On 4 July, the Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development (APCICT), an ESCAP subsidiary, will begin a five-day capacity building workshop for 50 senior government officials in Bhutan. APCICT will partner with the Royal Government of Bhutan’s Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC) and the Royal Institute of Management (RIM) in organizing its Academy of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders (Academy) programme. The workshop will support the Royal Government’s Chiphen Rigpel “Empowering a Society, Enabling a Nation” project which is designed to provide ICT training to all sectors of society and move Bhutan into the Information Age.

With the continued and persistent concern over energy security, the 67th session of the Commission held in Bangkok in May 2011 adopted the resolution “Promoting regional energy cooperation and the sustainable use of energy in Asia and the Pacific”. The resolution calls for convening an Asia-Pacific Energy Forum (APEF) in 2013 at a ministerial level. As a follow up action to that resolution, an e-Forum is being organized from July 4-15. The e-Forum is intended as a regional platform for informal dialogue on energy security issues, involving in their personal capacity government representatives and stakeholders from industry, NGOs, consumer groups, academia, UN agencies, and other regional and international organizations. Its immediate purpose is to help prepare for the ministerial forum in 2013 through a number of sessions on key issues.

The e-Forum is the initial step of a three-part exercise consisting of:
a) the e-Forum from 4 to 15 July, including the intervening weekend
b) an experts group meeting from 27-29 July at Bangkok
c) an energy security scenarios study during August-September.

The Transport Division of ESCAP is organizing the Subregional Meeting on the Development of Intergovernmental Agreement on Dry Ports for South-East Asia from 7 to 8 July in Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. The meeting will be hosted by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport of Lao PDR. Representatives of South-East Asian countries will participate in the meeting to discuss a working draft of the Intergovernmental Agreement on Dry Ports for South-East Asia which will be further negotiated and considered by regional meetings in 2012. The agreement is being drafted on the recommendation of the ESCAP Committee on Transport held in November 2010.

The United Nations Asian and Pacific Centre for Agricultural Engineering and Machinery (UNAPCAEM), a subsidiary body of ESCAP working to promote sustainable agricultural and food production, will share information on innovative agro-technologies and good agricultural management practices to help combat desertification and land degradation in the trans-boundary region of China and Mongolia at the Kubuqi Desert Forum to be held in the Kubuqi desert of Inner Mongolia from 8 to 10 July. Together with the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI), UNAPCAEM is supporting government efforts to formulate and implement policies addressing land tenure and sustainability issues in the Asia-Pacific region which has the largest number of persons in the world affected by desertification.

The Transport Division of ESCAP and the Korea Maritime Institute will jointly organize a one day Subregional Workshop on Port Tariff Setting Model for Pacific Island Countries on 13 July in Bangkok. The workshop will review current systems used by Pacific ports to set port tariffs, and suggest ways to enhance their competitiveness through a tariff setting model. Representatives from Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Solomon Islands, among other Pacific Island Countries, are expected to attend.

Transport experts from ESCAP member countries and representatives from ESCAP partner organizations have been invited to an Expert Group Meeting to be held in Bangkok from 14 to 15 July to prepare for the November 2011 Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Transport which will discuss transport challenges facing the region and adopt the second phase of the Regional Action Programme for Transport Development in Asia and the Pacific, 2012 - 2016. The Expert Group Meeting will review background documents for the Ministerial Conference, covering a wide range of issues including planning and financing of transport infrastructure, transport facilitation, logistics development, and inter-island shipping.

More than 500 participants, including high-level speakers from government, academia, private sector and civil society will attend the Second Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Week to be held from 25 to 29 July at the UN Conference Centre in Bangkok, Thailand. ESCAP will partner with the World Trade Organization (WTO), Asian Development Bank (ADB), UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF), the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking of Thailand (JSCCIB), the Greater Mekong Subregion Business Forum (GMS-BF), the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights, End Human Trafficking Now and the Mekong Institute to organize the event. Having as its theme “Post-Crisis Trade and Investment Opportunities for Asia and the Pacific”, the Week features the following events:
· The Second Session of the Committee on Trade and Investment from 27 to 29 July
· The Eighth Asia-Pacific Business Forum from 25 to 26 July
· The inaugural Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Fair from 25 to 29 July
· Regional symposium titled “Towards a Return of Industrial Policy?” from 25 to 26 July to be organized by the Asia and Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT)
· A business luncheon to discuss “Ending Human Trafficking is Smart Business” on 26 July
· A WTO/ESCAP Regional Seminar on WTO and Regional Trade Agreements from 25 to 27 July
· Capacity building on Evidence-Based Policy Making in Trade and Investment
· Expert Group Meetings to discuss a potential regional agreement on electronic exchange of trade data and documents and potential establishment of an agricultural machinery testing network in the region.
The Week will also see regional launches of major publications, including the ESCAP “Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Report 2011: Post-Crisis Trade and Investment Opportunities” and the WTO “World Trade Report 2011: New Era of Preferential Trade Agreements”. For more information on the Week and its various sub-events, see:
http://www.unescap.org/tid/tiweek2011.asp.

The Centre for Alleviation of Poverty through Sustainable Agriculture (CAPSA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Indonesia, and the Brighten Institute, Bogor, Indonesia, will organize an international conference on Investing in Sustainable Agriculture for Food Security and Poverty Alleviation on 27-28 July 2011 in Bogor, Indonesia. The conference will bring together experts from Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Korea to share their experiences country contexts, regulatory frameworks and policies that facilitated or constrained agricultural investment and transformation.
The objective of the workshop is to facilitate a dialogue among policy makers, the private sector, academia and development partners to identify an investment strategy for sustainable agricultural transformation that will also enable to contribute fully to poverty alleviation and food security targets in developing countries, with a particular focus on Indonesia.