November 2005: A series of regional and inter-regional meetings of small island developing States (SIDS) has taken place to follow-up on the implementation of the Mauritius Strategy for Implementation adopted in January 2005. The meetings, which took place during October and November 2005, were convened by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). Meetings were held in the Caribbean region (St. Kitts and Nevis, 5-7 October), the Pacific region (Samoa, 17-19 October), and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and South China Sea (AIMS) region (Seychelles, 26-28 October). An Inter-regional meeting also took place, in Rome (15-16 November). Participants at each meeting included representatives from government, and intergovernmental, non-governmental and regional organizations. Each meeting considered challenges and opportunities facing the region and developed recommendations.
Discussions in the Caribbean Regional Meeting included calls for: recognizing training and capacity building needs at all levels and the challenges of limited human resource capacity in specialized fields such as GIS, building management and environmental impact assessment; placing emphasis on training people who are actual practitioners; the establishment of commonly-agreed sustainable development indicators to be used by the regional mechanism for implementation for reporting and monitoring purposes.
In regard to linkages and synergies relevant to the themes to be discussed by the 14th and 15th sessions of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 14/15), climate change, energy, atmosphere and industrial development sectors, participants at the Pacific Regional Meeting highlighted that, if “SIDS themselves show how biofuel can be a substitute to fossil fuel, this promotes to the international community options they can take to decrease the use of fossil fuels contributing to Climate Change.”
Representatives at the AIMS Regional Meeting suggested reviewing how the specialized UN agencies contribute to sustainable development in AIMS and how channels of communication between AIMS and the UN system can be improved. [Caribbean Regional Meeting] [Pacific Regional Meeting] [AIMS Regional Meeting] [Inter-Regional Meeting]