Asian Countries Share Innovative Approaches to Low Emission Development

Submitted by admin on Fri, 2013-02-08 15:57
Thailand presentation at the Delhi Sustainble Development Summit

The USAID Low Emissions Asian Development (LEAD) program, in collaboration with the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), organized a thematic session on innovative initiatives that enable green growth on February 2, 2013 in New Delhi, India as part of the 13th annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit: the Global Challenge of Resource Efficient Growth and Development.  With support from LEAD, representatives from India, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam prepared presentations and materials highlighting their experiences and unique approaches to designing and implementing low emission development strategies (LEDS) and green growth policies and programs. A primary objective was to present tangible examples of LEDS and green growth initiatives that could be replicated  in other country contexts. Initiatives that were shared at the event included India's “Lighting a Billion Lives” rural solar energy program, Nepal's District Climate and Energy Plans for renewable energy, Thailand's nine-step Low Carbon City model, and Vietnam's national Green Growth Strategy. 

Employing a peer-to-peer learning approach, the session featured dialogue among presenters and more than 100 participants, with small groups rotating among the four country displays to facilitate discussion. The session was sponsored by the recently established Asia LEDS Partnership, a regional network to promote and enable low emission development involving more than 20 development organizations and Asian country governments.  The USAID Regional Development Mission for Asia (USAID/RDMA) serves as co-chair of the Partnership, and the LEAD program provides support as the Secretariat.

Links to the presentations, case studies, and hand-outs on the four featured initiatives are provided below, as well as a short video about the session:

India

Thailand

Nepal

Vietnam