The UN Development Programme (UNDP) held a two-day conference in Bangkok, Thailand, on innovative approaches to reducing poverty and inequalities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Haoliang Xu, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director for Asia-Pacific, said the conference aimed to accelerate the development of a sustainable future, and prepare for implementation of the post-2015 agenda through promoting innovative sources of financing and new types of partnerships.
31 October 2014: The UN Development Programme (UNDP) held a two-day conference in Bangkok, Thailand, on innovative approaches to reducing poverty and inequalities in the Asia-Pacific region. Haoliang Xu, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director for Asia-Pacific, said the conference aimed to accelerate the development of a sustainable future, and prepare for implementation of the post-2015 agenda through promoting innovative sources of financing and new types of partnerships.
The Asia-Pacific Regional Innovation Summit reviewed 15 pilot projects supported by UNDP’s Innovation Fund in 13 Asia-Pacific countries, including, for example, the use of: games and social media to challenge gender stereotypes in Nepal; crowd-funding to support biodiversity conservation in Malaysia; and mobile technology to monitor corruption in Papua New Guinea. On the second day of the conference, participants rated the projects presented and developed plans for scaling them up, as a basis for an overall strategy. Speakers discussed operationalizing innovation at the institutional level, and participants’ roles as “intrapreneurs.”
Around 30 participants from development agencies in 30 countries attended the conference. Speakers included representatives of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Prime Minister’s Office of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Office of Senator Aquino in the Philippines, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
The UNDP Asia-Pacific Innovation Fund was established through the support of the Government of Denmark. The Innovation Fund provides seed funding to UNDP country offices to introduce and experiment with new approaches, which have included: launching a recycling app for collecting and analyzing data on e-waste in China; linking parliamentarians and citizens through video conferencing technology in Bhutan; and mapping citizens’ concerns through web platform in the Maldives. [UNDP Press Release] [UNDP Asia-Pacific Innovation Fund Webpage] [Conference Tweets]