Strategy

Poverty reduction is a priority area for UNESCAP, together with managing globalization and addressing emerging social issues.
The UNESCAP Poverty Reduction Section’s role is to contribute to the reduction of poverty in the region through:

• Identification, documentation and dissemination of innovative practices
• Pilot testing and analysis of innovative practices to develop replicable models
• Capacity-building of member countries to adapt, replicate and up-scale the practices

Information on UNESCAP’s good practice methodology

Understanding poverty

In implementing its activities, the section recognises that:

• Poverty reduction efforts must take into account the specific needs, priorities and conditions of the poor, and must enable them to articulate and act on their needs and priorities.
• To remain effective, efforts need to be adjusted constantly to new conditions and opportunities, including the spread of the market-based economy, globalization, democratisation and decentralisation, and improvements in communication and transport.
• Most poor live in rural areas and rural poverty reduction must be given the highest priority. However, many countries experience high rates of urbanization and within the next two to three decades the majority of the region’s population will live in urban areas. Unless governments also adopt policies that tackle urban poverty, this trend will lead to an urbanization of poverty.
• As the poor are increasingly mobile across any rural-urban divide, poverty reduction requires understanding of rural-urban linkages and its potential to reduce poverty in both rural and urban areas.
• The role of external agents in the public sector and civil society is to create the conditions for the poor to escape poverty. External organisations can ensure access for the poor to essential infrastructure ad services; they can promote and support participation by the poor in decision-making that affects their lives and livelihoods; and they can create a policy and legislative environment that is supportive to the needs of the poor.
• Creating supportive conditions for poverty reduction required concerted efforts by public and private organisations so that each organization does what it can do best. Local governments and their civil society partners in both rural and urban areas are key actors in efforts to reduce poverty because of their critical position in poor communities, and concern with multiple aspects of poverty (such as access to land, housing, markets, infrastructure and services). They are therefore the primary target groups for capacity building in poverty reduction by the section.

Identification and documentation

Through regional networks and forums, the section identifies good and innovative practices in poverty. The section documents such practices using specific documentation guidelines. Practices documented this way include public-private partnerships for the provision of basic services to the poor (through the Pro-Poor Public-Private Partnership Project) and local level development strategies that utilize links between rural and urban areas as a basis for poverty reduction (through the Rural-Urban Linkages Project).

Pilot-testing and analysis

The section pilot tests selected practices through demonstration projects to determine core principles, adaptations to local conditions and understanding of the enabling environment required for a practice to flourish.

Expected outcomes of current pilot testing include policy frameworks that provide and enabling environment for community-based safety nets for the most vulnerable (in the Human Dignity Initiative) and approaches to rural community development that improve the income and living conditions of the rural poor (in the Saemaul Undong project).

Projects implemented by the section serve to demonstrate innovative approaches in poverty reduction for replication and upscaling. Most projects will have a dissemination component so that countries can draw lessons from these experiences. In order to reach as many stakeholders as possible, the section has established regional networks and resource facilities such as CityNet (network of local governments), LOGOTRI (network of local government training and research institutes) and OFGF.Net (organic food) to facilitate wide dissemination and replication. Cascading networks such as the Internet-based Regional Information Resource Facility on “Women and Local Government” hosted by the University of the Philippines, are also supported and encouraged.

Lessons drawn from pilot testing are also used for comparative research, including the identification of criteria for micro-initiatives to flourish and have an impact at a larger scale, including closer linkages to achieve the national level MDGs.

Capacity-building

A key component of the section’s activities is the strengthening of the capacity of countries to design and implement more effective approaches on poverty reduction.

Capacity-building is provided though three main modalities: (1) demonstration projects (as mentioned above), (2) regional resource facilities; and (3) advisory support.

Regional resource facilities include databases of good and innovative practices and internet-based tools for distance learning.

Ongoing advisory activities include assistance to the Government of Cambodia in the formulation of a urban housing policy and building the capacity of local government training institutes to undertake training of elected women in local government and women aspiring to run for government.

Advocacy and dialogue

While much of the section’s work is geared towards building the capacity and partnering with local government, it also plays an advocacy role, signaling new regional trends and advocating new ideas. Frequently, this role is closely inter-linked to that of sharing and disseminating good and innovative practices.
One way the section advocates issues and share innovative practices are through regional workshops that bring together “initiators” and “potential replicators”. For example, in response to a request by the Government of Pakistan to assist urban local governments in improving their solid waste collection, UNESCAP organized a workshop at Lahore in December 2002 for local government officials. It brought to Lahore three “initiators” of innovative practices: from the municipality of Phitsanulok (Thailand), Waste Concern, (an NGO in Dhaka, Bangladesh) and from SEVANATHA, an NGO in Sri Lanka. The interaction between the initiators and the potential replicators resulted in many new ideas for solid waste management in Pakistan.

Recent and ongoing issues which the section has advocated attention to include the vital role of women in local government, the benefits of organic food production, and mechanisms to implement housing rights in practice.

A critical mechanism for UNESCAP to gauge the “pulse” of the region, and identify critical issues, is the Asia-Pacific Urban Forums, which UNESCAP has convened in 1993, 1996 and 2000. The function of these forums is to identify and discuss emerging critical issues, and innovative practices and approaches to address these issues and regional technical cooperation mechanisms and modalities needed by country-level stakeholders to address these issues. The forums utilize UNESCAP’s role as the only multidisciplinary regional United Nations organization capable of convening multi-stakeholder policy dialogues and setting regional agendas, and have been important in identifying priority areas of work in the urban sector and mobilizing and coordinating the inputs of development agencies within and outside the United Nations system. A fourth Asia-Pacific Urban Forum is being planned for 2005.

Relevant links:

SCPR Rep Report of the Subcommittee on Poverty Reduction Practices (2004)

SCPRP_1E Creating and enabling environment for successful poverty reduction initiatives (2004)

SCPRP_2E Implementing ESCAP’s poverty reduction strategies (2004)

CPR Rep Report on the Committee on Poverty Reduction (2003)

E/ESCAP/CPR/3 ESCAP strategies in poverty reduction: transfer of good and innovative practices (2003)

UNESCAP’s technical cooperation strategy (2003)