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Rising Up for SIDS Offer READ IN FULL: UNDP's integrated SIDS Offer

Turning Challenges into Opportunities

Small island developing States (SIDS) are some of the most beautiful places in the world and, at the same time, some of the most vulnerable. They were first identified as a special case for sustainable development nearly three decades ago, at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Today, the United Nations lists 58 SIDS spread across the Pacific; Caribbean; and Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and South China Sea (AIS).

SIDS are generally small in population and land area, with fragile ecologies, and face diverse and distinct development trajectories. Common structural and fiscal development challenges comprise a lack of economic diversification, heavy debt burdens and overdependency on imported fossil fuels. Many struggle with inadequate social protection and shortfalls in inclusion that include gender-based inequalities and limited youth engagement. Their small size and geographies make them extremely vulnerable to climate change. They experience, intimately and urgently, the consequences of intensified extreme weather events, rising sea levels and ocean acidification, exacerbated by the degradation and depletion of the natural capital that sustains their livelihoods and economies.

The socioeconomic downturn triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the vulnerabilities faced by SIDS. While virus incidence has been relatively low, the pandemic has laid bare their fragility, with social and economic impacts that will persist beyond the health crisis. SIDS experience economic impacts through the reduction of remittance flows, disappearing tourism demand, reduced fishing, and limited borrowing options for foreign currency. The shock to international tourism caused by global travel restrictions is having devastating impacts on economies as a whole, and particularly on communities and livelihoods dependent on this sector. Socioeconomic vulnerability is compounded by current high debt servicing costs, often substantial reliance on food and energy imports, and low domestic savings. Disruptions to global value chains are increasing food and energy insecurity, threatening the progress SIDS have made in reducing poverty and inequality.

International partnership remains vital for SIDS to comprehensively manage their challenges and unlock their many possibilities. At the United Nations Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States in Samoa in 2014, Member States adopted the Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action agreement, known as the S.A.M.O.A Pathway. Moreover, the General Assembly resolution 74/3 established a high-level meeting to review progress on the S.A.M.O.A. Pathway. In line with the commitments of the S.A.M.O.A. Pathway, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the pursuit of sustainable development in SIDS must put people at the centre.

While SIDS contend with development constraints, they possess real potential for innovation to turn their most pressing challenges into opportunities for prosperous recovery that will allow them to build back better, greener and bluer. Many SIDS are well placed to become innovation incubators for new technological or nature-based solutions that may be scaled up across them and elsewhere. At the same time, SIDS hold nearly 20 percent of the world’s offshore exclusive economic zones. They have significant potential as ‘large ocean States’.

These opportunities, along with SIDS’ collective commitment to transformational change and global action, provide an ideal frame for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to serve as a key development partner. At the outset of the Decade of Action, UNDP commits to scaling up its support to SIDS and responding to their greatest opportunities for accelerating sustainable development. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the broader development crisis it has triggered, UNDP’s SIDS offer targets multipliers of sustainable development to support prompt recovery while accelerating sustainable development, ensuring no one and no island is left behind.

UNDP’s scaled-up offer for SIDS

SIDS have clearly articulated their expectations for support from the international community through forums like the 2019 mid-term review of the S.A.M.O.A. Pathway. These requests include:

  • Increased access to and advocacy within the international arena
  • Integrated and tailored policy advice
  • Mainstreamed localization of the SDGs and the closing of SDG gaps
  • Identified development best practices, and high-quality, disaggregated data collected through technology
  • Stepped-up efforts to further promote gender parity and women’s economic and political empowerment, as well as to address gender-based violence to enhance implementation of the S.A.M.O.A. Pathway, with continued support from the United Nations system and other relevant stakeholders
  • Better statistical analysis and use of data for evidence-based decision making
  • Greater access to innovation and innovative thinking
  • Partnerships, including with subregional organizations, and access to sustainable finance

UNDP is particularly well equipped to respond to these requests and tackle the many challenges and opportunities that SIDS face. It will build on its existing wide-ranging portfolio, with an estimated annual value of US$466 million, towards supporting SIDS in advancing their national development priorities. UNDP’s support is delivered through a strong presence across the Pacific, Caribbean and AIS. It has a network of eight multi-country offices as well as stand-alone country offices in Bahrain, Cabo Verde, Comoros, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Maldives, Papua New Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor-Leste.

