New York – At the request of the Government of Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning (BAPPENAS), the UNDP MDTF Office organized, in New York from 6 to 8 April, an Interactive Workshop on Multi-Donor Trust Funds in relation to Climate Change and Aid Effectiveness, for senior officials from BAPPENAS and the Ministry of Finance. Read full story...

New York – At the request of the Government of Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning (BAPPENAS), the UNDP MDTF Office organized, in New York from 6 to 8 April, an Interactive Workshop on Multi-Donor Trust Funds in relation to Climate Change and Aid Effectiveness, for senior officials from BAPPENAS and the Ministry of Finance.

The workshop was opened by Mr. Ajay Chhibber, Assistant Administrator and Director, Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific and Mr.  Bisrat Aklilu, Executive Coordinator, MDTF Office, followed by an opening statement by Vice-Minister Dr. Ir. Lukita Dinarsyah Tuwo, BAPPENAS, who led the  15-member senior Indonesian delegation.  

Ms. Veered Vandeweerd, Director, Environment & Energy Group and Mr. Yannick Glemarec, Director, Global Environment Facility Unit provided the officials with a thorough review and discussion of climate change issues and global initiatives. This was followed by detailed presentations and discussion about common features of MDTFs and National MDTFs including, MDTF establishment, operations, governance and Administrative Agent arrangements and lessons learned and best practices from a number of existing national and global MDTFs.  Discussions also focused on transitional arrangements that need to be put in place to build the capacity of national governments to move from UN administered to nationally administered MDTFs. Fiduciary, operational and implementation challenges and the need for capacity development to be an integral part of the MDTF mechanism were also discussed.  

The workshop benefited from presentations made by the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation led by Mr. Yiping Zhou, Director, and on UNDP’s various capacity development support tools, presented by Mr. Nigel Coulson, Capacity Development Group, Bureau of Development Policy.  

In his concluding remarks, Vice Minister Dr. Lukita, stated that the workshop exceeded their expectations and that it has generated considerable ‘food for thought’ as BAPPENAS moves forward to strengthen its internal planning and fund management systems in response to climate change, aid effectiveness and disaster recovery initiatives.