May 4, 2016
SDG Fund: Learning from the MDG Experience - Europa Newswire

United Nations, New York, USA, April 05 2016 – Paloma Duran, Director of the Sustainable Development Goals Fund at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) during Alejandro Aravena, Chilean architect and winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2016 press encounter on the link between architecture and sustainable development today at the UN Headquarters in New York.

By Britta Schmitz

UNITED NATIONS, April 28 2016 – In 2014, the UN created the Sustainable Development Goals Fund (SDG Fund). The Fund is supposed to serve as a bridge in the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were adopted by the General Assembly in September 2015.

“The SDG Fund is the first cooperation mechanism specifically designed to achieve the future SDGs,“ Paloma Duran, Director of the SDG Fund, told Europa Newswire.

The SDG Fund works on three thematic areas to eradicate poverty: Inclusive economic growth, food security and nutrition, as well as water and sanitation. All programs of the Fund across the three thematic areas embed equally important cross-cutting issues. These include sustainability, gender equality and public/private partnerships.

Currently, the SDG Fund has 21 pilot programs in 21 countries which were carefully selected by independent experts.

“We are involving more actors through matching funds, we have taken learning from the more than 130 programs to implement pilot programs that are more streamlined and utilize the expertise of other UN agencies. For example, we learned from the MDG Fund that facilitating strong participation by national and local stakeholders including civil society during the design phase is key to program effectiveness and sustainability,“ Duran said.

The SDG Fund has learned from the experience of the MDG Fund and created its own strategy, introducing matching funds as a requirement to ensure the sustainability of the programs.

“Building upon the vast experience and lessons learned of the previous MDG Achievement Fund (2007-2013), the SDG Fund intends to act as a bridge in the transition from MDGs to SDGs, providing concrete experiences on how to achieve a sustainable and inclusive world post-2015 through its integrated and multidimensional joint programs,“ Duran said.

The SDG Fund is working with more and more matching funds and uses the expertise of 14 other UN agencies. Experience from the MDG Fund has shown that working with three to four UN agencies produces the best results.

“From the MDG Fund experience, joint programs had on average six participating UN agencies and an even greater number of national counterparts which was challenging for governance and implementation, thus the new joint programs as part of the SDG Fund support a maximum of four UN agencies, with three agencies being the ideal number,“

Duran said. “We have also taken into account much of the learning from the extensive number of programmatic activities and discussions from regional workshops.“

In order to achieve the SDGs, it is important to conduct research and gather information on how countries, regions and businesses incorporate the Global Goals in their work.

Every company has the potential to make a contribution towards achieving the SDGs, for example through value chains, socially responsible investment or philanthropic contributions. Due to this vast potential, the SDG Fund tries to strengthen its ties with the private sector to achieve inclusive markets and environmental sustainability.

An ongoing dialogue between the private sector and development actors is key to achieving the SDGs. As part of this intention, the Fund has created a Private Sector Advisory Group and recently launched a new report, “Business and the United Nations“.

The Fund also appointed the Roca brothers, world-famous Spanish chefs, as the first Goodwill Ambassadors of the new 2030 agenda.

“We are extremely pleased with the direction we are going and will look forward to the learning from these joint collaborations,“ Duran said. “We are pleased to be building a library with concrete case studies and best practices that will help us integrate the new agenda into future activities.“