ECLAC Highlights Planning as an Essential Tool for Implementing the 2030 Agenda in the Region

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) stressed the role of planning as an essential tool for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, whose regional dimension will be at the core of the strategic document that the organization will present next week in Mexico during its thirty-sixth session.

Antonio Prado, ECLAC’s Deputy Executive Secretary, made this statement upon inaugurating the international seminar The Sustainable Development Goals and Building Futures for Latin America and the Caribbean along with the Korean Republic’s Ambassador to Chile, Ji-Eun Yu, on May 18 at the organization’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile. The Asian country, which has been a Member State of ECLAC since 2007, provides support for this event.

The seminar is being attended by Olga Sánchez, Costa Rica’s Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy, and Juan Temístocles Montás, the Dominican Republic’s Minister of Economy, Planning and Development, who will also participate next week in ECLAC’s session in Mexico City. Other participants in this gathering include authorities from the region’s governments and representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Chile.

“A long-term perspective tends to be lacking in governments’ policies and strategies. Today we are facing a favorable context to resume the role of planning thanks to the 2030 Agenda, which targets medium- and long-term goals with a focus on the comprehensiveness of development and offers an opportunity to link each nation’s development priorities with those stemming from the global agenda,” Antonio Prado said.

After the event’s opening segment, the Deputy Executive Secretary made a presentation on the Challenges of Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, in which he gave a preview of some of the messages that ECLAC will present on May 23-27 in Mexico, condensed in its new position document Horizons 2030: Equality at the Centre of Sustainable Development.

The building futures seminar is part of a series of actions aimed at strengthening planning as a means to implement the 2030 Agenda. To support this process—and by mandate of the countries grouped in the Regional Planning Council, a subsidiary body of ECLAC—the Commission has set among its priorities supporting the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in national development plans and budgets.

With that objective, ECLAC is focused on four priority actions: to support the creation of inter-institutional and inter-sectoral national architectures for the exchange of good practices; boost the incorporation of the SDGs in planning systems; strengthen the capacities of both public officials and other actors through courses and technical assistance work; and develop a regional observatory on planning for sustainable development.

This program of activities will be presented during the thirty-sixth session, which will be inaugurated on Tuesday, May 24 by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, and will bring together more than 30 ministers from the region, as well as researchers and scholars, officials from at least 23 intergovernmental bodies (specialized ones and from the United Nations system), and more than 130 representatives of nearly 60 civil society organizations.

The seminar on building futures is organized by ECLAC through its Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES). It includes four work sessions on the mornings of Wednesday, May 18 and Thursday, May 19, that are devoted to analyzing the scenarios and paths towards the SDGs, capacity building in territorial and development foresight thought, and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in the region.

In addition, the Third Planning for Development sessions are being held in the afternoon. Thirty eight papers, selected from 150 submissions, are being presented, most of them related to medium- and long-term institutional processes that have had or could have a practical application for public policy actions related to development. The previous sessions took place in 2013 and 2014.

Follow the seminar via webstreaming at this link: ://bit.ly/1TotjJ6

To obtain information on ECLAC’s thirty-sixth session:

·        Thirty-sixth session.

·        Video. Alicia Bárcena invites you to follow ECLAC’s session.

·        How to follow ECLAC’s session.

You can follow all the details of the thirty-sixth session on social media with the hashtags #Horizontes2030 and #Horizons2030.

For press-related inquiries, contact:

In Mexico City: María Luisa Díaz de León, Public Information Official, ECLAC’s Subregional Headquarters in Mexico. E-mail: marialuisa.diaz@cepal.org; Telephone: (52 55) 41705665.

In Santiago, Chile: Félix Ibáñez, Officer-in-Charge of ECLAC’s Public Information Unit. E-mail: prensa@cepal.org; Telephone: (56) 22210 2040.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Google+.