Remarks of Pauline Tamesis, UN Resident Coordinator, at the Launch of CSDG Framework

H.E. Chhay Than, Senior Minster, Ministry of Planning;  

H.E. Tuan Thavrak, Secretary of State, Ministry of Planning;

H.E. Theng Pagnathun, Delegate of the Government and Director General, Ministry of Planning

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning to you all.

I am honored to address you today on behalf the United Nations, at this event to launch the Cambodia Sustainable Development Goals.  

I must begin by expressing my congratulations and thanks to the Senior Minister personally, and to the team at the Ministry of Planning, for staying the course and finalizing the Cambodia Sustainable Development Goals Framework.  Formal publication today marks the fruition of a two-year preparation process, which has engaged line and central ministries, and civil society, delivering a framework which provides a fully adapted and comprehensive set of 18 goals, 88 targets and 148 indicators.

This is a very important step for Cambodia - translating its global commitment to the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda into national delivery efforts.  It is also encouraging that the Ministry of Planning has gone on to mainstream the goals within the National Strategic Development Plan, with the CSDGs providing around 50% of M&E framework.  Moreover, in concert with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the report includes proposals to include CSDG indicators within ministry and agency performance-based budgets.  This underlines that the goals offer real gains to the delivery of Cambodia’s national development agenda and its sectoral polices – offering a comprehensive measure of outcome progress, but crucially also, a guide the implementation of key policies and reforms.  The SDGs are an interlinked set of goals, emphasizing the need for, and enabling a holistic and systems-based approach to development.

Adoption of the CSDGs will also contribute to Cambodia’s growing international profile. The Framework developed by the Ministry of Planning is  compatible with international best practice – in its scope and level of adaption, and hence ownership, but also in making innovative proposals for roll-out and delivery.  I would urge Ministry of Planning to fully reflect this in Cambodia’s Voluntary National Review of SDG progress, which is to be presented to the High-Level Political Forum in New York in July of this year. This has the potential to both gain the recognition that Cambodia merits, but also to facilitate learning and sharing with others, particularly in addressing the challenges emerging from implementation and delivery. And this is precisely the stage where Cambodia now finds itself. I would like to once again convey my sincere appreciation to the Royal Government of Cambodia, in particular, the Ministry of Planning for the commitment and leadership in facilitating the Cambodia VNR process.

Excellency Senior Minister!  Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen!

I wanted to highlight four areas that need urgent consideration as we move to implementation.

First and foremost, further work is needed to consolidate the goals within national policymaking and strategic planning. This means more effective prioritization of the goals, resolving any outstanding M&E issues and making the CSDG Framework fully operational, and carrying through the innovative proposals to include CSDG indicators as performance measures within Budget Strategic Plans.  This necessarily requires MOP’s leadership but also coordination and cooperation across ministries.

Second, it is vital that Cambodia address the key question of resourcing and financing the CSDGs. This is especially important, given the sheer scale of ambition embedded in the goals, and the rapidly changing context – whereby development assistance is decline, and domestic revenues and private sector investment is growing rapidly.  Addressing the public financing challenges – growing tax and non-tax revenues,  developing new channels of public borrowing, and better management of the budget – are crucial. Yet it is equally important to leverage private sector flows to support CSDG achievement. This is both via joint delivery mechanisms such as Public Private Partnerships but additionally, through direct private sector provision, by incentivizing investment, and opening-up opportunities.

Third, Cambodia needs in the near term to translate the goals to the sub-national level – through effective localization of the framework and of delivery efforts.  This means cascading planning and M&E instruments to provincial and lower levels of local government, but also empowering them to address the service priorities they face.  There is therefore a need to revisit Cambodia’s decentralization and de-concentration  efforts.  And here again, the SDGs have much to offer as a practical device to help identify and tackle local challenges.

Fourth and finally, achieving the goals will require multiple contributions from government, private sector, civil society and ordinary citizens, and these contributions will take many forms, ranging from the financial and tangible, to fundamental changes in behavior and conduct. The latter is especially important for the environmental goals, where the targets focus on the greening of production consumption. As such, the SDGs are rightly the business of all actors, but this also requires Government to reach out, engage, and incentivize others - to deliver, to monitor, to finance and to modify their behaviors.    

Excellency Senior Minister!  Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen!

I close by underlining that the United Nations itself will need to work differently in order to provide the leadership required to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  For this, the UN has embarked on an SDG Leadership Lab, where innovation and learning will underline the what, how and why we deliver inclusive and sustainable development in Cambodia.

Specifically, we will continue to support the Ministry and the Royal Government not only in the wide roll out of the CSDGs, but also in the four urgent areas of action just mentioned.

First, in the consolidation of CSDGs in national policy making and strategic planning, we will support the scale up of performance measures in budget strategic plans across line ministries under the leadership of UNICEF;

Second, in addressing public financing challenges for the sustainable development goals, the UN will seek to design and set up an SDG Fund in close cooperation with Ministry of Economy and Finance and other partners, including private sector;

Third, in translating the goals at the sub-national level, we will focus on  supporting innovations in service delivery to communities throughout Cambodia.  This builds on the discussions between Ministry of Civil Service and UNDP in last week’s conference on public service innovations.

Fourth, in working across sectors and stakeholders, particularly in helping to prioritize where investments in time, resources and money can create the biggest impact across the sustainable development goals, we will work closely with CDC, MOP and MEF in designing programs to accelerate SDGs.  For the United Nations, we have identified four accelerators for SDGs in Cambodia.  These are in social protection, nutrition, youth and data.  We will be launching new joint programs for each of these accelerators shortly.

Excellencies,

Cambodia has a strong record of achievement in the MDGs. I am certain that with the Royal Government’s engagement and commitment, Cambodia can perform just as strongly on the SDGs, ensuring no family or community is left behind, and that prosperity is delivered alongside environmental sustainability.

Thank you.