United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
Q1. How have the COVID-19 pandemic and the current food, energy and financing crises changed the priorities of your organization?
The unprecedented crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the challenges to sustainable development by reversing some of the progress made. However, the transition to a more sustainable economy and the improved management of natural resources holds many opportunities for building back better and can be a source of economic dynamism and increased competitiveness. At the 69th session of the Economic Commission for Europe in April 2021, ECE member States committed to step up efforts to promote circular economy approaches and the sustainable use of natural resources, namely by mainstreaming circularity and the sustainable use of natural resources in the existing relevant ECE sectoral work programmes. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that international cooperation is necessary to address the multiple challenges that this crisis has raised. In particular, it has demonstrated the great value of transport cooperation and connectivity within the ECE and has highlighted the need for appropriate risk management and increased resilience. These remain important priorities for the work of the organization.
The current tensions in energy markets, which are hitting particularly hard the ECE region, should provide an opportunity to enhance the resilience of energy systems and move faster towards decarbonization. ECE has been carrying out multiple activities in this direction, including regarding improving energy performance in buildings, raising energy efficiency, modernizing resource management and understanding the role of subsidies and carbon pricing, among many others. ECE, together with other partners, is building a regional partnership to provide a platform for a continuous inclusive multistakeholder dialogue to facilitate regional cooperation, provide technical capacity support and help countries in Central Asia innovate and modernize its regional infrastructure and build resilient energy systems that are secure, affordable and deliver on net-zero targets.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the fragility of energy and food systems exposed by the war in Ukraine are a reminder of the need to understand and address risks before they materialize. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides the vision to anticipate and tackle multiple risks, including those of a transboundary character. ECE is ready to support its member States in their strengthened commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals as the blueprint that guides their policy actions.
Q2. How has your organization supported Member States to accelerate their recovery from COVID-19 and the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda? How has your organization cooperated with other UN system organizations in these efforts to achieve coherence and synergies?
The recent implementation of the 2030 Agenda in the ECE region has taken place in a context in which countries continued to struggle to leave behind the COVID-19 pandemic and deal with its legacy. The pandemic gave fresh impulse to existing trends or stressed ongoing concerns, resulting in a renewed emphasis on digitalization and resilience. The urgence of climate change action but also the need to reduce environmental pressures and their detrimental impact on pollution and biodiversity are prompting a search for policy initiatives that facilitate a green transition, including through a shift to a more circular economy. These issues have been well reflected in ECE work, which has continued to support its member States in crafting responses to these challenges.
Normative outputs have been developed to address these problems, followed by policy advice that is increasingly integrated, thus bringing together ECE expertise across multiple sectors to provide recommendations that consider different perspectives. ECE has complemented the focus on normative development and policy advice by increased efforts to mobilise different types of partners, including successful initiatives to engage the private sector and local authorities. In a region where gaps among its member States remain large, the provision of technical assistance remains a critical concern for ECE.
ECE engages with multiple partners to carry out joint activities, spread the dissemination of its outputs or create new platforms of engagement that promote actions in support of sustainable development. There has been a marked shift in recent years towards more structured forms of partnerships that create long-lasting vehicles for collaboration, increase coherence and seek to engage new and multiple actors.
Please highlight up to three high-impact initiatives, especially those that address interlinkages among the SDGs and involves interagency collaboration. Concrete initiatives might be selected to be spotlighted during relevant intergovernmental meetings.
| Initiative | High-performance Buildings Initiative |
| Partners | an expanding network of centres of excellence across multiple countries. |
| Relevant SDGs | SDGs 7, 9, 11, 13,15 |
| Member States benefiting from the initiative | All |
| Description | The built environment and construction sector are central to tackling climate change. High-performance buildings use minimal amounts of energy. The High-Performance Buildings Initiative is conceived to improve not only energy and carbon intensities, but also health, resilience, and affordability. The International Centres of Excellence are a network of community-focused organisations that engage local professional, regulatory, and policy actors to raise the performance of the buildings supply chain globally. Providing education, training, and other critical resources the centres will support their local industries to move forward in line with the UN Framework Guidelines for Energy Efficiency Standards in Buildings. They will also collaborate with one another to share resources and knowledge internationally. |
| Website | https://unece.org/sustainable-energy/energy-efficiency/energy-efficienc… |
| Initiative | The Sustainability Pledge |
| Partners | ITC |
| Relevant SDGs | SDGs 8, 12, 13, 15, 17 |
| Member States benefiting from the initiative | All |
| Description | The Sustainability Pledge invites governments, garment and footwear manufacturers and industry stakeholders to pledge to apply a series of policy recommendations, implementations guidelines and standards for improved transparency and traceability through the garment and footwear supply chain, developed as part of a UN-brokered package of solutions. The Sustainability Pledge is the culmination of several years of research and development work that brought together stakeholders from across the industry to deliver a practical solution for positive change towards more circular economic processes. Their findings identified the need for greater traceability and transparency in the sector. A series of pilots are being launched using technologies like blockchain and DNA tracking to develop an immutable fingerprint for any item of clothing or pair of shoes. |
| Website | http://thesustainabilitypledge.org/index.html |
| Initiative | Post-pandemic COVID-19 economic recovery: Harnessing E-commerce for the UNECE transition economies |
| Partners | UNCTAD, ECLAC, UPU |
| Relevant SDGs | SDGs 8, 9, 17 |
| Member States benefiting from the initiative | West Balkans, Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia |
| Description | The study aims to explore the impact of the pandemic on domestic and cross-border e-commerce in economies in transition in the ECE region and to identify policies and initiatives that could support these economies to enhance their readiness to engage in and benefit from e-commerce, as a contributor to the post-pandemic recovery. A key aspect in this discussion is the role of trade facilitation in enhancing or hampering cross-border e-commerce. Poor trade facilitation, including regarding automation of customs and border-related procedures, has a significant effect on both businesses and consumers. |
| Website | https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/ECE_TRADE_468E_1.pdf |
Q3. Has your organization published or is it planning to publish any analytical work or guidance note or toolkits to guide and support recovery efforts from COVID-19 while advancing full implementation of SDGs at national, regional and global levels?
Yes, please see below for examples.
| Resource | #Housing2030: Effective policies for affordable housing in the UNECE region”. |
| Publishing entity/entities | ECE |
| Relevant SDGs | SDGs 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15 |
| Target audience | Policymakers, academics and practitioners. |
| Description | The #Housing2030 report focuses on four topics: (1) Housing governance and regulation; (2) Access to finance and funding; (3) Access and availability of land for housing construction; and (4) Climate-neutral housing construction and renovation. The study draws on the experience of over 100 researchers, policymakers, housing providers and advocates from across the ECE region and beyond, to define useful approaches, outline their advantages and disadvantages, and illustrate their practical application. The study involved an extraordinary level of stakeholder engagement, despite the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, using survey instruments, online workshops and podcasts in order to maximize the exchange of policy experience and good practices. |
| Website | https://unece.org/info/publications/pub/360530 |
| Language | English |
| Resource | Placing Gender Equality and Care in the Center of National Economic Policies in Response to COVID-19 |
| Publishing entity/entities | ECE |
| Relevant SDGs | SDGs 5, 8, 10 |
| Target audience | Policymakers, researchers and practitioners |
