Phnom Penh, 07 June 2018 - National Council for Sustainable Development (NCSD) organized a conference on Integrating Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) in National Development Plans: “International best practices and the way forward for Cambodia”, financially supported by Sweden embassy and Cambodia Climate Change Alliance, attended by approximately 152 representatives from line ministries/agencies, development partners, private sectors, academia, NGOs, national and international experts at Raffle Le Royal Hotel. The event was presided over by H.E. Eang Sophallet, Ministry of Environment’s Under Secretary of state, and H.E. Maria Sargren, Ambassador of Sweden with a keynote speech from Mr. Nick Beresford, UNDP’s Country Director.

Cambodia’s NDC was submitted to the UNFCCC in 2015, setting out the actions planned to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions, and adapt to climate change, and how the plans will be financed and tracked for Cambodia. The conference aimed at identifying best practices and tools for the integration of climate change commitments in development planning, putting Cambodia in strong position to achieve its national and international development objectives.

H.E. Eang Sophallet, Under Secretary of State of the Ministry of Environment, emphasized that climate change is now an emerging threat for the country; its affects and impacts national economic development and will get more and more severe unless we take actions in time. The Royal government in this mandate has put climate change as one of the priorities issues. He finally called for action to integrate climate change into the new national strategic development plan and welcomed the exchange international best practices for tailoring in Cambodia context.

H.E. Maria Sargren, Ambassador of Sweden, mentioned that Sweden is the biggest per-capita donor to the major global climate funds, including The Green Climate Fund, The Adaptation Fund, The Least Developed Countries Fund and The Global Environment Facility. She further mentioned the linkages between climate change commitments and sustainable development are very strong, and that this needs to be reflected in the development planning process at country level, with involvement from ministries of Planning and Economy and Finance.

Mr. Nick Beresford, UNDP’s Country Director, underlined the good progress made so far by Cambodia in implementing the MDGs and the work that remains to be done to reach the SDGs and climate change commitments. He presented the support that UN agencies and UNDP in particular can provide: “We want to support tailored solutions to complex development issues, building on the broad expertise of the UN system, its in-depth understanding of Cambodia’s specificities, and its capacity to broker partnerships across a range of actors.

The conference focus on three areas: 1) Climate change, economic growth and SDGs: what’s the evidence on synergies and trade-offs, 2) Exploring Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) - Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Linkages and 3) Translating NDC/SDG Commitments into a Coherent Development Vision for Cambodia.

Participants discussed the tools available to better understand the linkages between the NDC and SDG agendas, and to translate this analysis into coherent development plans at national, sectoral and local levels. Challenges to implementation were also discussed, including issues of inter-sectoral coordination and financing.