Asia-Pacific steps up South-South Cooperation and Technological Cooperation for Climate Action and Sustainable Development
Singapore, 13 July 2018— The United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) co-hosted a workshop on South-South and Technological Cooperation for Climate Action and Sustainable development Progress in the Asia-Pacific Climate Week in Singapore on 13 July 2018. Held in Singapore, this event convened member states, international organizations, inter-governmental agencies, and non-stake actors to highlight climate actions through South-South cooperation and technology cooperation.
Highlighting the increasing experiences and knowledge on climate cooperation among the Southern constituencies, Tomasz Chruszczow, High-Level Climate Champion urged the international community to consider translating successful climate cooperation experiences into climate policy options. He called for enhanced participation of small and medium enterprises, the private sector and the civil society in implementing the Paris Agreement and invited the non-state parties to join the Marrakech Partnership for global climate action. Emphasizing the need to build strong institutional and legal infrastructure to address climate change, Chruszczow highlighted the opportunities brought about by climate change challenges in efforts to accelerate climate action and achieve sustainable development.
Emphasizing the growing ownership of the efforts on South-South cooperation on climate change among Southern countries, Xiaohua Zhang, Manager of Climate and Sustainability Programme at UNOSSC, introduced the Secretary-General’s South-South climate cooperation action plan aimed at maintaining the high-level momentum on climate change, increasing knowledge base on South-South cooperation on climate change, enhancing the United Nations coordination efforts, and engaging with multi-stakeholders. He then invited the keynote speakers to address the workshop.
Highlighting the three primary goals for the international community in the context of addressing climate change, i.e. implementation of the Paris Agreement by finalizing its work programme; acceleration of the climate ambitions before 2020; and reflection of these ambitions in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions, Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC set the stage for the participants to discuss successful stories of South-South and Triangular cooperation, including technological cooperation; relevant lessons learned and potential for replicability; and concrete and practical ways forward to enhance South-South and Triangular cooperation to combat climate change and to achieve sustainable development.
Underscoring the already happening South-South climate cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, Jorge Chediek, Secretary-General’s Envoy on South-South Cooperation and the Director of UNOSSC emphasized the critical role the Asia-Pacific region is playing in the global and regional cooperation to combat climate change. He invited parties to participate and contribute to the High-Level Conference on South-South cooperation to be held on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) in March 2019 in Argentina in order to discuss how South-South cooperation can help implement 2030 Agenda.
Iterating the clear and unequivocal human influence on the climate system and the rapidly closing window for action, Youba Sokona urged the policy, practice and research community to work together in strengthening political will, increasing access to human and financial resources, orienting institutions to deliver on the climate vision, and acknowledging the link between short-term and long-term needs and actions.
Dinara Gershinkova, Vice-Chair of UNFCCC Technology Executive Committee emphasized the need to disseminate the existing climate technology solutions and to raise awareness of potential technological cooperation that South-South and Triangular cooperation could bring to help countries in implementing their climate action. Thus, Gershinkova urged the international community to collaborate with international organizations to promote the South-South climate cooperation.
With regards to experiences, opportunities and challenges of South-South and Triangular cooperation in the Asia Pacific region, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, and the Pacific Island shared success stories and challenges of South-South and Triangular cooperation, including technological cooperation.
Ms. Nur Masripatin, Special Advisor to the Minister of Environment and Forestry/National Focal Point of UNFCCC, Indonesia highlighted Indonesia’s contribution of approximately USD 49.8 Million (national and international sources) between 2000 and 2013 to South-South and Triangular cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, focusing on sectors such as agriculture, scholarships, disaster risk reduction, maternal and child health, infrastructure and women empowerment. Masripatin pointed that South-South and Triangular cooperation in forest and climate change in ASEAN region in the context of policy, methodology, capacity building and communications include strengthening negotiation capacity and developing common positions of ASEAN member states in UNFCCC and other related fora; development of decision support tools for addressing drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in ASEAN region; experts dialogues; and training workshops on methodological aspects. Masripatin stressed that Indonesia’s success in South-South and Triangular cooperation on climate change has been led by flexibility in the use of financial resources both from national and international sources; common understanding on the important roles of forests in ASEAN region in climate change mitigation/adaptation and in economic development as well as for people’s livelihood and other environmental protection; commitment and support of ASEAN Leaders; and working modalities to ensure transparency, inclusiveness, acknowledge and respect for diversity.
