Baku Forum on Sustainable Development

25-26 October 2018

                             Fairmont Baku Flame Towers, Baku, Azerbaijan

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmadov, Deputy Prime Minister Raši, Assistant UN Secretary General Khalikov, Ambassador King, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to represent UNDP at this event. I am especially pleased to continue the UN Development System’s support for national efforts to implement the global Agenda 2030 and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Europe and Central Asia.

I would like to begin by congratulating Deputy Prime Minister Ahmadov, and other representatives of the Government of Azerbaijan who are with us here today, for their regional leadership in this area. Azerbaijan was one of the first countries in the Europe and Central Asian region to engage with the UN Development System’s SDG Mainstreaming, Acceleration, and Policy Support (or “MAPS”) platform. In addition to the May 2017 MAPS mission and the subsequent work on the MAPS report, our collaboration has taken the form of the drafting of the <<Baku Principles>>, which capture lessons learned across the region in the drafting and follow up to MAPS reports. Together with our sister agencies, UNDP looks forward to working with national partners in Azerbaijan and across the region in implementing MAPS report recommendations, in support of national transitions to sustainable development.

Of the 18 countries and territories whose development aspirations are supported by UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Europe and CIS, 14 have availed themselves of the MAPS platform. Please permit me to briefly share with you lessons in four areas that have emerged from the MAPS processes in these countries.

First, the SDGs have achieved much greater policy traction in the region than was the case with their predecessors—the Millennium Development Goals. This is apparent not only in their engagement with the MAPS platform, but also in the fact that nine of these countries have presented voluntary national reviews of sustainable development progress at the UN High Level Political Forum. Six other countries—including Azerbaijan and Turkey—are scheduled to present voluntary national reviews for a second time in 2019. The SDGs’ “universality” dimension—emphasizing the common but differentiated responsibilities of all UN member states in promoting sustainable development at home as well as abroad—has clearly struck a responsive chord in Azerbaijan and its neighbours.

Second, strong commonalities are apparent across the region in the identification of SDG “accelerators”—policy and programming areas with the most potential for capturing development synergies and addressing development bottlenecks. MAPS reports in virtually all countries of the region identified: (i) sustainable economic or green growth, (ii) employment, (iii) governance and service delivery, and (iv) social inclusion and “leaving no one behind” as accelerator platforms. In addition to highlighting commonalities across the region, these accelerators can serve as forward-looking frameworks for promoting national sustainable development policy convergence.

Third, despite many challenges, processes of adapting SDG targets and indicators to national circumstances are moving forward across the region. National statistical offices, sectoral ministries, and inter-ministerial coordination bodies across the region are redefining national development frameworks by including SDG indicators that can be monitored on the basis of national data. Progress is likewise being made in setting baseline and terminal values for these indicators. Moreover—as is the case with the “AZERBAIJAN - 2020: OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE"—the national development strategies currently in place in much of the region come to an end in 2020 or 2021. These approaching terminus points offer governments and their development partners opportunities to design new national development cooperation frameworks that are more closely aligned with the SDGs, and can therefore support more robust monitoring of progress in implementing Agenda 2030.

Fourth, issues of data and financing have emerged as key constraints in national SDG implementation and reporting cross the region. Answers to these challenges need to be found in three key areas.

• First: support for national statistical offices, from both national and international sources, needs to be dramatically stepped up. This is needed not only to help statistical offices report on a full range of SDG indicators—but also to allow this reporting to reflect, big, alternative, and other types of non-traditional data.
• Second: stronger efforts are needed—by development partners as well as national governments—to link SDG-compliant national development frameworks with policies and programming at sectoral and sub-national levels. Stronger linkages are likewise needed to relevant budgetary frameworks.

• Third: work to link specific financial flows to reporting against specific SDG targets and indicators—particularly as concerns state budgets—needs to be stepped up. Here I am pleased to note that UNDP has developed a new methodology for tracking potential sources of SDG finance in the region, which my colleague Ben Slay will be presenting tomorrow. More generally, as is noted in the Baku Principles, UN country teams can play important roles in ensuring that sustainable development finance—from state budgets, as well as from other sources—is managed with maximum efficiency.

I would like to conclude by emphasising that UNDP looks forward to continuing its support for national efforts to achieve the SDGs.

Thank you very much.