UNDP is supporting SIDS in immediate COVID-19 response and recovery efforts through a number of vehicles. A global Rapid Response Facility has offered $30 million in funding; 16.8 percent went to 37 SIDS (6 in Africa, 1 in the Arab region, 14 in Asia and the Pacific, and 16 in the Caribbean). With support from the Government of Japan, UNDP is providing further financial assistance to Fiji, Maldives, Mauritius and Palau. In many SIDS, UNDP is leading socioeconomic impact assessments to inform evidence-based recovery planning. These efforts are complemented by UNDP’s digital micro-level impact assessment tool. It is currently in use in seven SIDS to inform government prioritization of relief and recovery resources as well as strategic planning on mitigating secondary impacts of the crisis on households and micro-, small and medium enterprises.

Building on immediate response efforts, UNDP’s offer, Rising Up for SIDS, enhances its support, looking forward to long-term recovery to accelerate sustainable development. Over the next 10 years, UNDP will expand assistance on three multipliers that can accelerate progress, promote transformative and inclusive recovery, and build on the organization’s comparative advantage and specific expertise. These pillars of the offer are to enhance climate action, propel blue economies and catalyse digital transformation. Across the three, the offer emphasizes access to financing as a key enabler. Work will put natural capital at the centre of sustainable development, promoting nature-based solutions grounded in cultural and societal values around the protection, conservation and use of ecosystem goods and services.

UNDP's engagement with SIDS is rooted in its Strategic Plan 2018-2021 and based on national demands and needs. The offer will strengthen UNDP’s programmatic engagement, increase its ability to respond to urgent and emerging challenges, improve organizational agility, and provide tailored, human-centred development support. It builds on a multisectoral programmatic portfolio, broad development expertise and experience, and a valuable network of traditional and non-traditional partners. The offer is closely aligned with the spirit of General Assembly resolution 72/279 on a repositioned UN development system, particularly the Multi-Country Office Review and the Regional Review.

The SIDS offer and its implementation benefit from wide-ranging, inclusive consultations to identify national priorities and needs. This process includes continuing consultations with SIDS and a survey of UNDP country and multi-country offices, as well as regular exchanges with UNDP’s regional bureaus and UN resident coordinators.

Climate Action

Vision

SIDS are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, but they are also at the forefront of climate solutions. At the United Nations Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in September 2019, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) put forth the SIDS Package, which outlines their priorities in addressing climate change. It highlights their collective determination to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and includes cross-cutting initiatives and partnerships that are SIDS-focused and SIDS-defined. The Package introduced bold commitments by SIDS to update their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and develop comprehensive plans and strategies for low greenhouse gas emissions in island contexts, energy transformation and improved adaptive capacity. As SIDS take action to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 crisis, ambitious and prompt climate action remains at the top of their agendas. With disruptions in global value chains having uncovered the precarity of energy supplies in SIDS, transforming energy systems by building resilience and self-sufficiency is core to the first pillar of UNDP’s offer.

UNDP’s vision is to help SIDS towards these goals by promoting decarbonized and resilient societies, and scaled-up climate action. Our support is based on national development and climate policy priorities, under the overarching objective of meeting the SDGs.

Ambition: What will we do?

UNDP’s scaled-up climate action offer consists of three pillars with transformative impact: energy transformation, adaptation and resilience, and nature-based solutions.

To support energy sector transformation by 2030, UNDP commits to:

  • Providing 6 million people out of a total population of 65 million across 24 SIDS with access to clean energy
  • Assisting the 24 SIDS that have not yet reached universal access to electricity to achieve up to 50 percent improvement
  • Assisting the 25 SIDS with less than a 25 percent share of renewable energy in their power mix to achieve at least 25 percent by 2030, and assist those countries that have committed to reaching a 100 percent target

To help SIDS adapt to climate change and build resilience by 2030, UNDP commits to:

  • Supporting at least 30 SIDS in integrating adaptation into policy, planning and budgeting across national, subnational and local levels, especially through National Adaptation Plans and NDCs
  • Mobilizing $500 million in grants to support the implementation of adaptation priorities across at least 30 SIDS in water resource management/water security, coastal resilience, food security (fisheries and agriculture), resilient livelihoods, and early warning systems and climate information
  • Furthering the harmonization of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies across at least 25 SIDS, supporting governments in incorporating risk reduction and planning for short-, medium- and long-term risks

To leverage nature-based solutions for gains across multiple SDGs, UNDP commits to:

