Jamaica has moved to prioritise transformative actions – Henry
DR WAYNE Henry, director general of the Planning Institute of Jamaica, noted that Jamaica had moved to prioritise transformative actions outlined in a roadmap for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Jamaica with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
He was making his contribution to the voluntary national review (VNR) during the United Nations high-level political forum (HLPF) in New York, United States recently.
Henry outlined accelerators to include: social protection outreach to those furthest behind; multidisciplinary efforts to tackle the drivers of non-communicable diseases (NCDs); strengthening the effectiveness of the judicial system; violence prevention programmes; building disaster risk resilience; and advancing the development of the blue and green economies.
INTEGRATING CLIMATE HAZARDS
Dr Henry said Jamaica was deliberately integrating climate hazards across all dimensions of sustainable development planning because of repeated impacts including dislocation of population, disruption of livelihoods, and damage and losses, which have historically been equivalent to one to two per cent of GDP per annum.
And in reporting on the need for high quality data to guide development priorities in the SDGs, deputy director of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, Leesha Delatie-Budair, said that while the National Statistics System was able to produce 49 per cent of SDG indicators, “a lot more needs to be done to improve official statistics in Jamaica”.
The HLPF is the main United Nations platform on sustainable development and it has a central role in the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development the Sustainable Development Goals at the global level.