At the fifth Responsible Business Forum, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today called on business leaders to take a greater role in the new development era in order to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This Forum, opened in Singapore by UNDP and Global Initiatives, aims to address a sea change in the nature of development funding by creating a new partnership for sustainable development.

While foreign funding (Official Development Assistance) is still essential for the development system, it now accounts for 0.7 percent of total financial flows in Asia-Pacific (down from 13.5 percent in 1990), while domestic public and private finance accounts for 89 percent, according to a UNDP report launched last month.

It is one year since every country in the world signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals. They form a blueprint for addressing the most significant challenges facing our planet and its people. Challenges like climate change. This is likely to be the hottest year on record and here in Asia, climate change is a cause of the natural disasters that have claimed half a million lives in the last decade. Challenges like inequality, which has been growing for four-fifths of Asia-Pacific’s population over the last 20 years. Challenges brought on by the accelerating process of ageing, which will make it harder for many Asian states to provide basic services to their people. The 17 SDGs will address these challenges and other interlinked issues, including education, hunger and security. But governments cannot implement this blueprint on their own. Nor can the UN and other development organizations.

Persons with disabilities face multiple challenges such as inequality and discrimination in access to education, healthcare services, social and economic social justice, political participation as well as being particularly vulnerable to violence and other violations. With a predominantly Buddhist population, it is often thought that disability is seen as a result of a sin in a past life. There are however, other cultural norms that impact on people’s perception of disability...

As Cambodia crosses the threshold into the middle income country category, government intervention in education is highly justified and desirable to avoid the so called ‘Middle Income Trap’ also called ‘low skills trap’ by ...

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Asia-Pacific Development Effectiveness Facility (AP-DEF) opened a two-day meeting on aid ahead of the upcoming Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. More than 100 government delegates and development experts are exploring how to design integrated national financing frameworks for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Asia-Pacific. “Domestic sources of finance are emerging as a key driving force for sustainable development in Asia-Pacific,” said Haoliang Xu, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director for Asia and the Pacific. “These new sources of finance allow us to expand the existing development cooperation and partnership.”

As Cambodia crosses the threshold into the middle income country category, government intervention in education is highly justified and desirable to avoid the so called ‘Middle Income Trap’ also called ‘low skills trap’ by ...

If the returns to labour are to be increased, Cambodia will need to diversify the economy providing productive employment opportunities for the 275,000 youths reaching the working age population annually (ILO, 2008). It also needs to make agriculture more productive to provide higher returns to labour to young people who would remain employed in rural jobs. Lastly, there is a need to enhance long-term savings to build-up financial assets and strengthen household resilience and set the foundations for inclusive and sustainable economic growth...

To attain environmental sustainability and sustain Cambodia’s path to development, it is therefore more than timely that the government has recently decided to initiate an environmental governance reform...

Through the development of an Environmental Code, the reform is expected to provide overarching principles and a legal framework to guide implementation of existing laws, in order to achieve sustainable natural resource management and development. Through the support for the integrated ecosystem mapping, existing data on environment and development will be consolidated to assist national level land use planning and decisions for sustainable landscape management...

But the term ‘gold’ should also be used for another important resource in Cambodia — water. Water is central to agricultural production including paddy rice, through the expansion of irrigation...

To expand the scope for public action, UNDP will focus assistance on public institutions for poverty reduction and resilience and on strengthening voice and participation. The focus will be on upgrading value chains, financing development sustainably, building resilience and fostering participation. An important tool will be fostering partnerships in the context of transition.

Despite its reclassification as a Lower Middle-Income Country, Cambodia’s transition from a Least Developed Country will take perhaps another ten years while its human asset and economic vulnerability indices remain within the LDC category..