| Description | ECE, as part of a global project engaging UN regional commissions and other partners, developed this toolkit to support national efforts toward developing and implementing care-responsive and gender-transformative response and recovery policies. The Toolkit responds to member States´ demand for support of national policy efforts through practical and adaptable instruments. The purpose of the toolkit, thus, is to support governments and national stakeholders in incorporating a strategic focus on care and gender equality into COVID-19 response and recovery action. |
| Website | https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/Guideline_gender%20equali… |
| Language | English and Russian |
| Resource | Intermodal Transport in the Age of COVID-19: Practices, Initiatives and Responses |
| Publishing entity/entities | ECE |
| Relevant SDGs | SDGs 7, 8, 11, 13 |
| Target audience | Policymakers and practitioners |
| Description | Transport operations were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the disruption of supply chains and trade flows. As a result, the delivery and availability of essential products such as food or medicines became a common challenge undermining countries’ capacity to respond to COVID-19. The publication shows how UNECE instruments in the field of inland transport can and have been used to support member States in their responses to this crisis. Inter alia, the publication touches on issues relating to border crossing facilitation, road, rail and inter-modal transport, transport of dangerous goods and transport statistics. The publication provides a comprehensive overview of national, regional, international and sectoral transport policy responses and various UNECE transport legal instruments of significance in the context of cross-border emergency situations and pandemics. |
| Website | https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-02/2017694_E_web.pdf |
| Language | English |
Q4. How has your organization engaged with stakeholder groups to support SDG implementation and COVID-19 recovery at national, regional and global levels? Please provide main highlights, including any lessons learned. For example, what has worked particularly well as a model for effective stakeholder engagement?
ECE’s key strengths when engaging in partnerships include the normative dimension of its mandate, the long-term orientation of its work, the inclusive inter-governmental architecture and the ability to cover a wide range of topics. A key area are the partnerships with academia, including universities, think- tanks and related networks, which allow ECE obtain critical insights for the continued forward-looking relevance of its work. Private sector partners contribute substantially with technical expertise and industry perspective. Engaging with the business sector contributes to knowledge-sharing, including in connection with norms, standards and regulations being or to be developed by ECE. The engagement of different stakeholders play a key role in advancing the capacity of ECE to address complex, cross-sectoral (nexus) and emerging issues. This is illustrated by the recent work on the Circular Economy and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources (where a number of new partnerships are evolving). Beyond these, such cross-cutting themes as digitalization, climate change and gender equality create opportunities for new partnerships spanning several subprogrammes.
The Regional Forum for Sustainable Development provides a platform for the engagement of multiple stakeholders. Civil society organizations meet every year on the margins of the RFSD and report the conclusions of their discussions to the RFSD. A Regional Civil Society Engagement Mechanism, owned and driven by civil society organizations, has emerged as a platform to enable stronger cross constituency coordination covering five subregions in UNECE and fourteen different constituencies. Civil society representatives nominated through the coordination mechanism have also brought their views and policy examples into the peer learning discussions at the Forum. Following a practice introduced in 2010, pre-meetings of youth representatives take place that bring together young people from the region to discuss the Sustainable Development Goals. Messages from these meeting were conveyed to the RFSD each year. A Forum of Mayors, which brings together representatives from the region, was organised back-to-back with the Regional Forum to facilitate synergies. The evolution observed over the last years has enhanced the role that the stakeholders represented in the Major Groups have at the Regional Forum.
If your organization has established multi-stakeholder partnership(s) in this regard, please describe them (name, partners involved, relevant SDGs, Member States benefiting from the partnership) and provide links to relevant websites for more information.