  • Helping 20 SIDS to identify, by 2022, nature-based solutions and integrated approaches for climate adaptation and mitigation in line with national development plans
  • Supporting 20 SIDS in replicating, by 2024, best practices in integrated planning, including ridge-to-reef initiatives and integrated coastal zone management
  • Supporting 20 SIDS in using spatial data to develop maps of ‘essential life support areas’ that large swaths of the population depend on for their livelihoods and survival, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests, and to build political will for implementing nature-based solutions by 2025

Underpinning these actions in key thematic areas, UNDP UNDP is currently working with 28 SIDS under the Climate Promise (12 Caribbean, 10 Asia Pacific, 6 Africa) as part of UNDP’s Climate Promise. Capitalizing on commitments under the Climate Promise will enable green and inclusive recovery from COVID-19. This includes support to raising ambition in SIDS that have positioned themselves as champions of bold climate action—working in close concert with, and through, the NDC Partnership.

Acceleration: How will we do it?

To fulfil these commitments, UNDP is leveraging its extensive climate and energy portfolio of over $210 million across 42 SIDS.

Energy transformation and climate mitigation

  • Increase access to and effective use of grant financing through various sources to leverage private sector investment in clean energy at low cost and transform energy sector markets.
  • Support government efforts in increasing renewable energy generation (solar, wind, biomass, hydro and geothermal) and energy efficiency technologies through: technical assistance; policy and financial de-risking to scale up clean energy solutions; technical standards for energy efficiency such as green building codes, energy audits and sustainable transport; rural electrification through distributed generation and mini-grids; and policy and regulatory support to design and implement clean energy policies and a national roadmap for greenhouse gas reduction.
  • Support the monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas emissions by developing national and regional training; providing technical support for any component related to transparency; advising and providing strategic guidance on the way forward; and implementing quality control exercises on work done under the transparency framework within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Climate change adaptation and resilience

  • Support SIDS governments in incorporating risk reduction and planning for short-, medium- and long-term risks.
  • Advance ‘whole-of-island’ and ridge-to-reef approaches to development planning and policymaking, working across environment, climate, inclusive growth and governance.
  • Provide technical assistance and support to strengthen institutions at the national, regional and local community/island level to enable risk-informed policy, planning and investment decision-making.
  • Assist in mobilizing and accessing vertical funds and bilateral resources to implement adaptation and resilience actions focused on safety, security and livelihoods. Private sector innovations, technologies, insurance and finance will be combined with public finance to enhance food and water security, early warning and climate information, and resilient infrastructure.

Nature-based solutions

  • Assist SIDS in integrating nature-based solutions into NDCs and other national policies by providing integrated spatial data support for nature-based food security, water security and livelihoods.
  • Support piloting innovative nature-based efforts to scale up and advance learning from successes among SIDS. This support will be integrated with climate change mitigation and adaptation support, ensuring sustainability of these actions, and the protection and management of the natural safety net.

For all these actions, and to deliver on its Climate Promise, UNDP will draw on the local knowledge of its country office network to identify strategic and impactful entry points.

Blue Economy

Vision

SIDS are small islands but increasingly refer to themselves as large ocean States. They hold 19.1 percent of the world’s exclusive economic zones, which are sea zones over which States have special rights for use. Their combined ocean area is 20.7 times that of their land territory. This huge difference between the size of sovereign territory in the ocean and on land underscores the potential for SIDS to realize greater socioeconomic benefits from their sustainable blue economies. The blue economy is defined as the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, jobs, and social and financial inclusion, with a focus on the preservation as well as the restoration of the health of ocean ecosystems.

Sustainable blue economy opportunities in SIDS cover a broad spectrum, including existing dominant sectors in fishing and coastal tourism as well as actual or potential new contributors such as aquaculture, ocean-based energy (waves, tides and wind), offshore oil and gas, sustainable maritime transport, desalination, research and education, and marine genetic resources. The blue economy can also include non-market economic benefits such as carbon storage, coastal protection, cultural values and biodiversity. Unlocking the full potential of their blue economies can assist SIDS in achieving not only SDG 14, on oceans, but could have ripple effects on other goals, including SDGs 1 (poverty), 5 (gender equality) and 8 (growth and decent work).

UNDP’s vision is to support SIDS to pursue transformative blue economies and achieve prosperity through an integrated approach rooted in sustainable finance and development. Towards this end, UNDP is committed to providing SIDS with significant technical, financial and capacity-building assistance.

Ambition: What will we do?

