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By Charumini de Silva
In a historic move, Sri Lanka’s public sector, think-tanks, corporate and industry bodies will combine to integrate national policies to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while incorporating innovation to foster development.
The Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) yesterday signed the areas of cooperation for the first national summit on ‘Foresight and Innovation for Sustainable Human Development 2016’ at the UN Compound in Colombo.
The 2030 Agenda is based on 17 SDGs and 169 targets, with special focus on six selected SDGs which are fundamentally targeted to improve the living standards of the people in Sri Lanka through a more holistic development approach.
Noting that there are financial and human capacity constrains Sri Lanka might have to look into and address to ensure the realisation of 17 SDGs by 2030, National Policies and Economic Affairs State Minister Niroshan Perera said Sri Lanka had a favourable and stable political leadership to frame a sustainable national development strategy for the country.
“We need to review our existing policies, planning methodologies and set the national targets in line with both the SDGs and national development priorities to ensure more holistic and sustainable development for the country. In that backdrop, it is believed that foresight and innovation will be used as effective tools to formulate a more robust and strategic national development framework for the country,” he added.
National Policies and Economic Affairs State Minister Niroshan Perera (left) and UNDP Sri Lanka Country Director Joern Soerensen exchanging the partnership agreement – Pic by Upul Abayasekera
The Minister highlighted that the National Summit would be a good starting point for Sri Lanka in the internalisation of the Agenda 2030 and would shed light on policy formulation process to achieve the political and economic change expected by the people of this country.
Nevertheless, he noted that this internalization process would not be very pleasing for many developing economies due to their internal and external constraints like limited economic and financial capacities, weak institutional structure, ambiguities in political and institutional directions in devising an implementation mechanism for the 2030 Agenda and much more.
Stating that the UN’s new development agenda which was adopted by the member states in August 2015 would be the leading global development scenario for the next 15-year period, Perera added that the implementation of 2030 Agenda was a challenge due to its complexity and indivisibility. Therefore, the member states are urged to take necessary initial steps immediately to internalise the SDGs to their national development frameworks.
He assured that under the new political set-up, a holistic and balanced development approach was expected for the country rather than the development of specific sectors like infrastructure development.
“We want to partner the private sector when developing our national policies, it is important that we engage them in economic expansion — for them to actually plan the economic development process and to get their strength as the growth engine of Sri Lanka,” Perera added.
The Minister pointed out that as a country looking forward to develop rapidly, it was important to have a good relationship between the public sector and private sector. “There would be certain issues in coordination, but we can work together and there are many programs in which we have worked together.”
UNDP Sri Lanka Country Director Joern Soerensen said: “The most crucial aspect in development is planning. Planning for the future is certainly a tiresome task. Especially at a time where countries are increasingly connected to each other, the impact of global trends is felt far sooner than ever before. However, the UNDP is proud to contribute in supporting the Government of Sri Lanka in the journey of achieving sustainable human development.”
He said foresight and innovation were the perfect combination of tools that complemented each other and would enable the achievement of sustainable human development. The launch of the SDGs in September 2015 reiterates the need for futuristic thinking, he said, pointing out that it highlights just how much more we need to do in order to achieve that future by 2030.
“One challenges us to go beyond simply dealing with the present and the immediate future, while the other challenges us to move away from the business-as-usual ethic. The speciality of this summit is that we bring together all actors responsible for the development of a nation to think in a futuristic manner and envision Sri Lanka in the year 2030 and plan accordingly,” he explained.
He said this exercise was made particularly unique in terms of the various partners they had engaged. “We are glad to have partnered with the Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs in jointly hosting this exercise.”
Soerensen invited public officials, development practitioners, corporates and civil societies to be a part of this process and to follow closely the developments that will arise from this summit, which is truly unique and has the potential to be a globally accepted model, “as we, the UNDP, together with our partners embark on this collective journey to envision the year 2030 for Sri Lanka”.
The summit, the first of its kind to be held in the country, is expected to start a national dialogue on the importance of foresight and innovation as a value addition to traditional development planning to achieve sustainable human development and the 2030 development agenda. The two-day summit will take place on 24 and 25 May at Waters Edge, Colombo.
In addition to the Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs and the UNDP; Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation (COSTI)of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Research, the United Nations Global Compact Network of Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya and LIRNEasia will also be partnering this Summit in various capacities.