| Partnership | Partnership to improve energy efficiency of the building supply chain in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia |
| Partners | International Climate Initiative (IKI), of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). In addition, UNDP, Country Offices in the beneficiary countries, UN ESCAP, Passivhaus Institut (Germany), UNEP-Technical University of Denmark Partnership (UDP), Institute for Energy Efficiency in Production (EEP) (Germany) and Green Building Alliance (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States) |
| Relevant SDGs | SDG7 |
| Member States benefiting from the initiative | Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan |
| Description | The proposed project is designed to enable delivery of high-performance buildings by addressing the readiness of industry to deliver the needed materials, technologies, and equipment. It also aims to connect building energy efficiency with the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the beneficiary countries. By supporting national economic, social, and environmental goals and bringing multiple benefits for stakeholders in addition to energy savings, the project will bring strong political commitment to ensure sustainability of developed solutions, methods, and instruments beyond its completion. |
| Website | N/A |
| Partnership | Observatory on Border Crossing Status due to COVID-19 |
| Partners | Other regional commissions, ICAO, WCO, ITF, IRU, FIA, ECO and UIC |
| Relevant SDGs | SDGs 8, 9, 17 |
| Member States benefiting from the initiative | All |
| Description | Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, ECE, with the support of the other regional commissions and the private sector, maintains the Observatory on Border Crossing Status due to COVID-19, with information from almost all United Nations Member States, providing daily updates on the status of inland transport border crossings. The policies, measures and good practices implemented by the Governments during the pandemic, which were reported in the observatory, were further analysed and presented in a publication prepared by ECE on Intermodal Transport in the Age of COVID-19: Practices, Initiatives and Responses. |
| Website | https://wiki.unece.org/display/CTRBSBC/Observatory+on+Border+Crossings+… |
Q5. In the 2019 SDG Summit declaration (GA Resolution 74/4), Member States outlined ten priority areas for accelerated action in SDG implementation. Please highlight any major integrated and innovative policies or initiatives that your organization may have adopted in these ten priority areas:
5.1 leaving no one behind
ECE actively promotes the tools of the Protocol on Water and Health (jointly serviced with WHO-Europe) aimed at helping countries to enhance equitable access to water and sanitation. The Equitable Access Scorecard, an analytical tool developed under the Protocol, is used to assess equity in existing water and sanitation public policies and actions to be taken. ECE has also explored how the Protocol’s tools can be used to align with and apply regional water legislation such as the European Union (EU) Drinking Water Directive 2020/2184, which has now a clear focus on equity. In 2022, it published a policy brief to support the efforts of countries in the pan-European region in the progressive realization of the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. The brief reflects on why affordability matters, how affordability can be defined, what policy and social protection options and measures are available to ensure affordability. It also describes the good practices in implementing them and explains how affordability measures can be financed, as well as the current needs and way forward at the regional level. Increased dependence on digital technologies during the pandemic has focused policy attention on the importance of digital inclusion. A UNECE Policy Brief on Ageing examined the ‘digital divide’ between generations and highlighted policy priorities for digital inclusion of older persons, including on how to ensure equal access to goods and services involving digital technology, enhancing digital literacy to reduce the digital skills gaps, leveraging the potential of digital technologies for active and healthy ageing and ensuring the protection of human rights of older persons in the digital era ECE prepared a COVID-19 Recovery Action Plan for Informal Settlements in the ECE Region which showed that the twin goals of increased pandemic resilience, and the achievement of the SDGs can be advanced simultaneously. Greater integration and formalization of the informal communities within the broader formal markets is a critical step in the process of achieving greater pandemic resilience, alongside a more just, equitable, and sustainable future. The measures proposed in the COVID-19 Recovery Action Plan deal with both the new challenges, created by COVID-19, and the pre-existing ones.
5.2 mobilizing adequate and well-directed financing
ECE promotes a People-first Public-Private Partnership model that seeks to ensure that the collaboration between the public and the private sectors is structured and governed in a way that ensures an effective contribution to meeting the SDGs. ECE has elaborated a People-first PPP Evaluation methodology, which has been widely consulted. The methodology provides a mechanism to evaluate and score infrastructure and PPP projects and to determine the extent to which they meet the People-first PPP designation, which is fully aligned with SDGs. In recent years, ECE, as the secretariat of the Water Convention, has been working in collaboration with different partners on increasing understanding and capacity on the mobilization of financial resources for related cooperation processes and projects. As a result of this work, the publication Funding and Financing of Transboundary Water Cooperation and Basin Development was launched at the ninth session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Water Convention in September 2021. Together with other partners at the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiative, ECE developed Guidelines on tools and mechanisms to finance Smart Sustainable Cities projects. These guidelines provide practical recommendations for city governments on how to develop projects in support of sustainable smart urban development. The Guidelines explain what a sustainable smart city project is and provide an overview of traditional and innovative financing.
