24 March 2010
Conference on the “Turning Point on Poverty” Held
story highlights

11 March 2010: The Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK Government hosted a conference titled “Agenda 2010: the Turning Point on Poverty.” The event took place on 11 March 2010, in London, UK, and gathered around 80 technical experts from UN agencies and academic institutions, key ministers and policy makers from developing countries.

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11 March 2010: The Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK Government hosted a conference titled “Agenda 2010: the Turning Point on Poverty.” The event took place on 11 March 2010, in London, UK, and gathered around 80 technical experts from UN agencies and academic institutions, key ministers and policy makers from developing countries.

The meeting was opened by Douglas Alexander, UK Secretary of State for International Development, Helen Clark, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator, and Joyce Banda, Vice President of Malawi. Participants focused on some of the most off-track Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including hunger and nutrition, education and health. The conference addressed the conditions needed to enable the MDGs to be met, including: achieving economic growth; tackling the fragility of States and climate change; and empowering women.
Participants highlighted that climate change magnifies existing stresses and threatens to push a greater number of people into poverty. The meeting produced a Chair’s Summary, which recognizes the unavoidable impact of climate change and stresses the need to limit the rise in temperature to two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels and embark on a low-carbon growth path.
Participants also call on leaders at the MDG Review Summit to be held in September 2010, in New York, US, to agree on the need for: public climate finance that is new, additional and complementary to ODA; new and innovative ways of raising climate finance; policies and incentives to leverage private sector investments; mainstreaming climate change impacts into national development plans; prioritizing the needs of the poorest and the most vulnerable in adaptation finance; and integrating environmental sustainablility into country programmes and policies to tackle the challenges of climate change, in particular through improved management of water, land and forests. [Conference Website] [Chair’s Summary Document]

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