UNRC colleagues, Country Teams, and Friends,
I am pleased to welcome you to the United Nations Introductory Training on Sustainable Financing Instruments for an Inclusive Recovery.
ESCAP is proud to be leading this course along with our colleagues from UN-Women.
Within the UN system, we have seen first-hand the devastating effect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our member States.
The pandemic has also reduced countries’ fiscal space considerably because of tax revenue losses and extraordinary health and social expenditures.
This makes the achievement of the SDGs even more challenging in Asia and the Pacific – especially considering that before the pandemic the region was NOT on track to achieve any of the 17 Goals of SDGs by 2030.
As a result, there is a considerable financing gap, and we need to work with our member States to identify and implement solutions to bridge it.
Thematic bonds such as green, social, SDG and sustainability bonds are possible solutions that they can leverage.
These instruments have become increasingly mainstream, and more of our member States are requesting support and guidance on their issuance, impact measurement and supporting policies.
It is important that we, as a UN family, pool and coordinate our research and training resources to effectively meet these demands. We hope that this introductory training course will provide a useful contribution for that purpose.
I would like to thank UN-Women and UNEP for their leadership role in overseeing the UNSDG Task Team on SDG financing, and DCO for its organizational support throughout this process.
We hope that you find the training content useful to assist your ongoing efforts in supporting our member States.
Thank you very much.
