Insights from the European Development Report

The Rio+20 Conference is leading a new agenda around Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), combining economic, social and environmental targets. Poor countries and the poorest people within them need growth and access to natural resources for human development - which will require socioeconomic targets. Increased pressures on the planet’s natural resources will require environmental targets. The discussion on the SDGs provided the opportunity to not only look at each resource individually, but also took account of the extensive linkages between resources such as water, energy and land (the “WEL nexus”).

The European Report on Development (ERD) “Confronting scarcity: Managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth” suggests an ambitious integrated approach, which would embrace this nexus, avoiding perverse solutions and stimulating innovation.

This high-level panel provided the opportunity to discuss how such integrated thinking could inform the development of the SDGs.


Programme

• Keynotes: Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for the Environment, and Caroline Spelman, UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

• Introduction by ERD Team: Dirk Willem te Velde, ERD Team Leader, Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and
  Imme Scholz, ERD Core Team,
  German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)

• Discussants: Andrew Steer, World Bank Special Envoy for Climate Change, and H.E Gyan Chandra Acharya, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations

• Moderator: Anya Sitaram, Rockhopper TV