Opening Remarks by Elena Tischenko, on Scalability study - Methodology sharing and feedback session - 5 July 2011

I would like to welcome all of you to this round-table session for the scalability study in which you have all been participating over the last few months. It is a pleasure for me to see so many development partners joining in to discuss, develop and move forward with this initiative.

Allow me to share a few thoughts as a short introduction to this initiative. Cambodia is part of the most vibrant region – Asia. Economic growth in Asia, the emergence of new global power houses from this region and the rise of the strong middle-class all drive the reduction of inequalities globally. At the same time, inequalities persist, and in some places even grow, within the region and inside the countries – both vertically and horizontally. We see vertical disparities in income and purchasing power, and we see horizontal inequalities as, for example, those affecting people living in the areas prone to extreme climatic events, or living in the protected areas with limited opportunities for productive agriculture, or indigenous groups, or the groups with limited or no coverage by social protection schemes. In addition to that, we see another important vulnerability – the phenomenon of ‘near poor’ that exists in many (even middle-income countries) and is an issue in Cambodia – whereby any external or internal shock invariably drive many people in this category from being above the poverty line to extreme poverty.

How do we address these vulnerabilities and inequalities? With Cambodia having demonstrated very impressive progress in poverty reduction in the past decades, and as it is confidently pursuing impressive economic growth even after the recent financial crisis, the answer to sustainability of future development successes lies in the inclusive and equitable growth. While Cambodia’s aspiration is to reach the status of the middle-income country by 2015, it is important to get there with the growth that brings people on board through active participation in creating the wealth and in benefiting from it in an inclusive and equitable manner.

In the remaining five years before the MDG deadline, and indeed in the post-2015 era, inclusive and equitable growth is among key accelerators of poverty reduction and sustainable, resilient human development. It is in this context that we see the scalability initiative as the way to promote inclusive growth in several ways:

- Firstly, as an immediate objective, we believe it is important to bring together good practices, and partners like all of us, in building understanding of what the upscalable approaches actually are, and how we can jointly help move them from isolated, fragmented demonstrations to a broader, more effective and sustainable models.

- Secondly, as such models emerge, we need to link them to national programmes which in time can become instrumental in taking them to scale as part of respective national strategies and key reforms. A number of national programmes – such as social protection strategy, implementation of decentralization reform, national strategy for protected areas, national gender policy and many others – can provide space, institutional leverage, and in time resources, for upscaling sustainable local practices.

- Thirdly: what we collectively intend to do is shaping up as a very knowledge-intensive approach. We believe it will be important to support our way forward with continuous knowledge management - a knowledge platform of sorts - that might be configured as a dynamic, participatory and vibrant space to exchange development solutions and fuel the engine of accelerated human development. In Cambodia, with most vulnerable and poor people living in rural areas and engaged in subsistence agriculture, many development solutions are to be found in local poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods projects. People who are tied to their land and natural resources have a lot to teach us about, and yet in a cash-based economy their voices are not always heard and many good practices go un-noticed.  Many of these local initiatives are coming up with sustainable and resilient agricultural practices and local income-generating schemes, they show the ways to prepare for and mitigate natural disasters, they offer solutions to managing biodiversity and using natural resources in a sustainable and responsible way. This is the wealth of knowledge that needs to be documented and shared in the search for sustainable solutions and taking them to scale.

Finally, a few words about UNDP role. As you probably heard in the discussions leading up to this workshop, and will certainly hear in the course of our discussions during and after the workshop, UNDP sees its role as a facilitator of a broader multi-partner effort. Like every other organization represented in this room, UNDP supports some local-level livelihoods projects in our different portfolios, which give us some insights about the challenges and possible solutions. But so do other projects supported by all other organizations working in this area. Therefore we see our role really as a catalyst of the participatory effort of interested partners to a) objectively assess and understand the scalability potential of local practices and b) find ways to transform them into more sustainable, impactful models that can ultimately be integrated into national programmes and strategies.  

Let me in conclusion warmly welcome you again to this discussion today and say how much we at UNDP are inspired by the interest and positive energy that we observed so far. We hope this energy and the process will keep gaining momentum as we agree both on our broad objectives and expectations , as well as, very practically, on how we do it and what are the next steps. Our “scalability team” including the senior consultant, the study coordinator and my colleagues from the office stand ready to support this process going forward.

Thank you and the best of success to our discussions at the workshop.