The Poverty and Development Division (PDD) of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) is launching its economic review, Key Economic Developments and Prospects in the Asia-Pacific Region 2008 on 9 January at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT). The report’s release comes as the region faces new and complex challenges in the year ahead. The report will analyze how well the Asia-Pacific economies manage the continued uncertainty in the international financial markets, the potential for further spill-over from the US sub-prime markets into Asia’s financial and banking sectors, and the possibility of inflation due to the global rise in energy and food prices. At the launch ESCAP experts Ravi Ratnayake, Shamika Sirimanne and Shuvojit Banerjee will present the report's findings. In addition, the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2008 which outlines UN forecasts of short-term global economic, trade and financial trends and some key global economic policy and development issues will be launched at the same time.

A Regional Forum on Bioenergy Sector Development: Challenges, Opportunities and the Way Forward will be held in Bangkok, Thailand from 23 to 25 January 2008. The meeting is being organized by the United Nations Asian Pacific Centre for Agricultural Engineering and Machinery (UN-APCAEM)— which is part of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)— along with the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of Thailand. The objective of the Forum is to address a wide range of issues in bioenergy development, including policy, strategies and institutional frameworks. Participants will also examine financing bioenergy through the clean development mechanism, environmental sustainability, food security and review current bioenergy processing/conversion technologies. The will also examine next generation technologies and explore possibilities for developing this new energy source while ensuring a balance between its potential benefits and risks; and formulate viable policy, strategies and frameworks, and the way forward for the bioenergy sector development. Development of the bioenergy sector could help to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The Trade and Investment Division (TID) of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in cooperation with the other UN regional commissions and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), is organizing an event on Aid for Trade and Development: global and regional perspectives. Aid for Trade (AfT) is a means of helping countries implement multilateral trade agreements and develop their supply-side capacities to benefit from market access gains resulting from those agreements. The event, which is being organized under the auspices of the Working Group on Trade of the UN Executive Committee on Economic and Social Affairs, will be held at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) in Bangkok, on 24 and 25 January. The event will take place during the run-up to the UNCTAD XII global conference which will be held in Accra, Ghana in April. At the Bangkok meeting, the major UN agencies active in development cooperation and providers of trade-related technical assistance and capacity-building will discuss ways to sustain the momentum of moves to implement the AfT initiative and the supporting role to be played by the UN system.