Roundup: UN zeroes in on technology, finance, statistics for sustainable development in Asia-Pacific

Asia and the Pacific will have to work on three key aspects, including technology, finance and statistics, in order to unlock sustainable development in the post- 2015 era, said a United Nations report released here on Thursday.

The region has led the world in the drive to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with the proportion of people living on less than 1.25 U.S. dollars per day projected to fall from 53 percent in 1990 to 12 percent by the end of the year, according to the report launched at the headquarters of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

"To maintain this momentum for the post-2015 agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the region will need to address three key areas of implementation: extending the benefits of technology to all, mobilizing the necessary financial resources, and building statistical systems that can monitor the progress of the poorest groups to ensure that no one is left behind," the report noted.

The report, titled "Making it happen: Technology, finance and statistics for sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific," was jointly published by the ESCAP, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

As the final assessment of regional progress towards the MDGs, the report presented an optimistic picture of how far the region has come.

Between 1990 and 2012, the proportion of the region's population living on less than 1.25 U.S. dollars per day fell from 53 to 14 percent, it showed.

In addition, more than two-thirds of countries are expected to halve the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking water by 2015, while nearly all primary-aged children now complete school and students at all levels of education benefit from gender parity, according to the report.

However, it also underlined the crucial need to address ongoing challenges in the post-2015 development agenda.

In some instances, where goals have been met, there is still much progress to be made, and several goals continue to lag behind, the report underscored.

It pointed to facts that in 2012, 569 million people were still living on less than 1.25 dollars per day, 21 million children were not enrolled in primary school, and more than one-fifth of under- five children, or 75 million, were underweight.

In addition, 1.2 billion people in rural areas and 480 million in urban areas still lacked access to basic sanitation.

"The Asia-Pacific region has made great progress, helping drive the world towards major success but unfinished business remains," said Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, UN under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the ESCAP.

"To maintain momentum for the post-2015 agenda, the region needs a data revolution. The world is seeing explosive growth in the production of data, particularly Big Data, generated from the use of the internet, our mobile electronic devices and satellite imagery. To fully utilize these new sources, we should be exploring new technological possibilities for the production of statistics," she noted.

"To continue to effectively deal with our complex development challenges and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to focus even more on data, technology and innovation that can help us attain transformational impact on the lives of the poor and excluded groups in society," said Xu Haoliang, UNDP's assistant administrator and director for the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific.

Moreover, Vice-President of the ADB Stephen Groff called for a shift from an aid-centric approach on development finance to much wider financing for development.

"Governments, development partners, municipalities, businesses, financial and civil society groups will have to explore all possible sources of finance -- public and private, whether domestic or international -- to see how these can be coherently combined around shared agendas to meeting the SDGs," he said. Endi