Sustainable Development Goals Alert in Malaysia at Penang Paddy Festival

In many cultures in Asia, paddy milled into rice is the energy-giving, life-sustaining source of food for the majority. Food security has become one of the government fundamental agendas and it is essential for the overall development. Furthermore, the government has emphasized that food security is synonymous with rice security. Many paddy fields have even made way for the more lucrative use of the land – the building of residential housing and shops.

The goal of the Penang Paddy festival is to raise awareness to the hardships of paddy farmers, especially among the younger generation. At the same time, it is also to bring attention to the rapid urbanization of Seberang Perai, where many tracts of agriculture lands are being converted.

On 6 August 2018 Penang State Legislative Assembly, YB Dr. Norlela, State Assembly Person for Penanti, Penang, Malaysia raise the issues of conversion paddy land to housing and commercial purposes. She is aware of the 102.18 hectares of paddy land that been converted. She hopes to save the remaining 396 hectares paddy field in Kampung Terus and Guar Jering. She promotes this awareness by Penang International Paddy Festival programme. ASEAN My World 2030 Advocate, Nadhilah Razak said on this coming August 12 we are planning to celebrate the International Youth Day by collaborate with Penang International Paddy Festival which will happened on the 11th & 12th August 2018 at Kampung Terus, Permatang Pauh, Malaysia. YB Dr. Norlela and YB Nurul Izzah will be the main organizer for this programme as they will become one of the Malaysia My World Stories for this UN SDG Action Campaign.

#PadikuWarisanku #SDG #MyWorld2030 #Malaysia #act4sdg #SDG1 #SDG8 #SDG12

SocialCops

A solution to bring inaccessible data to decision-makers – and it’s not magic!

In most places in the developing world, information is still recorded on paper registers, and most of this data never makes it to a digital format. If it does become digitized, it is often stored in local languages, unstructured formats and extremely difficult to extract. To make matters worse, data is often housed in siloed, disconnected systems that just don’t talk to each other. With data this problematic, how can anyone track and accelerate the SDGs?

The initiative SocialCops in collaboration with the United Nations, active in India and Papua New Guinea, came up with a promising answer!

The SDG Solution developed by SocialCops in collaboration with the UN RCO office in India uses proprietary technology to generate and aggregate real-time data, then analyze and visualize a complete data-driven picture for every one of the 17 SDGs. With a data-driven approach to measuring progress towards Agenda 2030, their solution helps governments, nonprofits and foundations bring together data from anywhere – from web services and APIs to inaccessible PDF tables and primary surveys. By conquering problematic data and data sources, top decision-makers can finally consolidate their efforts across different sectors, measure their impact, find better solutions, and accelerate development.

The SocialCops-UNIndia SDG solution empowers decision-makers across different levels of the development sphere to make better, more data-driven decisions to accelerate the SDGs through their organization’s work. The solution is currently being implemented in three different contexts: at a national level in India with data from the government’s social welfare initiatives; across the private sector by the Business Council of Papua New Guinea to track the impact of corporate giving and throughout the state of Maharashtra’s gram panchayats (GPs, or self-governing village councils) to develop digital GP Development Plans and streamline participatory planning.

While launching its SDGs4Businesses dashboard (developed in partnership with UNDP and the Business Council of Papua New Guinea), the former UN Resident Coordinator for Papua New Guinea Roy Trivedi remarked: “Working with SocialCops has brought a wealth of cutting-edge data analytics and software engineering to PNG… They have worked around the clock to prepare this dashboard in record time and I am very proud of the result.”

The solution is still under implementation in India and Papua New Guinea, but the governments and United Nations have envisioned it as a North Star to guide and target all development programs and activities. Once the solution is complete, each country will be able to track every aspect of its progress toward achieving the SDGs, identify what is hindering its progress in real time, and align all development programs — at the central or state level, implemented by governments or NGOs — to focus on the indicators, sectors and geographies that will maximize progress toward Agenda 2030.

