Dubai: Zayed International Foundation for the Environment will host the eighth annual Global South-South Development Expo on behalf of the Government of UAE from October 30 to November 3 in Dubai.
South-South cooperation is a broad framework for collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains.
Dr Mohammad Ahmad Bin Fahd, chairman of the Higher Committee of Zayed International Foundation for the Environment, and Jorge Chediek, Envoy of the UN Secretary-General on South-South Cooperation and director of the UN Office for South-South Cooperation, signed an agreement on Monday to host the expo.
The Global South-South Development Expo will be organised by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) in conjunction with more than 20 UN agencies and partners.
The expo will run under the theme ‘South-South Cooperation: Towards innovation and roadmap for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, and will aim to engage all development sectors, including the private sector and civil society, to scale up concrete southern-grown initiatives to help achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Bin Fahd said the expo will address eight main themes in relation to sustainable development: poverty eradication, food security, public private partnerships, green technology transfer, economic growth, industrial innovation, green economies, and global health.
He added, “Without leadership there can be no sustainable development. Our events since our inception in 1999 work on establishing the principle of wise leadership to achieve sustainable development,” he said.
Chediek said this is the first expo to be hosted by a country, as they are usually hosted by UN entities.
He said the UAE is “an excellent example of a developing country that showed achievement in sustainability…The UAE is also a model of tolerance and of how different cultures and religion could work together. So this is the best place to have this event.”
He added that the expo is an opportunity to showcase to other countries the success the UAE has achieved in the field.
The GSSD Expo is a platform for showcasing and scaling up development initiatives while leveraging the complementary strengths of all institutional partners in addressing global and regional challenges.
Since its launch in 2008 the GSSD Expo has showcased 500+ Southern solutions, hosted 4,500+ development experts and practitioners, connected 150 countries, mobilised $15 million+ in partner financing, launched 15 South-South and triangular cooperation initiatives, and encouraged 30 UN partners to Deliver as One.
