Suchergebnisse

As the world embarks on implementing the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, the Arab region lags behind on the road towards sustainable development and inclusive growth. The region faces considerable challenges in generating and adopting green technologies: it faces, difficulties absorbing or diffusing such innovations, as well as facing socioeconomic, and political impediments. Governments can encourage businesses to adopt green technologies by applying economic policy instruments, providing access to financial mechanisms, supporting research and development, and improving the overall environment of doing business. If the Arab region aims to improve competitiveness, enhance environmental performance, and ensure citizens' prosperity through a more sustainable future, it needs to adopt and implement economic policy instruments and mechanisms providing a stable and long-term regulatory framework that allows for sound business decisions and attracts investors. This report makes the case for economic policies as an important tool to promote green technology and achieve sustainable development goals. It provides an overview of economic policy options, draws on examples from the Arab region and beyond.

The publication presents and applies the Arab Regional Food Security Monitoring Framework developed by the Economic and Social Commission of Western Asia (ESCWA). The Framework aims to help countries effectively assess their food security situation. It was developed in collaboration and partnership with Arab countries, the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and experts with support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). It accounts for the complexity and multidimensionality of food security along its multi-pronged definition and allows the monitoring of selected targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. The framework tracks food security through three outcome indicators grouped under a core pillar and 21 causal indicators distributed along the four food security dimensions of availability, access, utilisation and stability. The publication outlines the Framework's development process and rationale for selecting the indicators and introduces an innovative way to show results in the form of a dashboard composed of a double doughnut chart visualising performance and a table summarising key statistics and trends. It also presents the key results of tracking food security at the Arab regional level and the trend over the considered years. It shows that the region records poor performance for all three of the outcome indicators of undernourishment, food insecurity experience and obesity while also presenting the performance and trends for the remaining 21 other indicators. It identifies yields, food import dependency, logistics, food price volatility and low political stability as hotspots needing urgent action, among others. It also reveals declining trends in the prevalence of undernourishment and obesity as well as dietary energy supply, use of water in agriculture and unemployment, to name a few. The publication includes an indicator-by-indicator analysis and outlines selected recommendations.

In September 2015, Governments worldwide adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including 17 wide-ranging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Arab Sustainable Development Report attempts to answer the following questions: Where does the Arab region stand with respect to those global goals? What have been the trends over the past two decades? How can the region successfully implement the Agenda? Using the SDGs as a thematic reference, the report examines progress on securing human dignity and well-being in the Arab countries and what is needed to achieve sustainable development in this region in turmoil. It also looks at the complex factors shaping the region: the occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands; ongoing conflicts; governance, human rights and institutional deficits; and shortcomings in terms of financing, science and technology, trade and statistical capacity. The report stresses that urgent action is needed at the national and regional levels, and that integrated, long-term and evidence-based planning and investments that address the root causes of instability in the region are indispensable for achieving the SDGs.

Tourism Governance takes a systematic approach to reveal the varying internal and external dynamics that influence tourism policy and strategy across countries. With particular attention to the role of stakeholders and governmental scales, the book offers a broad geographic representation, highlighting the diversity of governance relationships towards tourism in Colombia, Egypt, Finland, France, India, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and United States. Two additional chapters push beyond borders to examine tourism driven nongovernmental organizations and international tourism governance. As the first and only comprehensive comparative analysis of tourism across governmental systems, Tourism Governance promises to be a platform for inspiring critical discourse on the forces that shape this global industry