5.3 enhancing national implementation
ECE technical cooperation activities aim to improve the capacity of member States to implement ECE legal instruments, norms and standards to support regional integration and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Through those activities, ECE establishes national and subregional networks of policymakers and technical experts that contribute to the long-term sustainability of the work carried out. Multiplier effects are achieved by targeting cross-border issues and covering a wide range of beneficiaries in several countries.
5.4 strengthening institutions for more integrated solutions
Nothing to report on institutional strengthening.
5.5 bolstering local action
ECE has sought increasingly to engage local authorities in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. In October 2020, it convened its first ever Forum of Mayors. Its overall theme was “City Action for a Resilient Future: Strengthening Local Government Preparedness and Response to Emergencies and the Impact of Disasters and Climate Change”. The Forum offered a multilateral platform for cities to present specific actions to make cities resilient, focusing particularly on COVID-19 and climate change. The Forum culminated in the adoption of the Geneva Declaration of Mayors, under which mayors in the ECE region undertook to strengthen the resilience of their cities, make them greener, guarantee sustainable urban transport and affordable housing for all, and make their cities more equitable and more inclusive. The second Forum of Mayors was held back-to-back with the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development on 4-5 April 2022. The event provided a platform for Mayors from the UNECE region to exchange information on experiences and best practices on city level policies and practices. In addition, the UNECE Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management has endorsed Guidelines for the Development of Voluntary Local Reviews in the UNECE Region, which will assist local and regional governments in the region in developing VLRs. The Guidelines contain a set of principles and recommendations on concrete steps to be taken. The guidelines were elaborated based on the existing best practices in the region with the development of the VLRs and in consultation with UN-Habitat and other partner organizations, cities and their networks and other stakeholders. A UNECE Regional Action Plan was developed in 2022, which considered the complex challenges to achieving sustainable housing and urban development in the UNECE region in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and housing emergencies. The Plan provides clear and concise principles, policies, goals, targets and actions geared toward creating synergies between interventions at the local and national levels and bolstering international cooperation. 5.6 reducing disaster risk and building resilience;
5.6 reducing disaster risk and building resilience
Industrial accidents at tailings management facilities (TMFs) have resulted in devastating effects on humans and the environment in recent years. With the severity of such accidents increasing, especially due to climate change, and the demand for mineral resources set to continue rising, improving safety is paramount. In order to contribute to the efforts to reduce risks, ECE launched a new Online Toolkit and Training for Strengthening Mine Tailings Safety. The eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to ECE’s Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents (Industrial Accidents Convention) adopted a decision on strengthening mine tailings safety in the ECE region and beyond, acknowledging the key role for the Convention to play in the future in reducing risks at Tailings Management Facilities and increasing the safety of persistent hot spots, in particular in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The project on “National Policy Dialogues for Industrial Safety in Central Asia was implemented in 2020-2021 by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, in order to strengthen governance mechanisms and policy making in the subregion.
5.7 solving challenges through international cooperation and enhancing the global partnership
ECE provides a platform for policy dialogue and the elaboration of normative outputs in multiple areas (transport, trade, environment, statistics, energy, forest, housing, innovation, public and private partnerships and population) where all its member States participate. They engage in addressing practical problems and finding solutions that find expression in normative instruments that are implemented with the support of technical cooperation and capacity-building activities. ECE is also the convener of the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development for the UNECE region, which is organized in close collaboration with the UN regional system. This prominent Pan-European platform for sustainable development provides opportunities for broad stakeholder engagement across all relevant issues, the sharing of experiences and the identification of actions to accelerate progress. As vice-chair of the Regional Collaborative Platform for Europe and Central Asia, ECE has contributed to further strengthening cooperation of the UN entities in the region and UN system collaboration between the regional and country levels for SDG implementation.
