
• Regional knowledge exchange and increased capacity to monitor and report on progress towards the SDGs culminating with the organization of the Pacific Small Islands Developing States (PSIDS) Voluntary National Review (VNR) Capacity Building Workshop in Fiji in September 2018 (picture group of participants, top right) and a dedicated capacity development workshop in Samoa (November 2018) for the 5 Pacific countries that presented their VNR to the HLPF in 2019. These sub-regional events provided an opportunity for countries to learn from each other as well as build on the experiences of Samoa and Kiribati, the two Pacific Island countries which have already prepared a VNR.

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (24-26 April 2017)

President of ECOSOC, H.E Frederick Musiiwa Makamure Shava and the Permanent Representative, Ambassador LIU Jieyi on behalf of the BRICS Group at the Special Meeting of 31 May 2017, New York.