One year on since COVID-19 was officially recognized as a pandemic on 11 March 2020, it is clear that the road to recovery will be a long and hard one. The sheer loss of life, the number of people who have lost their jobs, missed out on education or been hit by other forms of hardship induced by the crisis, is unfathomable. Young people are among the hardest hit.
The Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) is an annual and inclusive intergovernmental forum and a regional platform for supporting countries, in particular those with special needs, in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development while serving as a regional preparatory meeting to the high-level political forum.
This international technical webinar is part of the series organized by the FAO elearning Academy, Agreenium (l'Institut agronomique, vétérinaire et forestier de France) and UN ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific). These webinars are an opportunity for all of us to share experiences and lessons learnt, discuss challenges, and propose innovative solutions and models.
This international technical webinar is part of the series organized by the FAO elearning Academy, Agreenium (l'Institut agronomique, vétérinaire et forestier de France) and UN ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific). These webinars are an opportunity for all of us to share experiences and lessons learnt, discuss challenges, and propose innovative solutions and models. They aim to provide a holistic and comprehensive view of current trends in thematic areas related to global challenges, by combining development research and innovation perspectives.
The Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), in Thailand, used space applications to combat COVID-19, in particular to enable policymakers to utilize COVID-19 related data. GISTDA used space applications to monitor the COVID-19 situation and visualize the impact of the policies employed in the country. For example, GISTDA analysed reduced night-light images to monitor the impact from lock-down measures.
The Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), launched by the Republic of Korea in February 2020, enables the hourly monitoring of air pollution levels for almost 20 countries in Asia. Specifically, countries covered by the project include Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Viet Nam (ASEAN); Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka in South Asia; and China, Japan and the Republic of Korea in North-East Asia.
The goal of this paper is to provide policy makers, urban planners, and other pandemic-related prevention and response interests with the justification to proactively integrate distributed microchip bioelectrical sensors into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)-supported built and natural environments.
Countries in Asia and the Pacific need to extend social protection coverage for all. Doing so would help them build back better after the COVID-19 pandemic. It would also help them tackle a range of compounding challenges arising from population ageing, migration, urbanization, technological advancements, disasters and climate change.
Yet, as this report finds, social protection systems in the region are riddled with gaps.
Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension. They are most frequently made of polyethylene but can be of other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and plystyrene. These plastic products also unfortunately affect marine, land-based, and human life in negative ways.
In this session of the Asia-Pacific Climate Project, two speakers will discuss more about this issue.
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), through its Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG) and its Project Office on Governance (UNPOG), and the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) with the support of the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) Malaysia are co-organizing an Online Training Workshop on “Government Innovation for Social Inclusion of Vulnerable Groups” to pilot the Training Toolkit on the same topic.