5.8 harnessing science, technology and innovation with a greater focus on digital transformation for sustainable development
National Innovation for Sustainable Development Reviews (I4SD) are the centerpiece of ECE work on innovation. The reviews are demand-driven and take a comprehensive look at the innovation ecosystem, analysing the scope, quality and efficiency of government policies and of institutions and processes charged with developing, implementing and monitoring them. ECE launched the I4SD review for Georgia in 2020, followed by reviews of Armenia, Moldova and Uzbekistan in 2021 and 2022. In addition, ECE published a Sub-regional Innovation Policy Outlook 2020: Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus and completed two reference policy publications: Supporting Innovative High-Growth Enterprises in Eastern Europe and South Caucasus and Business incubators for sustainable development in the SPECA subregion. In addition, ECE has recently launched the UN-ECE Transformative Innovation Network (ETIN), which brings together innovation agencies, policy makers, government officials, think tanks, researchers, practitioners, experts, and entrepreneurs mandated to support or engaged in transformative innovation in the ECE region. The objective of the network is to analyse, discuss, and cooperate on better understanding trends, challenges and opportunities of transformative innovation for sustainable development and explore ways of how the government can play a productive and catalytic role in these efforts.
5.9 investing in data and statistics for the SDGs
To support statistical production in the face of the crisis, ECE developed a wiki platform on COVID-19 and official statistics. The platform offers a space for national statistical offices and international organizations to share experiences. It contains resources both on new statistical needs to support countries in managing the crisis, and on emergency measures to ensure continuity of statistical production in core areas of economic, social and demographic statistics such as national accounts, consumer prices, population censuses and household surveys. In 2021, ECE issued new Guidelines to assist countries in maintaining high quality as they move towards using modern data sources in their censuses. Drawing on quality frameworks and best practices adopted by national statistical offices across the world, the new Guidelines will lead census practitioners through the practical stages of assessing the quality of administrative sources. ECE has also published a Set of Core Climate Change-related Indicators and Statistics, along with a set of Implementation Guidelines, both endorsed by the Conference of European Statisticians (CES). ECE published in 2022 the second edition of the Road Map on Statistics for SDGs, which aims to provide guidance to members of national statistical systems and other stakeholders on how to best navigate the complex task of measuring the achievement of the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda. By doing so, it strives to strengthen reliable data-based national information systems and support efforts to achieve the Goals. In recent years, many countries have witnessed the emergence and growth of new forms of employment, driven by economic changes, the adoption of new business models, technological advancement, and continuing digitalization. ECE has published a Handbook on Forms of Employment, which presents a broad framework to classify and understand forms of employment. It provides definitions of key concepts, general principles and guidelines as well as a list of key recommended indicators with the goal of facilitating national statistical efforts to classify, measure and track diverse forms of employment relevant to their national context. ECE also issued in 2022 a handbook on approaches and practices in measuring social exclusion. A recent major development in sectoral statistics has been the launch of a new data platform on forests in the region. This represents a significant milestone in ECE efforts to facilitate access to relevant and reliable data on the sector. Building on its long history of working on forest monitoring, data and assessment in the region, the “INForest” platform gathers key information on forests and the forest-based sector in the ECE region in one place. It offers the most up-to-date information about the size of forests and changes across time, the structure of forests, detailed information about the goods and services forests provide, as well as their contribution to the health of our economies, societies and the environment.
5.10 strengthening the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF)
ECE, through the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development for the ECE region, provided the regional review of progress in SDG implementation in the region, as the official regional contribution to the global HLPF discussions. Jointly with its sister commissions, and with the involvement of other regional stakeholders, ECE as coordinator of the Regional Commissions in 2022 organized the session ‘Messages from the regions’, providing the key policy messages from the RFSDs in all regions to the HLPF ministerial discussions. The session also highlighted regional situations and ways in which Regional Commissions are contributing to addressing the current crises through mobilizing regional action and leveraging regional frameworks.