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Who is behind this?

SocialCops

For more information:

Visit https://socialcops.com/sdg-video-success/

SDG Voices Campaign in 6 cities

The SDG Voices campaign, led by the City of Ghent, challenged cities in Belgium to encourage and mobilize Belgians to implement the SDGs in their daily lives. The campaign involved 23 different Ghent city services and departments. Nearly 6,000 citizens in 6 cities participated physically and many others took part via social media.

The SDG Voices campaign, led by the City of Ghent, challenged cities in Belgium to encourage and mobilize Belgians to implement the SDGs in their daily lives. The campaign involved 23 different Ghent city services and departments. Nearly 6,000 citizens in 6 cities participated physically and many others took part via social media.

The Ghent City Board designed a series of five concrete and competitive challenges for Ghent and 5 other cities, which each focused on SDGs 1-5: “Eat massively social” (SDG1.4), “Days without meat” (SDG2.4), “Everyone on the bike” (SDG3.9), “Class marathon” (SDG4a) and “Everybody feminist” (SDG5.5).

Nearly 6,000 citizens in 6 cities participated physically, many other people supported the challenges via social media (communicated through short movies, web-posts and campaign images) The campaign brought together stakeholders such as Ghent knowledge institutions, various NGOs, The Shift, Gent en Garde, Football Club KAA Gent. The campaign paved the way for new partnerships with organizations such as the Flemish Association of Cities and Municipalities, University and Academy Ghent, CSR Europe, etc and initiatives such as healthy cooking workshops, debates on sustainability at school, theatre performance on gender equality, summer cycling course for immigrant children, etc.

The campaign also resonated throughout networks, such as Eurocities, ESDN, ICLEI. The campaign is having a multiplier effect on more citizens’ and organizations’ familiarity with the SDGs. For example, the cooperation between businesses and schools will be continued. NGO Globelink started a project to implement the SDGs in Ghent with youngsters. The city administration integrated the SDGs in the preparation of the long-term city planning. Ghent University and Ghent Academy embraced the SDGs in their new policy strategy.

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Who is behind this?

City of Ghent

For more information:

Visit https://ookmijn.stad.gent/sdguitdagingen

NDC-SDG Connections

Global agreements are okay but… let´s bring some action!

Major global agreements, overlapping agendas – Finding synergies to take action!

In an ever increasingly complex world we are observing a multitude of documents that contain concrete national commitments to the global common good of sustainable development. The two guiding global agreements -the Paris Climate Agreement and the 2030 Agenda- seek to halt climate change and foster sustainable development within planetary boundaries. To keep a systematic overview on these multiple commitments, to identify gaps where action is needed and to foster learning across countries and regions, NDC-SDG Connections visualises how concrete climate action commitments in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of countries can support the achievement of a multitude of SDGs and their targets at global, regional and national level.

NDC-SDG Connections provides a knowledge hub for thematic connectivity of the two global agendas that are kept separate in implementation but benefit heavily from thematic complementarity in implementation. This knowledge hub has been taken up very positively by nation states, asking for support to deepen their national dialogue of stakeholders to achieve the two agendas as one, as well as at UN level to foster synergies between the two agendas and achieve the global common good of sustainable development.

In a next step, this knowledge hub aims at integrating the actions and commitments countries have given in their sustainable development processes to implement the 2030 Agenda in order to truly carve out at global, regional and national level the thematic overlaps and gaps between the two agendas. Knowing about overlaps allows reducing redundancies in activities, identifying the gaps is of utmost importance to strengthen action to leave no one behind.

This initiative aims at stimulating the thematic dialogue across policy sectors to implement both agendas consistently and to provide a platform for learning from each other and jointly contributing to sustainable development for all and within our planetary boundaries.

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Who is behind this?

Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) / Stockholm Environment Institute

For more information:

Visit http://ndc-sdg.info/