What's New

The Regional State of Oromia is the largest region both in terms of population and geographical size. Like any other region in Ethiopia, the regional state is faced with a growing demand for qualified district and regional planners with requisite skills in project planning and management as well as techniques of data collection and analysis. The technical assistance of the UNCRD Africa Office in Ethiopia is designed to fill this gap and provide the planners of the Regional State of Oromia with requisite knowledge and technical know-how to design, implement, and manage effective regional development projects and programmes. The training course is also designed to provide the planners and development managers of the Regional State of Oromia with appropriate and effective data collection and analysis techniques. Towards this goal, the UNCRD Africa Office, in collaboration with Oromia Bureau of Finance and Economic Development (OBFED) and UNICEF, Ethiopia, has so far conducted a number of successful in-country training courses and managed to train a substantial number of professional planners and development managers in project planning and management; and data collection and information management. Encouraged and satisfied by the success of the previous training courses, the Regional Government of Ethiopia has again requested the UNCRD Africa Office to support further training. In this regard, the UNCRD Africa Office, in collaboration with the Regional Government of Oromia and UNICEF, Ethiopia will organize the next training course from 9 May to 4 June 2011 in Adama (Nazareth). The training workshop will focus on: (a) project planning and management; and (b) data collection and analysis, which includes participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods.

The UNCRD Africa Office, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), organized training courses on “Urban and Regional Development Planning and Management” in 2008, 2009, and 2010, respectively. The principal objective of these training courses is to strengthen the national capacity of African countries for urban and regional development management. The training courses are implemented within the context of South-South cooperation towards enhanced development cooperation between Asian and African countries, through the exchange of experiences in urban and regional development planning. More importantly, the courses are designed and implemented to support African planners and urban managers to learn and draw relevant lessons from Singapore’s successful experiences in urban and regional development planning and management. Through these training courses, a number of regional planners and urban managers from several African countries have been trained. The previous three training courses were well-received by the participants, as indicated in the evaluation of the course and the feedback UNCRD has received from the course participants, which was later published in the UNCRD Alumni Newsletter. Satisfied with the impact and outcome of the previous training courses, UNCRD, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore, Government of Singapore, and JICA will jointly organize the fourth phase of the training course from 4 to 15 April 2011 at the Civil Service College of Singapore.

Since 2004, the UNCRD Africa Office has been providing technical assistance to the Ewaso Ng’iro North Development Authority (ENNDA) of Kenya to build its capacity in regional development planning and plan preparation. ENNDA is a statutory board, which falls under the Ministry of Regional Development Authorities. The Authority is in charge of planning and implementing regional development policies and programmes in the Ewaso Ng’iro River Basin. The UNCRD Africa Office, in collaboration with its partners, has so far conducted several training workshops, seminars, and field study analyses to upscale the knowledge and skills of the planners of ENNDA and other stakeholders in techniques of data collection and analysis as well as in regional plan preparation. The integrated regional development plan for ENNDA has now been prepared and is ready for publication. However, prior to publishing the regional plan, the UNCRD Africa Office and ENNDA will organize a stakeholders’ workshop to solicit final comments and ensure ownership of the plan by the local community. This participatory process will also ensure the effective implementation of the regional plan in the future.

The UNCRD Africa Office and University of Denver, in partnership with the University of Nairobi, have been conducting a research-cum-training project in northern Kenya. Within the overall context of human security, this project aims to reduce vulnerability and increase human security of communities affected by conflict in Northern Kenya by building the capacity of the community and empowering vulnerable groups affected by conflict through identification and promotion of sustainable livelihood and conflict management strategies. The rationale for capacity building and conflict management is to empower people through exchange of information, promotion of knowledge, and building of skills for improved livelihoods and to enable the local community to deal with conflicts in a sustainable manner. Through identification and promotion of both sustainable livelihood and conflict management strategies, the project attempts to address the two aspects of human security: freedom from fear (conflict) and freedom from want (creation of sustainable livelihoods). The research phase of this project was completed and the findings of the research will be published as a book titled “Human Security and Conflict in Africa: Kenya in Perspective,” to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in June 2011. The capacity-building phase of the project commenced last year and to-date two training workshops were conducted for the Garissa and Laikipia districts of Kenya. As part of this capacity-building programme, the UNCRD Africa Office and University of Denver, in partnership with the University of Nairobi, will conduct a training workshop for community leaders, planners, representatives of NGOs, CBOs, etc. from the Marsabit district.

