UNDP Administrator highlights middle-income countries’ potential

April 3, 2018

Energy-efficient street lighting for Congaz, Moldova. Photo credit: UNDP Moldova

Istanbul, April 5 – Visiting Turkey, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Achim Steiner, called on the Europe and Central Asia region to accelerate its transition to sustainable development and depicted Middle-Income Countries as a global force for change.
“UNDP’s partnership with the Government of Turkey demonstrates the potential of partnering with an Upper Middle-income Country to both address global development challenges, and take advantage of the many new opportunities for promoting sustainable development,” Steiner said at the annual meeting of UNDP Resident Representatives in Istanbul.

While extreme poverty has largely been eliminated and the middle class has tripled between 2001 and 2013, the Europe and Central Asia region faces important structural bottlenecks as it strives to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These include greening economies and boosting the job market, modernizing government administrations while involving the most vulnerable in important decisions, and harnessing the region’s innovation and creativity.

Middle-Income Countries – which make up a majority of the region - are facing the challenge of continuing to mobilize development financing in the face of declining aid. In many cases, these countries are also facing complex situations, with pockets of poverty, frozen conflicts or environmental dangers and disasters persisting in spite of continued economic growth.

On the other hand, these countries offer tremendous learning opportunities for the region as a whole, the Administrator said. With UNDP’s support, countries such as Kazakhstan are now establishing their own aid agencies, while Romania and Slovakia – also funding development efforts abroad - have important lessons to share on EU accession and its implications.

Steiner also described innovation as “one of the defining comparative advantages of UNDP in the Europe and Central Asia region”. With UNDP’s support, governments in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia have set up national innovation laboratories that are looking into new ways of achieving the SDGs.
These are consistent with the new UNDP Strategic Plan, which aims to “lift the ambitions of the organization and moving it beyond business-as-usual,” he added.

The UNDP Strategic Plan for 2018-2021 aims to optimize UNDP to help countries achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with a focus on building coalitions of partners to tackle complex and intertwined development challenges.

The plan identifies six “signature solutions” against which UNDP will now align its resource and expertise, to make a real impact on poverty, governance, energy access, gender equality, resilience and environmental sustainability.