Cooperation between ESCWA, UN Environment, and the League of Arab States has led to the development of a draft “Implementation Framework for the Environmental Dimension of the 2030 Agenda”. The draft framework proposes means of integrating the environmental dimensions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into national development plans and policies in the Arab region. The framework should be feasible to implement under the existing national statistical systems, within available and to be developed required data for analysis, monitoring and reporting in the region, which supports informed and integrated policy-making in the Arab region.
 
The framework’s methodology had already been presented and discussed earlier this year, during the “Preparatory Meeting for the 2017 Arab Forum on Sustainable Development” that was held on the 23rd and 24th of April 2017 in Cairo, Egypt. That preparatory meeting was jointly organized by ESCWA, the League of Arab States, and UN Environment.
 
The meeting will highlight the approach adopted for the development of the framework and the assessment of the environmental priorities across the SDGs in the Arab region, and the assessment of the integration of the environmental dimension of the SDGs into regional and national development framework in the Arab region. The meeting has the following specific objectives:

•  Exchange perspectives and priorities on implementing the 2030 agenda in general, and the environmental dimension of the Agenda and sustaining the natural resources base in particular through mainstreaming the SDGs into existing strategies and plans in the Arab region at both the regional and national levels;
• Review the “Implementation Framework for the Environmental Dimension of the 2030 Agenda”, being prepared by ESCWA, UN Environment and the League of Arab States;
• Engage participants in a dialogue on the proposed future steps, and the adequate regional and national institutional frameworks, to monitor and review the goals and targets that have an environmental and natural resources dimension.
• Exchange perspectives and views on how best to define, measure and monitor sustainable development goal indicators in environmental statistics areas for the Arab region in line with the 2030 Agenda, which is the objective of the environment pillar of the UN Development Account programme on data and statistics.

The meeting will result in a report that includes a set of conclusions and recommendations reflecting the participants’ views on the issues under consideration.

Report (Arabic)