TARDA is the oldest of the six regional development authorities that the Government of Kenya created in 1974 for effective management of natural resources and the environment, and preparation of regional development plans to enhance social and economic development in the region. In this regard, TARDA has requested the UNCRD Africa Office for technical assistance for preparation of an integrated and long-term regional development plan. This process involves sensitization and consultative workshops to facilitate the plan preparation process. Towards this objective, the UNCRD Africa Office and TARDA, in partnership with the University of Nairobi, will organize a consultative and sensitization workshop for planners, development managers, policymakers, community leaders, representatives of NGOs and CBOs, local members of parliament, and others.

Following the outcomes of the Tenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) held in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010, as well as taking into consideration the priorities addressed in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), UNCRD will hold a public event entitled “Biodiversity and Regional Development”. The purpose of this event is to raise the awareness of the general public on issues pertaining to biodiversity and sustainable regional development in developing countries. The programme includes presentations and discussion by experts, NGOs, and the private sector, with a focus on relevant topics such as biodiversity-friendly coffee production, fair trade, and ecotourism.

Admission is free-of-charge.

The International Symposium and expert meeting will be organized in order to:

1. Share the importance and potentiality for community-based disaster management (CBDM) for climate change adaptation (CCA);
2. Develop regional discourse on recently emerging climate change-related risks and CBDM’s effectiveness in building the capacities of communities for adaptation measures;
3. Share good practices and challenges from the project countries, and create an international network for applying good practices around Asia and the Pacific region; and
4. Discuss methodologies and strategies on CBDM for CCA to develop a user’s guide.

The main objective of the training workshop is to train the Namibian planners and councillors on effective decentralization and regional development policies and practices. The course also aims at equipping the participants with training of trainers (TOT) techniques so that the participants can train more planners when they return to their respective workstations. More specifically the workshop aims at:

• Training planners and councillors in regional development planning to enable them to establish a mechanism for guiding and co-ordinating the decentralization process;
• Enhancing the capacity of the planners in project planning and management;
• Training the participants in data collection and analysis;
• Training the participants on the techniques and methodologies of undertaking effective training programmes; and
• Enhancing planning capacity at regional and national levels to promote effective resource utilization and environmental management; proper planning and implementation to alleviate poverty and spur economic growth.

In conjunction with the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly being held from 20 to 22 September 2010 to first review the progress made so far towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and then to accelerate progress to achieve them by 2015, UNCRD also conducted a “Stand Up Take Action” event in Nagoya. This event was part of a world-wide campaign conducted in partnership with the UN’s Millennium Campaign and the GCAP (Global Call to Action against Poverty) NGO network that took place over the period of three days, from 17 to 19 September.
　　　The MDGs target alleviating poverty, combating disease, fighting hunger, protecting the environment, and boosting education, among others. This event, which focused on alleviating poverty, had the participation of not only staff members, but also UNCRD supporters and members of the local community.
　　　Staff members took turns in reading the Declaration out loud, and everyone then voiced their determination with the shout, “Stand Up Take Action!” UNCRD is of renewed resolve to strive to achieve the MDGs through its programme of activities.

The overall objective of the in-country training programme is to train planners and government officials in effective district development planning and project planning and management towards supporting decentralization programmes of the Government of Botswana by enhancing district development planning and implementation. Specifically, the programme will achieve the following objectives:

• To build the planning capacity of district planning staff and district officials in the implementation of development plans and projects as well as in monitoring and evaluating them;
• To build the capacity of the ministerial staff and planners for giving technical advice and guidance in district and local implementation of development plans and projects as well as in monitoring and evaluation;
• To train district and regional planners in data collection and analysis skills;
• To enhance the capacity of local authority officials and ministerial planners and project managers on project planning, implementation and management;
• To develop practical skills for facilitating effective community participation in project planning, management, and implementation; and
• To strengthen the capacity of development and project implementation agencies and institutions for effective coordination of planning and implementation of development projects.