Dr. Surachai Sathitkunarat, Assistant Secretary-General, National Science Technology Innovation Policy Office, Thailand shared the first South-South collaboration under CTCN between Nationally Designated Entities of Thailand and Bhutan in the context of reducing GHG Emissions from transport by improving public transport systems through capacity building and use of technology. Sathitkunarat iterated that activities held under this collaboration included training and field visit in February 2016 to provide Bhutan’s participants with an overview of the Thai experiences on intelligent transport systems (ITS) and public transport systems by Thai experts; workshop in December 2016 on sustainable and environmental friendly transport; and study tour in March 2018 to improve Bangkok’s mass transit management systems and infrastructure. Emphasizing the factors that led to the success of this project, Sathitkunarat highlighted the need to localize climate technology from the Northern countries and to support the demand driven sustainable project. He further emphasized the importance of national innovative system and urged the policy, practice and research community and the private sector to work together and raise demand for such sustainable projects. He also urged national governments to create platforms to address such demand driver projects.
Highlighting South-South and Triangular cooperation as one of the avenues to implement Singapore Cooperation Programme, Mr. Mitchel Lee, Deputy Director of Technical Cooperation Directorate, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore noted the importance of climate cooperation at the local level by providing an example of how Singaporean Government is now supporting two of their local NGOs, Mercy Relief and Lien Aid to enable villagers in Myanmar, Cambodia and Timor-Leste to be more self-sustainable in terms of water security and water, sanitation and hygiene (wash) awareness. Additionally, in 2017, Singapore signed an MOU with Argentina on Technical Cooperation to share their respective strengths in areas such as Smart Nation Initiatives and food safety. Singapore started off with a pilot course on “Smart Nation Initiatives” in home country that brought together experts and trainers from Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Argentina’s Ministry of Modernisation to share their experience with 22 participants from the Southeast Asian region with the goal to leverage on technological solutions for sustainable development.
Explaining New Zealand’s approach to development cooperation in the Pacific region, Alysha Bagasra, Policy Officer, Climate Change, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand and Technology Executive Committee Member highlighted New Zealand’s successful experience with the South-South and Triangular cooperation model that has provided an opportunity and an effecitve mechanism to learn from each other, to leverage funding and to deliver effective climate technology results in the Pacific Island countries. In the above context, Bagasra pointed two South-South and Triangular cooperation projects, one of which is a trilateral project (New Zealand, China and the Cook Islands) to upgrade Te Mato Vai’s water system to increase storage capacity and build resilience, the first cooperation of this kind in the region and the first Chinese development cooperation with an OECD donor in the Pacific. The other one is the jointly funded Solomon Islands PV power generation project (New Zealand and UAE), which aims to increase Solomon Island’s uptake of renewable energy needs.
Bagasra noted that while running South-South and Triangular cooperation projects, it is vital to recognize the development needs of the region, particularly the Pacific; to focus on high impact areas to deliver effective results; to involve and empower local stakeholders to enable the replication and improvement of technologies; to integrate hardware and software and bring in multiple stakeholders in different capacities; to coordinate technologies in cross-sectoral planning and policy formulation with the help of local and national governments; and to have checks and balances during project implementation to ensure the standards and expectations of the partners are met to ensure sustainability outcomes in the long-term. Bagasra explained in case of the Solomon Islands PV project, the UAE provided immediate training and capacity development to enable the local energy authority to operate and maintain the system and New Zealand provided asset management and planning capacity to ensure the long-term sustainability of the system. Local energy authority was fully involved in the design process and was aware of the additional capacity requirements to manage the system long-term. Various stakeholders like local energy authority, the UAE company, Fiji based power solutions company and Australia based IT company, as well as the local Solomon government, were brought together to implement the project. In the case of Te Mato Vai’s water project, China’s civil engineering construction cooperation company constructed stage I of the project while New Zealand provided technical assistance including regulatory and legal expertise. Also, it was the Cook Island’s government that defined the needs to overhaul their water infrastructure in order to attain their health, economic development, and climate goals.