Building on UNDP’s sizeable baseline of blue economy programmes and projects, and based on gaps and needs identified in this portfolio, the blue economy pillar comprises three strategic outputs:

  • 20 to 30 national SIDS blue economy strategies fully integrated into national development plans and budgets in all three SIDS regions by 2025, with strong elements for safeguarding natural resources and ecosystems
  • 20 to 30 SIDS blue economy on-the-ground pilots by 2025, with strong social and sustainability elements
  • $30 million or more in new and additional blue economy grant finance mobilized by 2025

Acceleration: How will we do it?

UNDP will achieve its plan for accelerating the blue economy pillar through strategic activities under three main outputs:

National SIDS blue economy strategies

  • National blue economy assessments (status, trends, marine resources evaluation, etc.)
  • National blue economy strategic plans
  • Assessment of policies for a gender-equitable and socially inclusive blue economy, and advocacy for ratification of the international Convention 188 on Work in Fishing and the development of gender-equitable social protection systems
  • Introduction of innovative blue economy financial instruments
  • Advances in governance frameworks more conducive to private sector investment
  • Capacity building (training on blue economy planning, innovative finance, private sector engagement, governance reform, stakeholder engagement, etc.)
  • Partnerships between UNDP, SIDS, external academic organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), United Nations entities, the private sector and other stakeholders
  • SIDS blue economy advocacy, awareness-raising and knowledge products

On-the-ground pilots

  • Live demonstrations, webinars and training sessions on blue economy investments, including ecosystem restoration and protections that restore lost economic opportunity
  • New and additional public and/or private investments in sectors deemed sustainable

New grant funding

  • $30 million or more in new and additional blue economy grants mobilized by 2021, with principal sources including vertical funds, and selected bilateral donors and philanthropies

Digital Transformation

Vision

SIDS states are at a moment of great, almost revolutionary, promise, where digital technology is concerned. Small in size, they can offer ideal conditions as innovation incubators, pioneering new technologies that can be tested, replicated and scaled up elsewhere. SIDS can become frontrunners in the use of digital technologies to accelerate sustainable development and mitigate many of the challenges that they face. These can be tested and then scaled up elsewhere.

SIDS are working to address challenges in core infrastructure and connectivity needed to make this leap. Significant progress on increasing connectivity has put SIDS on track to achieve targets for the universality and affordability of Internet access. According to current trends, mobile broadband coverage will reach almost 90 per cent of the population As of September 2019, mobile broadband coverage covered 85 percent of the population, and over half the SIDS had an Internet penetration rate of over 60 percent.1

Many SIDS continue to struggle when it comes to improving two key issues: digital capacities and inclusive access to digital technologies. This widening digital gap is seen, for instance, in the limited availability of online content in local languages, and inadequate broadband infrastructure and capacity, particularly in rural areas. Without proactive measures, new technologies are going to exacerbate already existing inequalities within communities. As the 2019 Human Development Report highlighted, those with less access to new technologies are at high risk of being left behind. The exclusion of women and some social groups in digitalization is not only a matter of human rights but may infer significant costs for SIDS as it results in losing resources for innovation and economic development. These challenges need to be systematically addressed. UNDP recognizes the need to explore the potential for digital transformation in SIDS alongside the urgency of bridging the persistent digital divide.

UNDP’s vision is to support SIDS in taking advantage of the opportunities of a digital age, while managing the associated challenges and overcoming existing constraints in access and capacity.

Ambition: What will we do?

UNDP aims to support SIDS in achieving their digital ambitions by 2030 in the following ways:

Support 20 SIDS in developing forward-looking national digital transformation strategies, fully integrated into national development plans and budgets by 2025 and following pioneering global practices and international standards while remaining tailored to country-specific contexts.

Increase the resilience and inclusion of public institutions and people in SIDS.

  • Bolster early warning systems and disaster preparedness programmes in all SIDS by 2030, employing cutting-edge technologies and techniques, thereby reducing future risks of disasters across SIDS in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
  • Digitize public data to enhance resilience and avoid loss of public information caused by weather-related disasters. Digitization will make domestic resource mobilization more efficient and effective and ensure that sustainable development priorities are integrated into the public investment portfolio. This will strengthen the performance of public finance and attract investments. Enhanced monitoring and evaluation efforts through digitization will also, for example, contribute to efforts to mobilize bilateral resources.
  • Improve the financial and social inclusion of all people in SIDS, across the digital divide, overcoming barriers related to gender, geographical location, income level and other social determinants, including through digital identification systems and innovative finance.
  • Establish enabling legal, policy and regulatory frameworks for the adoption and scale-up of digital technologies for strengthened social protection schemes and the achievement of universal health coverage.
  • Build the capacity of at least 10 SIDS to use satellite and meteorological data to better forecast and manage arboviral outbreaks, principally dengue fever.