The main objective of the seminar is to discuss the impact of climate change on poverty and examine the policy options available to policymakers in terms of mitigation and adaptation to climate change to reduce its adverse effects in the African and Asian regions. More specifically, the seminar aims at:

• Examining the correlation between climate change and poverty in Asia and Africa;
• Addressing the impact of climate change on vulnerable groups of African and Asian society;
• Exploring adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce the adverse impact of climate change in both Africa and Asia;
• Providing a forum to exchange experiences between senior policymakers and scholars of the two continents about best practices of addressing the problem of climate change and poverty reduction.

The main objective of the training workshop is to build the capacity of the community leaders in conflict resolution techniques to bring about sustainable peace in the region and to discuss the implementation of strategies and tools which were developed during Phase 1 of the project in the selected sites as community members start to participate in the designed initiatives for:

1. Creation of sustainable livelihood;
2. Conflict management;
3. Capacity-building process aimed at empowerment; and
4. Self-reliance of vulnerable and primary stakeholders in the case study area.

The world-renowned violinist, Midori, visited UNCRD on 3 June 2010. She was appointed Messenger of Peace by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2007, in recognition of her exemplary commitment to worldwide goals shared by the UN. In this connection, Midori set aside time from her busy schedule to make a visit to UNCRD headquarters in Nagoya.

As one of her community-directed initiatives to give people of all ages and backgrounds the opportunity to have access to music, Midori established the NPO, Music Sharing, to raise the cultural awareness of children and create a nurturing environment in which they can fully experience music. Music Sharing conducts activities in Japan and other Asian countries, during which she visits schools, hospitals, and special institutions. One programme of Music Sharing is the International Community Engagement Program (ICEP) in which Midori and other professional musicians who serve as participating artists tour Asian countries, and then tour Japan to report on it. To date, the ICEP Quartet has toured Viet Nam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Mongolia. The Quartet is currently in the midst of its Japan tour, and plan to visit Laos later this year.

UNCRD staff had the opportunity to learn about Music Sharing and its activities in Mongolia, which the ICEP Quartet visited last December. The Quartet also performed two pieces, one by Mozart and the other by Borodin, which were simply superb and gave the staff a most unforgettable experience. At the close of the programme, Midori and other members of the Quartet answered questions from the audience.

It was indeed an honour to welcome Midori to UNCRD, and to learn of her activities for peace through music.

• To present the community cyclone shelter management guideline, which is developed based on the community training workshop held in March 2010
• To approve the developed guideline as a community guideline by the local government.
• To discuss how the guidelines can be sustainable.
• To share and discuss how it can be promoted to other cyclone-prone areas.

The broad objective of the training programme is to strengthen the capacity of planners on effective district and local development planning and implementation by ensuring the availability of skilled and competent manpower at the district and lower levels. The specific objectives of the training programme are to:

1. Strengthen the institutional capacity of OBFED for effective project planning and management, and data collection and analysis at the district and lower levels;
2. Upgrade the capacity of the planning staff at the district levels for giving technical advice and guidance in project planning and management, and data collection and analysis at the district and lower levels;
3. Build capacity at the district level for development planning and implementation of projects by providing planners with requisite skills and knowledge in project planning and management;
4. Provide practical skills to enable the participants to gather necessary data and prepare proposals applicable to the grassroots level;
5. Introduce the participants to methods and techniques of data collection and information management, as well as PRA methods; and
6. Enable the participants to develop effective survey tools and instruments, and to apply accurate data in planning.

The main objective of the training course is to improve the African planners’ skills and knowledge in urban and regional development planning. By focusing on the successful experiences of Singapore, the course aims at assisting African planners and administrators to acquire the skills and competence they require to design and implement effective and sustainable regional and urban development policies and strategies. The course is specifically aims at:

• Improving the participants’ knowledge and understanding of the broad range of urban issues facing African countries;
• Providing opportunities for African planners to learn from the effective urban management experiences of Singapore;
• Facilitating exchange of experiences and ideas between African and Asian planners; and
• Promoting South-South cooperation by building and strengthening institutional linkages between African and Asian training and planning institutes.

In order to contribute to enhancing awareness on the importance of disaster preparedness if the field of development and the safety of vital regional facilities such as medical and educational institutions, UNCRD, which is headquartered in Japan, and the Center for Research and Disaster Prevention (PREDES) will hold a forum on “Constructing Safe and Sustainable Communities: Strategies of Disaster Management for Regional Resilience”.

