Around 40 Ministers, alongside leaders from business, academia and civil society spoke with a unified voice at the PAGE Ministerial Conference in Berlin last month. Their key message: we need to scale up our efforts, strengthen cooperation and act quickly to achieve the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals.
More than 430 participants from more than 50 countries gathered at the Second Ministerial Conference of the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE), where a high-level media debate on Sunday 26 March set the tone for two full days of policy discussion.
Co-hosted by PAGE and the German Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, the conference unpacked four major themes, namely green investment, inclusive growth, sustainable lifestyles and policy in practice.
Head of UN Environment, Erik Solheim; Executive Director of Oxfam International, Winnie Byanyima; Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Heraeus Holding, Jürgen Heraeus; Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs; and UN Goodwill Ambassador, Pavan Sukhdev and more than a dozen ministers were among the esteemed speakers.
The speakers underlined the importance of policy-making, investment, sustainable consumption and production, innovation, education and job creation as major drivers of sustainable development.
Policy tools such as the Virtual Policy Solutions Centre, supported by PAGE, Germany and Switzerland, and hosted by the Green Growth Knowledge Platform, were launched to further support countries pursuing greener economic policies. Participants were also provided with a preview of the 2017 edition of the Inclusive Wealth Report and the PAGE Annual Report for 2016 .
The conference showcased individual and combined efforts towards greener economies through the PAGE Ministerial Awards and the Green Economy Pioneers Exhibition, which was hosted by the Green Economy Coalition and the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ).
Guyana and Uruguay were announced as new PAGE countries, bringing the total number of partner countries to 13. South Africa expressed its willingness to host the next PAGE Ministerial Conference in 2018, while the United Arab Emirates announced it would host in 2020.
PAGE is a partnership of five United Nations organizations - UN Environment, the International Labour Organization, the UN Development Programme, the UN Industrial Development Organization, and the UN Institute for Training and Research - supporting countries to transform their economies and financial systems into drivers of sustainability and social equity.
For photos, videos and more highlights of the PAGE Ministerial Conference 2017, see our Flickr, YouTube and Twitter channels.
