A webinar on Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD) and the related COVID-19 challenges was organized by Concord Europe in collaboration with the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) on June 11, 2020. The webinar was attended by participants from 17 National Platforms, EU-wide networks and other CSOs. The webinar was moderated by Marc Maes, 11.11.11 and Rilli Lappalainen, Fingo.
The guest discussants were Ernesto Soria Morales, Senior Policy Analyst at the OECD's Policy Coherence for Development Unit, Anna Piccinini, Policy Analyst in the OECD's Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development Unit, James Mackie, Senior Adviser EU Development Policy at European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) and Martin Ronceray, ECDPM.
The stated objectives of the webinar were as follow:
- To further define the links between PCSD and PCD in discussion with external experts in order to inform our “PCSD for dummies” draft and to narrow down CONCORDs focus within the PCSD debate.
- For members to gain a better understanding of the challenges EU institutions and Member States face in applying PCSD to be able to better adjust our PCSD advocacy efforts.
- To explore concrete proposals for how PCSD can be better used as a key framework to address policy challenges, especially those caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
Some takes from the webinar:
- PCSD for dummies is a paper which CONCORD has been working on with the aim to illustrate the linkages between PCD and PCSD for those who are not experts but aim to advocate on this.
- PCSD does not aim to replace PCD, instead it builds on it as it combines policy coherence for different interests in more diverse dimensions.
- In working on PCSD at national level it is important to move progressively in order to avoid the mainstreaming overload, which can result in a pushback. It is necessary to build narratives and build coalitions with the government and civil society actors as well as other actors.
- There are several consequences of COVID-19 around the PCSD implementation, the OECD has released the new Economic Outlook which illustrates the consequences of the crisis. All the signals about the consequences of the crisis indicate that it is undermining the efforts made so far on SDGs, for example the crisis deeply impacted the achievement of SDG 1 with an increase of people living in poverty of over 5 million.
Please find here the minutes of the webinar, while the recording of the webinar and the presentations can be found in this folder.
