The Asia-Pacific region is rapidly urbanizing, with its urban population projected to reach 3.5 billion by 2050. While urbanization fuels economic growth, it also brings challenges like overcrowding, environmental degradation, and infrastructure strain, especially in informal settlements. Cities contribute heavily to greenhouse gas emissions and face climate risks, but opportunities for sustainable urbanization exist through smart planning, renewable energy, and regional cooperation.

The Eighth South-East Asia Multi-Stakeholder Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals will focus on integrating key SDGs to tackle these issues, aiming to showcase best practices, provide policy recommendations, and foster collaboration. This is an annual, inclusive intergovernmental forum to support follow-up and review of progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development providing governments, development partners, civil society, academia, the private sector and other stakeholders opportunities to share perspectives, discuss collaborative measures and exchange good practices. 

The Forum will begin with a Voluntary National Reviews (VNR) workshop on 11 November, which aims to facilitate the exchange of good practices in preparing evidence-based VNRs and voluntary local reviews in South-East Asia. By showcasing country experiences, it will discuss the role of data and evidence for the VNR, including qualitative data stemming from stakeholder consultations and it will highlight the importance of strong narratives. The workshop is complementary to the main programme of the SDG Forum. Please find the website here. 

There will also be a special session on AI Skills for All on 14 November, which is designed to democratize access to AI skills and aims to: (1) enable government agencies to drive AI fluency, (2) scale reach through strategic national priorities (e.g. SMEs, tourism), (3) unlock AI in education, (4) enable social and impact organizations, and (5) empower individual learners.