At the forum, UNCRD will present its project, "Reducing Vulnerability of School Children to Earthquake: School Earthquake Safety Initiative". The participation of representatives from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Pan-American Health Organisation, and NGOs at the event has been confirmed. The participating institution will present a progress report on retrofitting and improvement work for the safety of educational and medical facilities against disasters, seismic standards and possible sites of earthquakes in Lima, and the project on preparedness against earthquake and tsunami disasters and early recovery in Lima and Callao.

Lastly, a panel will be launched to discuss whether the policies on disaster risk reduction as well as strategies for strengthening regional vital educational and medical facilities against disasters have been adequately implemented.

The main objective of the current training workshop is to train the Namibian planners on the skills and tools of preparing and implementing effective regional development policies and practices. More specifically the training workshop aims at:

• Training Namibia planners in regional development planning and policy to enable them to establish a mechanism for guiding and coordinating the decentralization process;
• Introducing the participants to sectoral planning and policies;
• Enhancing the capacity of the planners in project planning and management; and
• Training the participants in techniques of data collection and analysis for plan preparation.

UNCRD held a Symposium and Expert Meeting, “International Symposium on Urban and Climate Risk Management for Sustainable Development,” from 17 to 20 January 2010. The public symposium, on 18 January 2010, was organized as part of the 4th APEC Emergency Management CEO’s Forum 2010 together with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Task Force on Emergency Preparedness (TFEP), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)-Government of Japan, and Yomiuri Shimbun Co. Ltd, and with the support of Hyogo Prefecture. The objectives of the Symposium were:

1. To share the experience of urban risk at the regional level, including structural safety of the built environment;
2. To develop regional discourse on recently emerging disaster risks (i.e., climate change) and its effects on the built environment, including structural safety; and
3. To heighten awareness on initiatives on disaster mitigation in the APEC region in terms of regional development.

Following the Symposium, the 4th APEC Emergency Management CEO’s Forum was held on 19 January to discuss Climate Change Adaptation and Public-Private Partnership in the APEC region.

The main objective of the workshop is mainly to launch the report, “Human Security and Conflict in Northern Kenya: Assessment, Capacity-Building and Operational Tools to Promote Sustainable Livelihoods and Conflict Management,” which has been prepared by the research team from UNCRD, University of Denver, and University of Nairobi; and also discuss the next phase of the project, which is capacity building. More specifically the workshop aims to:

• Examine the research report and provide feedback;
• Discuss the next phase of the project, which is capacity building and suggest target groups, entry points; and themes/modules to be covered; and
• Discuss the way forward.

Under the Project on Human Security and Regional Development in Latin America, UNCRD-LAC will implement a workshop to introduce the human security and regional development approach in the formulation of territorial municipal plans from a sustainable tourism perspective in the department of Sololá, one of the areas most affected by conflict and violence in Guatemala. Issues to be highlighted are those related to territorial security, human security, environment, and tourism. The workshop, of a participatory nature, will have the participation of public officials of the local, regional, and national levels, community representatives, and representatives of international organizations working in the area. The methodology will promote consensus building on the main issues to be addressed, and the establishment of a work plan to initiate the formulation of a regional territorial organization plan for the municipalities of the Department of Sololá.

The forum will be organized in conjunction with the City of Bogotá and the State of Cundinamarca, and will serve as a space to launch the UNCRD-LAC publication on Human Security Assessments in the Bogotá-Cundinamarca Region, and disseminate and discuss the findings of the work undertaken from 2006 to 2009.

The meeting was held as part of a larger effort to improve capacities of countries emerging from conflict to integrate sustainable development principles into development strategies and thereby increase the likelihood of sustainable peace. Specific objectives were:

• To review and evaluate experiences and status of methodologies for integrating sustainable development principles in overall development strategies in countries emerging from conflict;
• Highlight key challenges, their causes and areas of concern related to sustainable development planning;
• Identify and assess the critical gaps in the area of national sustainable development strategies (NSDS) and comprehensive development planning in conflict-affected countries;
• Develop selection criteria of the pilot countries to be considered under the project; and
• Make recommendations and propose areas to be tackled to achieve the main project objectives of:
  • increasing capacities to utilize sustainable development principles in policy-making in countries emerging from conflict; and
  • producing methodologies (scalable toolkit) based on NSDS guidelines that explain and illustrate ways to integrate sustainable development principles into national development strategies as part of peace-building.

