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Climate action and SDG acceleration through sustainable PPPs and resilient infrastructure

Climate action and SDG acceleration through sustainable PPPs and resilient infrastructure

PPP Working Party session Nov. 2024

The world faces immense challenges in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The climate crisis, widening inequalities, and infrastructure financing gaps underscore the urgent need for sustainable, resilient, and inclusive development strategies. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are central to addressing these challenges, leveraging private sector expertise, capital, and transformative innovation (ETIN) to build infrastructure that advances climate action and accelerates progress on the SDGs. 

In her opening remarks at the 8th session of the UNECE Working Party on Public-Private Partnerships, UNECE Executive Secretary Tatiana Molcean highlighted these urgent challenges facing the world, while emphasizing the opportunities for progress presented by the recently adopted UN Pact for the Future.  

Referring to the Pact of the Future, she stressed that a “newfound path to a brighter future is underpinned in the most wide-ranging international agreement in many years, which strives to achieve environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic development, with Public-Private Partnerships playing a pivotal role in leveraging private sector expertise, efficiency, and capital”.  

At the session, member States discussed how the UNECE PPPs for the SDGs approach is linked to the Pact for the Future and its Global Digital Compact, and how it can advance its objectives, while at the same time contributing to the cross-cutting theme of the 70th Commission session dedicated to digital and green transformations for sustainable development. Among others, UNECE member States endorsed four new UNECE Guidelines: Guidelines on improving the delivery of PPPs through digital transformation throughout the project lifecycle in support of the SDGs, the Guidelines on PPPs in digital infrastructure: diagnostics in healthcare (telemedicine) and other digital public services, the Guidelines on green and sustainable PPP procurement for the SDGs, and the Guidelines on the state of PPP and infrastructure finance midway to 2030.These guidelines include very practical policy recommendations for policy makers. 

In addition, member States identified two new policy workstreams to be launched in 2025 in the following priority areas:  

  • Enhancing fiscal sustainability and affordability in PPPs for the SDGs; and 

  • Harnessing the potential and mitigating the risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in PPP and infrastructure projects in support of the SDGs. 

These new workstreams, and many other priority topics, will be further explored at the 9th edition of the UNECE International PPP Forum in Belgrade, Serbia, from 14 to 16 May 2025, which will be organized with the support of the Government of Serbia.  

UNECE PPP flagship products, such as PIERS, will feature prominently in the Forum as practical tools to unlock climate finance into PPP and infrastructure in support of the SDGs.  

For further information, please visit: https://unece.org/ppp