Q6. Following the adoption of the 2022 Ministerial Declaration, please highlight any major integrated and innovative policies or initiatives that your organization may have adopted related to the below, if applicable:
6.1 Member States encouraged "the United Nations system and all relevant actors to take advantage of emerging technologies and their applications, as appropriate, in order to maximize impact and effectiveness in data analysis and collection and stress the need to bridge the digital gap among and within countries" (Paragraph 86)
ECE is exploring how new technologies can be used to improve data collection and analysis in support of statistical offices. It supports a High-Level Group on Modernisation of Official Statistics and, in 2022, it released a publication on machine learning, which holds a great potential for statistical organisations. It can make the production of statistics more efficient by automating certain processes or assisting humans to carry out the processes. In addition, it also allows statistical organisations to use new types of data such as social media data and imagery. The publication presented practical applications of machine learning within statistical organisations and discussed their value added, challenges and lessons learned. It also included a quality framework that could help guiding the choice of methods and key messages on advancing the use of machine learning for the production of official statistics.
6.2 Member States specifically called upon the UN system "to work with the newly established United Nations Food Systems Coordination Hub, hosted by FAO, to support Governments to develop and strengthen SDG-based national pathways for sustainable food systems transformation" (Paragraph 128)
ECE is member of the Issue-based Coalition on Sustainable Food Systems, which advocates and facilitates coordinated support for strengthening sustainable food systems in the region of Europe and Central Asia - through multi-sectoral approaches that capitalize on the expertise of several UN agencies -, with a strong focus on the most vulnerable groups, in line with the principle of leaving no one behind.
ECE has been working through the Task Force on Water- Food- Energy- Ecosystems Nexus to address problems related to low coherence and a lack of integration between sectoral policies. The aim is to identify intersectoral synergies that could be further explored and utilized in selected transboundary river basins, and to identify policy measures and actions that could reduce tensions between sectoral objectives, avoid unintended consequences of resource management and resolve trade-offs between sectors.
Q7. The 2023 SDG Summit is expected to provide political leadership, guidance and recommendations for sustainable development and follow-up and review progress in the implementation of sustainable development commitments and the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, including through national and regional consultations, which will mark the beginning of a new phase of accelerated progress towards the SDGs. In the lead up to the 2023 SDG Summit, please provide your organization’s recommendations on how to overcome challenges to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the achievement of the SDGs, taking into account the thematic reviews and voluntary national reviews conducted to date.
Implementation of the 2030 Agenda faces three main critical challenges: insufficient policy impulse, lack of policy coherence, including when accounting for the external spillover of policies, and inadequate financing. The three challenges are clearly interrelated: the absence of more ambitious policies is a reflection of the inability to mobilise the necessary financing while the lack of policy coherence undermines effectiveness and raises the costs of action.
It is important to fully exploit the synergies offered by the 2030 Agenda to accelerate implementation and increase the effectiveness of policies. Drawing attention to co-benefits would facilitate policy action in multiple areas in a coordinated manner. However, it is critical to identify and protect groups that could be negatively affected by policy interventions or may be left behind. International cooperation is essential to ensure the coherence of domestic policies with development goals beyond national borders. This requires continued efforts in ensuring that the global and regional architecture for multilateral cooperation is fit for this purpose, filling gaps and strengthening commitments. VNRs and thematic reviews may be encouraged to assess the external spillovers of domestic actions and to identify constraints in progress that result from gaps or other shortcomings in international cooperation. The mobilization of financing should focus not only on the resource side but also on the creation of suitable conditions to direct finance to where is needed, including by addressing externalities that underprice natural resources or give an unfair advantage to environmentally damaging activities. Strategic public investments will have an important role on paving the way for opportunities that can attract private financing. Advancing progress in addressing shared challenges will not be possible without shared financing that facilitates channeling public and private resources to those countries that face more constrained finances.