Twenty-nine young professionals from the government, private sector, academia and civil society in 16 Asia-Pacific countries have completed the Second UN Winter School on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) in Asia and the Pacific organised in Pathumthani, Thailand, to enhance their understanding of the sustainable use of the region’s natural resources.
The Second UN Winter School on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) in Asia and the Pacific was organized through the Regional Policy Support Component of the EU-funded SWITCH-Asia programme and its partners, the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), and the ASEAN Secretariat.
Resource experts from across the Asia-Pacific region conducted the Winter School held at AIT. The participants, selected from over 300 applicants, were taught in a diverse array of topics including: Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Sustainable Public Procurement, Sustainable Production Theory and Applications in Manufacturing Sector, Sustainable Tourism, Sustainable Lifestyles, SCP Finance and SCP Policy.
“This SCP Winter School is an investment in the future of the region. Resource use, production and consumption patterns are rising very dramatically across the Asia-Pacific. Tomorrow’s decision makers need to be equipped to respond to the challenges they will need to address,” said Janet Salem, Programme Officer UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. “The participants also learn from each other and establish long-lasting networks that will help them in future.”
In addition to expanding the participants’ SCP knowledge base, the course also aims to create a regional community of advocates drawn from a range of disciplines. The young professionals who took part in the Second Winter School are linked to instructors as well as alumni from the preceding session.
School graduates were encouraged to stay in touch and learn from each other’s perspectives. “To understand the concept of SCP is very important now in Lao PDR. I have met many people from around the Southeast Asia region and we exchanged our knowledge about the concept of SCP,” said participant Nakhalin Vorasarn from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
The program uses progressive educational tools not only to promote forging regional relationships but also to ensure that the content is both meaningful and memorable to the participants so that they may bring their newly acquired SCP knowledge immediately into their professional and personal lives.
Participant Ludwig Oscurio Federigan from the World Wide Fund for Nature, Philippines, sees an immediate opportunity to work on shifting behaviour change through policy reform. “I will be able to cascade what I have learned in this course with our people who do policy work, who talk with the government, both national and local government and hopefully we will be able to influence them and integrate SCP in their respective policies,” he said.
For more information: Ms. Satwant Kaur, Regional Information Officer, UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Tel: + (66 2) 2882127; Mobile: +(66 8) 17001376, Email: satwant.kaur@unep.org
