Keeping up with the United Nations – Renaud Meyer

With our integrator role, UNDP is well positioned to convene and strengthen the collaboration between the UN as a whole and government partners, private sector, and civil society to accelerate the country’s structural transformation for sustainable development.

This applies both at national and subnational levels, allowing a convergence of top-down and bottom-up approaches, key to maximize impact. The priorities of the Thai Government on fostering green growth, strengthening climate action, fighting inequalities and localizing the SDGs at subnational level are clearly well aligned to the directions of the UNSDCF.

Progress will be further advanced as commitments translate into action. And action will be even more impactful as people are empowered and involved in decision-making, as recalibrating growth towards an environmental-sustained path needs to translate to a more equitable sharing of prosperity.

There cannot be any trade-offs between improving economic prosperity and ensuring nature conservation.

The role of PAGE is crucial in providing integrated support on advancing both short-term green recovery and long-term sustainable and inclusive development pathways via synergizing expertise of various agencies.

UNDP worked with UNIDO and the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) in evaluating subnational projects under the government’s economic rehabilitation programme in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This work provided lessons for future policy formulation on strengthening the alignment between short-term economic revitalization and sustainable development progress acceleration.

Currently, UNDP is working with Thammasat University on conducting a study on developing and scaling Thailand’s carbon markets to improve the mechanisms that support achieving carbon neutrality and net zero goals that the country is committed to.

To accelerate Thailand’s transformation into an inclusive economy based on green, resilient, low-carbon, sustainable development, UNDP’s programmes are guided by these 6 principles: (a) localizing the green transformation as part of the SDGs; (b) developing solutions with multiplier effects across the 2030 agenda; (c) promoting a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach; (d) prioritizing leave no one behind; (e) enhancing gender equality and (f) supporting risk-informed development.

Given that PAGE is operational in 20 countries globally with the collective strength of the specialized expertise of the five UN agencies, partnership with PAGE will be instrumental in promoting south-south cooperation and peer learning, particularly among policymakers, on translating green aspiration into impactful actions.