Mr. Solomone Fifita, Manager, Pacific Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (PCREEE) pointed the opportunities provided by South-South and Triangular cooperation in bringing in multi-stakeholders, particularly the private sector, in developing sustainable projects to drive the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Fifita explained the need to have specialized entities for the development of energy sector focusing on market, investment and the private sector. Such entities should be given mandates to promote the capacity of the public and private sector, to support availability and access of market data for investment and to create investment and business opportunities. Fifita explained that this need led to the establishment of ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) in 2010 focused on the private sector in renewable energy and energy efficiency, which is anchored to be established as a regional entity in the ECOWAS region. Furthermore, in 2015, the CARICOM community launched the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREEE), which is anchored to be established as a regional entity in the Caribbean region. Additionally, in 2017 the Pacific region launched the Pacific Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, which is anchored to be established as a technical and scientific regional entity in the Pacific region. At present, there are seven centers across regions. A global network of sustainable energy centers has been established that includes centers from the Caribbean, East Africa, the ECOWAS region, Himalayan region, the Pacific, Middle East and South Africa.
This regional collaboration has led to the development of the online capacity building programme for the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands funded by the Spanish government. Also, this global network is working to mainstream gender in energy, in cooperation with Global Women’s Network for Energy Transition. Expressing the need to harmonize the regional guidelines and standards on energy regulation, and an ongoing work to establish a network of energy regulators throughout the centers, Fifita concluded by highlighting the opportunities provided by regional climate cooperation in addressing climate change.
Taking into account the experiences shared in the previous session, Ms. Ariesta Ningrum, Team Leader, Technology Policy and Strategy Unit, Finance, Technology and Capacity Building (FTC) Programme, UNFCCC Secretariat opened the second session to foster discussion among participants to explore concrete and pragmatic ways, including on methodological aspects, relevant instruments and modalities that could be used to design, finance and implement South-South and Triangular cooperation initiatives.
Mr. Rob Bradley, Director, Knowledge and Learning, NDC Partnership Support Unit outlined that the NDC partnership was set up to facilitate technical support and capacity building, to foster knowledge and learning, and to transform NDC activities into financial support through country engagement process in efforts to implement the NDCs. Underscoring the importance of political commitment, finance, technical capacity, and the inclusion of the private sector to enable large-scale systematic change, in realizing the NDCs, Bradley initiated the panel discussion.
Ambassador Shahid Kamal, Special Advisor, Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS), Islamabad, Pakistan emphasized the importance of community connections, increasing convergence of societies and institutions, indigenous knowledge, and greater collaboration and partnerships in the context of disseminating knowledge, technology and innovation in an endeavor to achieve sustainable development and address climate change. Noting the lack of capacity, knowledge and technical know-how at the local level, he urged the educational institutions to integrate climate curriculum into their programmes and national and local institutions to build environmental units that could work collaboratively with the environmental units at the provincial and federal level.
Underscoring the importance of long-term and sustainable knowledge sharing and climate change adaptation in vulnerable countries, Ms. Ina Islam, Deputy Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Bangladesh, urged the international and intergovernmental bodies to help inject external funds and provide technological cooperation on climate change adaptation.
Ms. Rima AlAzar, Global Climate Governance Coordinator, Climate Change and Environment Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) underlined the need of demand-driven South-South climate technology cooperation projects and the importance of the private sector in realizing the NDCs. AlAzar further urged the audience to work towards creating an enabling environment to share not only successful cases but also failed practices in order to learn from real South-South cooperation experiences.
Mr. Mareer Husny, Assistant Director, Ministry of Environment and Energy, Maldives and Technology Executive Committee member pointed out that capacity building is more of an on-going process than a mere product. Highlighting that countries need to own South-South cooperation projects and South-South cooperation partners need to have a clear exit strategy once the South-South cooperation projects are completed, Husny urged the financial institutions to be more creative and willing to take the risk for the implementation and replicability of sustainable development projects.
Underscoring the importance of political leadership, Dr. Natarika Wayuparb Nittiphon, Deputy Executive Director, Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organization, Thailand concluded the panel discussion by stressing the need to have appropriate technology and coordination mechanism in place to combat climate change and achieve sustainable development.
The workshop aimed at enhancing the understanding and the awareness of the potential of South-south and Triangular cooperation in the Asia-pacific region; gaining insight on how to make full use of the critical and complementary role of South-South and Triangular cooperation to overcome shared challenges; and providing space for exchange of experiences among countries with a view to initiating or scaling up South-South climate cooperation initiatives.
The workshop was widely attended by member states, international and intergovernmental organizations, civil society groups, activists, researchers and other non-state actors as well.
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