By Akanimo Sampson
Conversations at the 2019 Green Economy Academy have contributed to spread greater understanding of innovative policies, strategies and tools, and more importantly, on the different ways in which they are being shaped, adopted and implemented.
Insiders say the event which took place in Turin, Italy from October 14-18, was very successful in delivering individual and institutional capacity development for Inclusive Green Economies.
Among the series of side events, the 2019 academy featured a knowledge fair. In this space, the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) country partners, PAGE agencies, development cooperation agencies, civil society organisations and academic institutions discussed on the practices from on-going country initiatives and learned from each other’s efforts and contributions to shape Inclusive Green Economies.
The presentations highlighted the innovative actions taken, among other, on SMME development, the collaboration of policy, industry and finance for transformative green growth, on the monitoring and evaluation processes in the Inclusive Green Economy, as well as on how people and movements are organising to engage high-level agendas to tackle the climate crisis.
PAGE country partners took the opportunity to share their action plans and the way forward on several issues. The Department of Environment Forestry and Fisheries of South Africa presented on the innovative and systemic approach to creating a virtuous cycle of community, environmental and financial benefit through SMME development, public and private collaboration, harvesting and beneficiation — all, important elements that establish a truly sustainable relationship between communities, land and water.
Uruguay shared the challenges and opportunities to design and implement inclusive green economy policies. Burkina Faso shared experiences on non-timber forest products and Mato Grosso presented the actions taken to improve the environment, especially on their experience in reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation.Guyana, on its side, provided an in depth explanation of its Green State Development Strategy Vision 2040, a visionary national development policy that reflects the guiding principles of the green agenda.
United Nations partner agencies actively participated in the knowledge fair. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research’s (UNITAR) presentation centered on green economy learning, displaying its global learning products and the most successful South-South and triangular Cooperation approaches used by national learning institutions to learn from each other. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) presented on the potentials for green job creation to achieve sustainable cities.
UN Environment share the policy tools and services developed to contribute to the overall PAGE outcomes, including services such as policy guidance, measurement frameworks and training programmes that support the development of policies and strategies for inclusive green economy.
In partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), they also presented the Green fiscal Policy Network, in particular, the experiences from their work in Peru, South Africa and Uruguay.
The Green Economy Coalition centered its presentation on inclusion, people and movements, and on how they are mobilizing around the climate crisis to engage high-level agendas. The Green Growth Knowledge Platform, a key PAGE partner, provided an overview of the tools they have developed to support collaboration for transformative green growth among policy, industry and finance.
All participants to the Academy were invited to present their work and to learn from other initiatives. The knowledge fair represented a unique opportunity to openly interact with representatives from PAGE countries.
PAGE was launched in 2013 as a response to the call at Rio+20 to support those countries wishing to embark on greener and more inclusive growth trajectories.