Enhance digital ecosystems and strengthen digital capacity in SIDS.

  • Build local expertise in the tech sector by expanding local entrepreneurship, decent jobs for youth, financial technologies, and other means.
  • Improve digital literacy, bridging digital divides, including gender disparities.
  • Establish a new UNDP Accelerator Lab for SIDS.

Acceleration: How will we do it?

UNDP’s support to digital transformation in the SIDS is being realized through a range of technical, advisory and knowledge building measures.

National digital strategy

  • Provide policy advisory support for digital strategy and regulatory frameworks, ensuring flexible and innovative policy and regulatory approaches that incentivize digital transformation.
  • Advise/provide technical assistance for digitizing public services and processes, including facilitating secure and reliable ICT infrastructure, building affordable access to and delivery of high-volume public services, utilizing data to inform decision-making, and, ultimately, enhancing efficiency and agility and reducing costs.

Resilience and inclusion

  • Promote the use of UNDP’s Household and Building Damage Assessment Toolkit, and build on the experience of the Global Center for Disaster Statistics for faster and better recovery from crisis by improving monitoring, policymaking and disaster preparedness.
  • Provide technical support for using new technologies, including satellite imagery, to strengthen early warning and disaster relief systems, and bolster systems, capacities and processes for the continual assessment of structural vulnerabilities.
  • Leverage the UN Biodiversity Lab in working closely with national governments to provide every country with the best available spatial data to make informed conservation decisions.
  • Utilize the existing UNDP digital roster of deployable experts (topical and regional) for crisis situations to ensure fast, effective expert deployment in disaster responses.
  • Support the development of regulatory and institutional frameworks for digitizing public data and services, and adopt digital solutions to improve financial and social inclusion, including digital remittance services and digital identification systems.
  • Support the development of regulatory and institutional frameworks conducive to adopting digital services, including digital health technologies.

Ecosystem and capacity building

  • Encourage the growth of local entrepreneurship, decent jobs for youth and financial technology by building regulatory and institutional environments, and attracting private sector investment.
  • Build knowledge, advocacy and awareness of the benefits of new technologies. This includes increasing digital literacy and building local expertise on digital technologies to prepare SIDS for the future of work.
  • Establish a new Accelerator Lab for SIDS focused solely on the digital, which would scout solutions fit for SIDS, and be scaled up quickly to other countries through the Lab’s network.2
  • Promote and support youth-led innovative solutions to implement the SDGs and sustain peace, building on UNDP’s large global youth portfolio (e.g., Youth Global Programme, Youth Co:Lab in Asia-Pacific and Youth Connekt in Africa) and existing interagency youth partnerships (Decent Jobs for Youth, led by the International Labour Organization, and Generation Unlimited led by the United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF).

Mobilization

For UNDP, delivering its scaled-up SIDS offer means enhancing the organization’s human capital and footprint in SIDS, building on a range of existing initiatives such as the network of Accelerator Labs and the organization’s first-ever Digital Strategy (20182021). Delivery will also require drawing on all UNDP assets, including the United Nations Volunteers (UNV), the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office and the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. Stronger interagency linkages will be essential to provide comprehensive and responsive support.

Finance

Access to finance through innovative and traditional sources is a key enabler for many SIDS. UNDP supports SIDS in accessing finance in four areas:

  1. Innovative finance, including blended finance approaches and risk-mitigating solutions like insurance for protection from disasters ex ante, and enhanced protection for coral reefs and other types of natural capital
  2. Financing for conservation and debt restructuring (in hand with fiscal policy advice) using blue bonds and resilience bonds3
  3. Catalysing private sector investment for infrastructure (natural and humanmade) through green bonds
  4. Leveraging domestic resource mobilization and scarce public investment to find other sources of finance for sustainable development in SIDS

In each of these areas, UNDP is enhancing its efforts, including in partnership with other organizations. It will:

  • Conduct feasibility testing, including to identify risks and assess the appropriateness of potential financial solutions, while considering the vulnerability of communities along socioeconomic and climate dimensions, and marine biological health. This could lead towards identifying legal/regulatory provisions to support work on natural capital sources, and exploring local capacity to deploy financial instruments.
  • Assess the values of environmental services provided by the blue economy to ascertain whether finance is appropriate.
  • At the community and government levels, support stakeholder engagement with information on why financial interventions are important and cost effective, such as by estimating avoided losses, in tandem with capacity building and technical assistance.
  • Work with stakeholders at the federal, municipal, and local levels to assess interest in the proposed financing mechanisms.
  • Assess financial and capacity gaps, and how to address them based on the country profile.

