UNCTAD, the Secretariat of Planning and Programming of the Presidency of Guatemala, (SEGEPLAN), the Ministry of Economy of Guatemala and CentraRSE jointly organized a kick-off meeting in Guatemala to launch the implementation in the country of the UN Development Account 11th Tranche Project titled Enabling policy frameworks for enterprise sustainability and SDG reporting in Africa and Latin America. The Kick-off meeting took place virtually on 29th June 2020.
Opening the meeting, Ms. Keila Gramajo Vílchez, Secretary of Planning and Programming of the Presidency of Guatemala said: “Guatemala is committed to report, qualitative and quantitative information on compliance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in a transparent and responsible way”. Ms. Edith Flores de Molina, Vice-minister of Integration and International Trade, Ministry of Economy of Guatemala stated that: “The Ministry of Economy recognizes the importance of working together with the private sector, to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. Initiatives like this project contribute to increase our capacity to promote, measure and monitor sustainable practices that underpin the 2030 Agenda”. In addition, Ms. Rebeca Arias, UN Resident Coordinator in Guatemala said: “UNCTAD’s Development Account project together with MINECO, SEGEPLAN and CentraRSE, will foster synergies between different actors to advance towards the implementation of sustainability reporting frameworks, measuring the contribution of the private sector to the 2030 Agenda”. Ms. Tatiana Krylova, Head of Enterprise Branch at UNCTAD highlighted that: “The main objective of this Development Account project is to enable governments to develop policy frameworks on SDG reporting by companies to strengthen the capacities to measure and monitor the private sector contribution to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.”
The kick-off meeting was organized to present the project and initiate a collaborative multi-stakeholder dialogue and cooperation at the national level, which is a key success factor to promote high quality sustainability and SDG reporting by companies. The topic falls under the responsibility of different government entities and other stakeholders in the public and private sectors. Therefore, an efficient and inclusive communication and collaboration among key stakeholders is critical to achieve the objectives of the project.
During the kick-off meeting UNCTAD presented the objectives, activities and expected outputs of the project; and provided an overview of the UNCTAD tools that will support the implementation of the activities. These comprise the revised Accounting Development Tool (ADT), the Guidance on core indicators for entity reporting on contribution towards implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (GCI) and the Training Manual on the GCI application. The project will also be guided by the Metadata Guidance on SDG indicator 12.6.1. developed by UNCTAD and UNEP as co-custodians of this indicator. UNCTAD’s resource person presented an in-depth description of the ADT as a benchmark for a comprehensive assessment of the national sustainability/SDG reporting infrastructure, and explained how participants would be able to contribute to the process.
The meeting was attended by 47 participants from key entities including institutions in charge of the implementation of the SDGs and the entities involved in financial and sustainability/SDG reporting at the national level.
The kick-off meeting will be followed by a National Consultative Workshop scheduled tentatively at the end of October 2020. The results of a thorough assessment of the national sustainability/ SDG reporting infrastructure in Guatemala will be discussed and validated at this event. Gaps and priorities identified in the assessment process will be agreed and used to develop an action plan towards regulatory, institutional and technical capacity building to facilitate progress towards high quality and comparable sustainability/SDG reporting at a company level. The action plan will be presented to all key stakeholders and will be a basis to deliver advisory services and capacity building activities. In Latin America the project is also being implemented in Colombia, and in Africa it takes place in Kenya and South Africa. In addition, a regional workshop in each region is planned at a later stage of the project to share good practices and lesson learned.
