APFSD & HLPF: Reviewing SDG progress

About Sustainability…

This time, Andre, Erin, and Simon spoke with Nobue Amanuma, a Deputy Director at the IGES Integrated Sustainability Centre. Nobue and Simon have been quite deeply involved in IGES work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We discussed the SDGs, and in particular two key upcoming meetings that review countries’ progress toward them. The Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD), happening in March 2022, is the main regional event for the Asia-Pacific region, and the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) is its global event cousin that takes place in July 2022.

We started by talking about what these meetings are and why they are convened. We spent quite a bit of time exploring the concept of “Voluntary National Reviews” (VNRs), and their “shadow report” or “spotlight report” counterparts, all of which are key features of APFSD and HLPF. We discussed IGES involvement at the meetings and asked what else happens there, besides the review of SDG progress. We talked about the importance of these meetings as forums for engagement between civil society and governments, and we ended off by speculating about whether they are as effective as they could be.

To learn more about the APFSD and HLPF, and IGES contributions to these processes in 2022, please visit:

• IGES’ APFSD 2022 Special Webpage: https://www.iges.or.jp/en/projects/apfsd2022
• IGES’ HLPF 2022 Special Webpage (coming soon)

"About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.