These workshops are part of a series of activities initiated in May 2009, implemented under the capacity-building project to revise and harmonize the territorial organization and land-use plans of Bogotá and its surrounding municipalities to address common fundamental social, economic, and environmental issues. The process promotes a common understanding of the main issues to be addressed, and collaboration between Bogotá and the municipalities to address these issues in a sustainable manner. The methodology used pursues consensus building among the territorial entities, about three main aspects: (1) Main Ecological Structure; (2) Functional and Public Services Structure; and (3) Socio-economic Structure.

This Introductory Training Module is an integral part of the semi-virtual postgraduate training course jointly implemented by UNCRD, the Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile, UN/ECLAC, and the Municipality of Milan, targeted to approximately thirty participants from Chile and Colombia. The module is aimed at providing tools for participatory project formulation under the human security and regional development conceptual framework, and its relation with energy efficiency and climate balance. The module has been designed as a practice-oriented workshop highlighting the basic aspects of human security and regional development, and the importance of collaborative work, through conferences, group discussion, and practical exercises.

At the end of the training course, the participants should have:

• Understood the strengths of the human security approach in the context of the integrated regional development initiative, and its relationship with energy efficiency and climate balance, for the formulation of urban-regional projects;
• Identified the basic variables to build indicators that may be applied to the social development of specific projects that participants developed during the course;
• Taken appropriation of the methodology and instruments to design, formulate, and evaluate strategies, programmes, and projects under the human security and regional development approach; and
• Identified ways to integrate the human security concept in local and regional development strategies, including a human security orientation in their action plans.

Objectives are:

• To inform the public of culturally adaptable seismic-resistant construction in Indonesia based on the experiences of UNCRD's HESI (Housing Earthquake Safety Initiative)/SESI (School Earthquake Safety Initiative) as well as various other experiences related to disasters in Indonesia, particularly those of international development actors involved in the post-earthquake work in Padang.
• To distribute the manual, "Constructing Seismic Resistant Masonry Houses" (written by Mr. Teddy Boen, printed by UNCRD) as reference for further activities in the region.

Objectives are:

• To promote regional development in historical cities;
• To identify the risk of existing buildings in historical cities in the Asia-Pacific region;
• To share the experience of formulating countermeasures for existing buildings in historical cities and its conservation/reconstruction; and
• To enhance awareness of safety measures for existing buildings in historical cities.

Objectives are:

• To disseminate the outcome of SESI Indonesia (Bandung);
• To share the experiences and knowledge on building safe schools, other vital regional facilities, and housing in the region; and
• To explore strategies to further planning of sustainable communities against earthquake disasters in terms of building safety and disaster awareness/education.

Since independence, Botswana has had one of the fastest growing economies in the world, averaging 9 per cent per year from 1967 to 2005. In order to sustain this growth, it established a system of national development planning which is linked to subnational development planning through district development planning and physical planning of settlements and urban areas. However, the districts are faced with a problem of shortage of trained manpower, particularly in the area of project planning and management. All planners working for the government at the ministerial and district levels have a minimum first-degree level of education in planning. Beyond this, only a few have had opportunities to acquire new planning skills by attending specialized training courses to improve their planning capacity.

To address these challenges, the Government of Botswana requested the UNCRD Africa Office for technical assistance to enhance the skills and capacity of planners working for Ministry of Local Government, in the field of district and regional development planning. UNCRD, in partnership with UNDP, University of Botswana, and University of Nairobi, conducted the first phase of the training programme from 17 to 29 November 2008 in Gaborone, at which thirty-two planners from various districts were trained. Satisfied with the results and output of the first phase of the in-country training course, the Government of Botswana requested UNCRD to organize the second phase of the training course from 7 to 23 September 2009.

Specifically, the programme hopes to achieve the following:

• To build the planning capacity of district planning staff and district officials in the implementation of development plans and projects as well as in monitoring and evaluating them;
• To build the capacity of ministerial staff and planners to give technical advice and guidance in district and local implementation of development plans and projects as well as monitoring and evaluation;
• To enhance the capacity of local authority officials and ministerial planners and project managers on project planning, implementation, and management;
• To develop practical skills for facilitating effective community participation in project planning, implementation, and management; and
• To strengthen the capacity of development and project implementation agencies and institutions for effective coordination of planning and implementation of development projects.