The Fifth Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Forum discusses 2030 Agenda achievements and challenges

28-30 March 2018 – Bangkok, Thailand – Member states gathered at the Fifth Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) shared their progress the 2030 Agenda under the theme "Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies."

The forum focused on transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies, the opportunities and challenges in the implementation of SDGs, as well as ways to promote the means of implementation. The roundtable that took place during the conference worked to assess the outlook on the SDG implementation, establish a shared understanding of interlinkages within the SDG clusters as well as with other sustainable development goals, and develop policy recommendations on how to hasten the progress of the SDGs in Asia and the Pacific.  

On SDG 15 Life on Land, the round table provided several recommendations to make further progress on the SDGs in the region, including:

• achieving land degradation neutrality
• implementing integrated data systems that support ecosystem-based management, combining information from diverse  sources, including community, indigenous and traditional knowledge
• promoting engagement across sectors and stakeholders, in particular with local communities and indigenous groups 
• strengthening governance approaches and laws that clarify land-tenure arrangements, ensure the rights of indigenous groups, support ecosystem-based management approaches and recognize the intrinsic rights of nature
• diversifying financing and linking it to improvements in governance and management approaches
• strengthening regional cooperation, including by implementing the outcomes of the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Summit on the Environment held in 2017

The outcomes from the Fifth APFSD will provide inputs into the global discussions held at the High-Level Political Forum at UN HQs in New York in July 2018.

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