Vertical funds are key channels for direct support for programmes. UNDP will continue to provide technical and policy-level support, bringing decades of experience in using funding sources such as the Global Environment Facility and Green Climate Fund to implement projects related to ecosystems and biodiversity, international waters, chemicals and waste, and climate change. New projects will be designed with vertical fund resources that permit integrated approaches at scale and can crowd in public and private sector financing.

Partnerships and advocacy

Leveraging and scaling up existing partnerships as well as engaging in new partnerships is essential to realizing UNDP’s ambitions across the three pillars of its SIDS offer. UNDP works with a wide range of United Nations, NGO, civil society, youth network, bilateral and multilateral, private sector, and philanthropic partners. It enhances support to SIDS through continued advocacy on the global stage.

Partnerships for finance

UNDP has dedicated partners enabling access to innovative blue financial instruments (including blue bonds and reef insurance instruments) as well as working to support protected marine areas through incentivising conservation and de-risking investment. Alongside mobilizing additional finance for SIDS, and in support of a sound fiscal infrastructure, UNDP works to strengthen the capacities of tax revenue authorities to audit multinational enterprises. This strengthens co-operation in tax matters in the international community and contributes to the domestic resource mobilisation efforts of SIDS.

Partnerships for the climate action pillar

UNDP is currently working closely with many actors on the ground providing technical and financial assistance to SIDS. They include other United Nations agencies such as the Secretariat for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the United Nations Environment Programme, UN Women, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UNICEF and the International Renewable Energy Agency. These partnerships often entail close coordination with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Regional Collaboration Centres active in SIDS regions. The support of regional political groupings such as the Caribbean Community, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme is also critical. Other development partners comprise the international financial institutions (World Bank, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, etc.), bilateral governments with regional interests (such as Australia, China and New Zealand in the Pacific) and Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ).

Partnerships focusing on capacity building, knowledge sharing and inclusion are further enhanced through work with the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth; youth organizations, movements and networks (for instance, YOUNGO); the International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organizations; the Major Group for Children and Youth; and young people from all sectors of society. UNV assignments or fellowships (youth volunteers in particular) funded by governments, regional actors and academic institutions are a modality for inclusion while strengthening capacities for assistance.

Partnerships for the blue economy pillar

In addition to SIDS governments at multiple levels, UNDP works with a wide range of United Nations, intergovernmental, NGO, bilateral and multilateral, private sector and philanthropic partners on the blue economy pillar. These include the United Nations Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Maritime Organization, and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. They encompass the Pacific CROP agencies (Forum Fisheries Agency, Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme); several Caribbean intergovernmental organizations (Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism, Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission, Caribbean Community, Cartagena Convention, etc.); bilateral funders (including Canada, France, Norway and Sweden); multilateral organizations (Global Environment Facility, Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, World Bank, etc.); NGOs such as the International Coral Reef Initiative, The Nature Conservancy, Rare, the Ocean Sanctuary Alliance and the Cousteau Society; and philanthropic entities such as the Paul Allen Family Foundation. Existing partnerships will continue and be further nurtured, while new partnerships will be identified to strengthen UNDP’s support on the blue economy.

Partnerships for the digital economy pillar

UNDP has a long track record on digital finance, such as the decades-long successful experience of the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme, a collaboration with UNCDF to develop digital finance solutions. UNDP’s Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development, based in Singapore, has sustainable finance as one of its key priorities and could be leveraged to export successful financial technology development to assist digital transformation in SIDS. UNDP collaborates with technology companies like Microsoft and Engineers Without Borders, the European Space Agency, Copernicus and NASA on geospatial analysis, as well as academic institutions. Partnerships help develop strategic initiatives, empower local experts and build a local knowledge base across SIDS. UNDP also has access to UNV’s Online Volunteering service, which provides practical skills-based support, at no cost.

UNDP’s integrated SIDS offer Rising Up for SIDS articulates a clear strategy to respond to their most pressing needs as well as bring forth innovative solutions to the complex developmental challenges they face for a better future for people and planet. UNDP's increased investment. This offer acts as a vehicle for recovery committing to enhancing current support in areas of climate action, blue economy and digital transformation, with innovative development finance as an enabling cross-cutting area.

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Photo Credits: UNDP Timor Leste, Ecosystems and Biodiversity UNDP, Ocean Image Bank, Unsplash, Getty Images

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