The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has selected champions from each of the three regions of small island developing States (SIDS) to lead and guide a strategy for 2014 as the International Year of SIDS, according to the April 2014 issue of 'Small Island Matters,' the newsletter of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' (DESA) SIDS Unit.
April 2014: The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has selected champions from each of the three regions of small island developing States (SIDS) to lead and guide a strategy for 2014 as the International Year of SIDS, according to the April 2014 issue of ‘Small Island Matters,’ the newsletter of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ (DESA) SIDS Unit.
The three champions are: Joseph Goddard, Barbados, representing the Caribbean; Ronald Jumeau, Seychelles, representing Africa, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and South China Sea (AIMS); and Jane Chigiyal, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), representing the Pacific region.
Several SIDS-related events are taking place during the International Year, culminating in the Third International Conference on SIDS, which will take place in Apia, Samoa, from 1-4 September 2014. Negotiations on the Conference outcome document began in New York, US, on 21-25 April 2014.
The newsletter also highlights the Third Biennial Conference on Small States, convened by the Commonwealth Secretariat in Saint Lucia, on 26-27 March 2014, on the theme ‘Building Resilience in Small States.’ The conference discussed: economic aspects of resilience; debt and resilience in small States; governance aspects of resilience building; environmental management in the context of resilience building; and social cohesion.
Prior to this conference, an Expert Group Meeting on ‘Implementing Rio+20: Integrated Planning for Sustainable Coastal Area Management in the Caribbean Region,’ organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), took place from 17-18 March 2014, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The newsletter notes that the Meeting aimed to facilitate inter-regional information exchange and peer learning on integrated planning and sustainable management of coastal areas, and the final recommendations of the meeting will be made available on the UN sustainable development knowledge platform. [Small Island Matters, April 2014] [Third Biennial Conference on Small States Website] [Expert Group Meeting Agenda] [Website of the Third International Conference on SIDS] [UN Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform]