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1. ADB Launches New Long-Term Strategic Framework
ADB has launched Strategy 2020, a long-term strategy for its vision of an Asia and Pacific region free of poverty. Strategy 2020 sets ADB’s new strategic course, emphasizing that poverty reduction can only be sustained if more people are economically productive, economic growth takes place in a well-managed natural environment, and neighboring economies work within larger and freer markets to achieve shared interests through cooperation.
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2. New Steps Announced in Safeguard Policy Updatep
ADB has completed 13 consultation workshops on the consultation draft of the Safeguard Policy Statement (SPS). CSO representatives contributed substantial feedback on the document, and constituted one-third of workshop participants. In order for the new safeguard policy to be responsive to a wide range of views, ADB will prepare a second draft SPS based on the feedback received through the extensive consultation process. A consultation workshop will be organized at ADB headquarters to give stakeholders to chance to discuss the document. It will also be posted on ADB’s website for public comment.
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3. CLS, Energy, and Safeguard Policies Feature in Annual Meeting Dialogue
ADB will hold its 41st Annual Meeting from 3 to 6 May at the Institución Ferial de Madrid (IFEMA) in Spain’s capital city. One hundred and fifty CSO representatives from 77 organizations and 29 countries have registered for the event. CSO representatives will share views with ADB senior staff during panel discussions addressing energy, the Safeguard Policy Update, and core labor standards (CLS). Other dialogue sessions between civil society participants and ADB officials are also planned. For more information, contact Suzanne Nazal, NGO and Civil Society Center (NGOC), at ngocoordinator@adb.org.
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4. Clean Energy Generation gets a Boost in India
ADB will finance two wind power projects in the Indian states of Gujarat and Karnataka. ADB is extending a rupee-denominated loan of $113 million equivalent to an Indian subsidiary of CLP Holdings of Hong Kong, China to develop the projects. The projects will contribute to India’s economic growth and energy diversification in an environmentally sustainable manner. They will also stimulate private sector participation in energy generation by demonstrating the successful implementation of large-scale wind power projects.
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5. ADB Calls for More Funding to Address Climate Change
Speaking in Chiba, Japan, at the fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development, ADB Vice-President Ursula Schaefer-Preuss called for more partnerships to pool technical and financial resources to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and to enable those adversely affected to adapt to the challenges in the Asia and Pacific region.
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6. Plan Promotes Conservation in Coral Triangle and Heart of Borneo
ADB will provide a $1.5 million grant for environmentalists to work with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines to draw up a plan to protect the region’s seas and rainforests, which are being damaged at an alarming rate. The grant will support the World Wildlife Fund for Nature in preparing an environmental and socio-economic profile of the region, geographic information system mapping, and stakeholder consultations in the four countries that would lead to the development of a long-term program to establish regional environmental management policies and strategies to strengthen the sustainable management of natural resources.
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7. Senior Appointments Made to Independent Audit and Evaluation Posts
Mr. Philip Daltrop has been appointed ADB’s new Auditor General, and Mr. H. Satish Rao has been appointed Director General of the Operations Evaluation Department. Both staff members assumed their new positions in April, and will hold a question and answer session with CSO representatives attending ADB’s 41st Annual Meeting in Madrid, Spain on 3 May.
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8. Workshop will Address Better Governance in Transport
ADB will host an Asia regional workshop on "Mobilizing Civil Society to Improve Governance in Transport," 25-27 June. The workshop is being organized by the Governance Theme of the global Transport Knowledge Partnership (gTKP). Those interested in participating should contact Stephen Vincent at stephen.vincent@gtkp.com.
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9. Resettlement is Focus of International Symposium
The 9th Annual Symposium on Poverty Research in Sri Lanka will be held in November in Colombo. This year’s program will encourage research and analysis to understand the interaction between poverty and resettlement and displacement. The Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), which is organizing the Symposium, has called for expressions of interest for papers under the core topic of resettlement due to development processes or other factors, such as natural disasters or conflicts. For more information, contact Coordinator, Symposium on Poverty Research, at symposium9@cepa.lk.
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10. Reference Guide Promotes Environmentally Responsible Procurement
ADB has published Environmentally Responsible Procurement: A Reference Guide for Better Practices. The publication offers guidance to ADB staff, consultants, and personnel of executing agencies in designing and implementing environmentally sound projects. It supplements ADB’s Environmental Assessment Guidelines (2003) by elaborating on the links between environmental assessment and procurement, and by strengthening the implementation of environmental mitigation measures.
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11. CSO Visitor: Aquaya Institute
This regular feature spotlights one of the many CSOs whose representatives have recently met with ADB staff at the institution's headquarters in the Philippines.
The Aquaya Institute is a San Francisco-based nonprofit research and consulting organization that promotes innovations for preventing diarrhea through technology development, product distribution, and impact evaluation.
Aquaya staff conduct a variety of research projects to develop and test innovative approaches for the delivery of safe water and sanitation to end-users in developing countries. They develop new technologies, assess strategies for the distribution of products and services, and measure the impact of innovations on user health and well-being.
Aquaya considers the first step towards delivering innovation for reducing waterborne disease to be the development and optimization of appropriate technologies for the provision of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene. In this first element of the Aquaya pipeline, the organization studies and leverages proven technologies, adapting them for use in resource-poor settings. At present, Aquaya is conducting technology optimization research for household-level water treatment and water quality testing.
To ensure that its innovations for reducing waterborne diseases will have a positive impact, Aquaya develops effective product distribution strategies that promote sustainable and scalable product use. Researching and evaluating fully commercial and subsidized distribution models makes up the second essential component of the Aquaya pipeline.
The third step of the Aquaya pipeline is developing rigorous methodologies for quantifying impacts on end-user health and socio-economic parameters in order to measure the success of product development and distribution. Aquaya believes that this step is essential for obtaining science-based evidence of successful innovations and building support for their uptake.
Aquaya is collaborating with the School of Health at the University of California-Berkeley to conduct an epidemiological evaluation of the long-term health and socio-economic impacts of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions implemented by NGOs in rural communities of Tamil Nadu state in Southern India.
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12. Training Courses in 2008
A listing in this section does not imply ADB endorsement or availability of financing for participants.
- Strategic Financial Management for NGOs - Managing for Financial Sustainability, 2-4 June, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Contact: MANGO; e-mail: training@mango.org.uk; tel: +44 1865 204836; website: www.mango.org/uk/training/book.aspx.
- International Training Workshop on Disaster Risk and Environmental Management, 5-8 July, Melaka, Malaysia. Contact: World Youth Forum; e-mail: zhsend@yahoo.com; website: www.wyf.org.my.
- Short Course on Nonprofit Leadership: Maximizing Impact, 29-30 May, Washington, DC, United States. Contact: UPEACE Centre for Executive and Professional Education; e-mail: newsletter@upeaceus.org; tel: +1 202 683 4081; website: www.upeaceus.org.
- INTRAC Conference: What Ever Happened to Civil Society?, 3-5 December 2008, KDK Conference Centre, The Netherlands. Contact: INTRAC; e-mail: conference@intrac.org; tel: +44 1865 201851; website: www.intrac.org/pages/cseventmain08.html.
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