Seoul, 28 April 2015 - The two-day event brings together experts and policymakers from around the globe as well as representatives from specialized international organizations, such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) countries.
The event opened with welcome remarks from Choi Heung-jin, the Director General of the Korean Climate and Air Quality Bureau, and Yvo de Boer, the Director General of GGGI, as well as a video address from Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Policy-makers and experts in Green Economy from across the globe are taking part in the workshop, which provides an excellent opportunity to analyse the innovative strategies developed by countries with similar economic, social and environmental conditions and the novel approaches and activities being pursued by different institutions. The event aims to enhance a cross-border network of countries from the global south that form partnerships to enhance inclusive Green Economy practices.
This workshop is organized within the framework of the UNEP project “Enhancing South-South Cooperation-Building the Capacity of Developing Countries to Promote Green Economies”, whose activities seek to highlight the importance of a Green Economy as a vehicle for achieving sustainable development, as confirmed in the Rio+20 outcome document. South-South Cooperation is a broad framework for collaboration and exchange among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains.
Under this project, UNEP has been working for the past two years with four countries to document and share their national sustainable development approaches. These countries and their approaches are: China (Ecological Civilization), South Africa (Green Economy), Thailand (Sufficiency Economy), and Bolivia (Living Well). During the workshop, participants will have the chance to gain a broad understanding of the variety of greener, more inclusive, low-carbon policies that have been implemented in these four countries.
In addition to being a knowledge exchange forum, the workshop also serves as the launch event for the National Green Economy Pathways project synthesis report. The report, entitled “Multiple Pathways to Sustainable Development: Initial Findings from the Global South” provides analysis of the underlying concepts behind the sustainable development initiatives in the four project countries, looks at the impacts of their integration into the national policy frameworks, and the achievements gained by implementing them at the local level. To help launch the report, four accompanying short films will be shown, each providing a brief overview of one of the national approaches described in the report.
