UN Environment Highlights Sustainable Waste Management, Green Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Consumption and Production at European Development Days in Brussels
Discussion details
UN Environment was again actively involved in the European Development Days (EDD), which took place on 7-8 June 2017 in Brussels. For UN Environment and other UN agencies, this forum attended by 8000 people this year, offers amongst others a strategic platform to showcase some of our successful projects implemented with EU support and provides the opportunity to explore possible new collaborations and projects.
This year, UN Environment was represented in a Lab session on financing waste management (7 June), in a workshop on sustainable consumption and production in the garment industry (8 June) , and in a lab session on green entrepreneurship (7 June), as well as in an enormous UN stand at the center of the village.
Hereby a brief impression:
On 7 June, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (of which the Secretariat is hosted by UN Environment) and the European Investment Bank co-hosted a Lab Debate Session on ‘Financing City Waste Management for urban economic development and climate mitigations - Moving city waste management plans to full implementation’. On this topic, Alice Kaudia, Vice-Chair of the Coalition, presented the case for Kenya and indicated that waste management is a priority for the Kenyan presidency of the Coalition; while Dan McDougall also from CCAC focused mainly on the organization’s work highlighting the need for the active involvement of stakeholders alongside an investment scale financing.
Also on 7 June, UN Environment participated in a Lab Debate Session on ‘Business switch to green with innovative support services’. The session was organized by the Switch2Green, SwitchAfricaGreen, SwitchAsia, SwitchMed, Regional Activity Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production, UN Environment and UNIDO. Amongst the speakers were Green Entrepreneurs, also referred to as Switchers, who shared their best practices as well as current challenges in the context of the inclusive green economy transition.
On 8 June, Ms Sandra Averous from UN Environment Resources and Markets Branch participated in a Brainstorming Session on ‘Sustainable Clothing’ organized by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and TuvRheinland. Ms Averous stressed the need to take into account the environmental, social and economic dimensions and look at the whole value chain in order to achieve sustainability in the garment industry. She also underlined the importance of a real multi-stakeholder approach whereby Small and Medium Enterprises and international companies can exchange and learn from best practices.
In addition, UN Environment was one of the 25 agencies represented in a joint UN info-booth in the center of the Global Village where we explained to several high profile visitors, including Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina Mohammed or the Queen Mathilde of Belgium, the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda and how the UN is contributing to its realization.
For UN Environment, this included an SDG Studio – Live interview, with Switch Med green entrepreneur Nour Kay from Lebanon, a 360 degrees virtual reality video on pollution Clean up in Serbia, and other short films relating to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, the SWITCH programmes, the UN Environment Assembly (Pollution Summit) and the #CleanSeas campaign. Our UN Stand featured several times in DEVCO’s #EDD17 highlights and one of the @UNinBrussels tweets made it into Euractiv’s tweets of the week.
The UN team was honored with the visit of SDG Advocate H.M. Queen Mathilde of Belgium, who took some time to discuss with our staff, interns and SDG supporters.
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